Our First Commercial Project

Back in December 2013 when we were first approached by a customer to look into Home Automation systems for a new build, it was all very new to me and I didn’t really know where to start, I’d been tinkering with various ‘internet of things’ devices, considering (on the quiet of course) myself quite knowledgeable about the whole home automation subject.

How little did I know?

I went out to Las Vegas for CES January 2014, expecting to find a cornucopia of Home Automation products we’d be able to integrate into UK projects. Again once more I was wrong, there was very little technology that had even been released in the US let alone the UK.

Coming back to the UK and the awful weather, the Loxone training course arrived rather quickly, as a techie, I didn’t think i’d have any issues with learning the material. Wrong, I felt like a stranger in a strange land and very much the newbie Loxone installer with a room full of lighting designers, and electricians who talked in a different language! (though probably no different to how my IT customers feel when I talk with other technical people in front of them).

What followed was several months of what if’s and how does this do this? and suddenly we were starting work on my own house, several weeks later, we started the installation on our first commercial project, a 6 bedroom house in Farnham.

My eyes were opened I have to say, i’d never been on a building site in my life, so many people each working on different parts of the house, and here we were about to join up all the dots so to speak with the lighting and heating. Initially I was a little disappointed as the project was literally just lighting and heating, not the most interesting I have to say, in retrospect with the size of the installation it was most definitely for the best.

I don’t think I could have made everything work so smoothly had it been more complicated (we can leave that to the next project).

I learnt about heating curves, different types of heating technology, how lighting can make or break a room, I finally got lighting scenes to the point I understood the mantra of having few switches preached by Loxone finally made sense!

Its good to learn new things, moving into the home automation field shifted me out of my comfort zone of IT support, and into a more exciting world.

Fast forward another 12 months and the project we worked on is now on the market:

The future….. I’m looking forward to the next project coming online, which hopefully won’t be too long.