Home Today, Here Tomorrow

That blueprint is called Home Automation Ready (HA-Ready), which is a repeatable method that home integrators use to ensure that all the wiring necessary to support home automation, entertainment and security systems is in place and ready—even if such systems are not installed immediately, said Mullings, owner of Irvington, N.J.-based technology design firm Digital Lifestyle.

HA-Ready's patent-pending plug-and-play wiring topology essentially ensures there is sufficient wiring for current and future implementations. This means a universe of electronic devices sporting industry-standard connectors can be added at a later date without pulling new cabling. As new technology arrives, or ownership of an HA-Ready property changes hands, additional PCs, plasma TVs, wireless routers, lighting, HVAC controls, storage devices, touchpads and security controls can be added without having to install additional new wiring.

"It's a free-wiring concept," Mullings said. "What we do is lay in all possible wiring now, so whatever might get added later can be wired up immediately."

To come up with the product, Mullings studied the typical architectural floor plans and married them to common occupant traffic patterns. For example, a PC will not likely be placed in a bathroom, or multiple broadband connections won't be needed in a kitchen. Armed with this understanding, a maximum amount of connectivity can be embedded with maximum efficiency in relation to the environment.

"How technology is used in the home is a common thing," Mullings said. "We know there are certain areas in the home you are going to use in a specific manner. You are not going to plug in a [desktop] PC in your dining room. If anything, a laptop would be used there, so in preparation we build for a Wi-Fi access point."

As the Manhattan brownstone is being renovated, Mullings and his crew have access to the insides of walls and ceilings. Having access to this is one of the preconditions of an HA-Ready install—unless a customer has no quarrel with factoring in the costliness and inconvenience of tearing down walls and ripping open ceilings. Multiple types of cabling are run through the building to support power, bandwidth and audio. Each termination point is individually labeled and matched to its opposite termination point. Therefore, ping testing to ensure two devices or outlets are connected properly is unnecessary.

Of course, planning for the future by running excess wiring is not an entirely new idea, said Dan Hoehnen, president of custom installation company Custom Automation Technologies, Powell, Ohio. Hoehnen advises his customers to consider adding extra connectivity during a wiring job while the walls are already torn open. But instead of choosing a retail, prefabricated approach to connectivity such as HA-Ready, Hoehnen opts for a more customizable approach. "What we do is basically the same thing, it's just not a fixed, standard package like HA-Ready," Hoehnen said.

But a fixed and standardized approach is what HA-Ready is all about, Mullings said. With HA-Ready, industry-standard termination points enable the use of almost any popular connector or controller.

"The design is manufacturer-agnostic," Mullings said. "You can swap out equipment without breaking into the walls."

For a typical HA-Ready job, material costs come in at around 35 percent of the total cost, then Digital Lifestyle pays a referral fee to installers of about 4 percent. If, for example, a job runs about $13 per square foot in a 5,000-square-foot home, thereby adding up to a grand total of $65,000 for the work, an installer's referral fee alone is approximately $2,600.

"The installer gets the bulk of the revenue for the project. They receive around 40 percent of the cost of the job," Mullings said. "That's a nice chunk of change for one project."