HOME LIVING
KEVIN MCCLOUD ON SMART HOMES AND THE FUTURE OF DOMESTIC TECH The Grand Designs frontman discusses his favourite gizmos, and why robots may be invading homes sooner rather than later. By Luke Rix-Standing.... Voice-activated kettles, app-controlled toilets, and ovens that can tell you the weather - love it or loathe it, the smart home is here to stay. We talked to veteran Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud about the rise of the tech-savvy houshold, and what's in store for the homes of the future... For all the Luddites out there, what does the phrase 'home tech' really mean? "I'm a Luddite - I don't like things to be complicated, and the more stuff you have hardwired into your building, the more things can go wrong. I'm not a fan of the really geeky stuff that turns a house into a machine, where you've got to spend an hour a day adjusting the controls. "What's happened to our homes is exactly what happened to our computers, only 15 or 20 years later. When the first examples of home tech emerged, they were highly complex pieces of equipment that would fill entire rooms and burn through enough energy to heat the whole house.
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"Now you can run a house with an app, and even my mother could do it. There are some amazing little devices in 'the internet of things', which are inexpensive and can bring immeasurable improvements to our quality of life." What's your favourite home tech invention? "A few years ago, I tested a product called the Foobot, which tells you how healthy your air is by measuring things like CO2, bug spores and volatile organic compounds. It's also controlled via an app and responds remotely when tapped. "Parents started using it to know when their kids came home they would tap the Foobot, which would alert the parents. I know one person who used it for their mother to indicate when she'd been moving around - which would create dust and change the quality of the air. People started using as a monitoring system for their relative, without being intrusive. It's really intriguing how people find new uses for devices. "I'm also a real fan of mechanical ventilation and heat recovery. It's a very clever way of recycling energy."
