|
"Integrally including domotics from the new construction up to and including follow-up. Thus from the specification phase through service provision in the years after handover." According to Michel Schrijvers, this in a nutshell is the plan the cooperation Hendriks Bouw en Ontwikkeling and Schrijvers Elektrotechniek decided on in 2008. In 2010 this cooperation will result in accommodation of Schrijvers in Dome-X, the new Hendriks Lifestyle and Knowledge Studio.
Intelligent home
Domotics is the umbrella concept for everything in a housing unit, office, school or care centre that contributes electronically to optimum safety, comfort and reduction of energy consumption. Says Schrijvers: "In the intelligent home, all appliances and installations are connected to one another and to the outside world. You can also operate them with one key, remote control or via a touch screen. You can arrange it in such a way that the home knows, as it were, that you are coming home and adapts itself to your needs of the moment."
User-friendly system
This is already the case in cars, explains Schrijvers. "Once the car is switched on, all functions are operating and everything can be read on one display. However, in our home we switch security, lighting, heating, kitchen equipment, computer, TV and audio on and off all day long. Domotics integrates and combines all functions into one user-friendly system, life-cycle durable, easy to expand and adapt to future wishes. The difference with the car? A car decreases in value, but a house with domotics increases in value! And using domotics can reduce energy consumption by thirty percent in comparison with the conventional installations, which in a technical sense have remained the same for a hundred years already."
Domotics design centre
Schrijvers is going to arrange a domotics design centre in Hendriks’ Dome-X, with separate areas for the various target groups, because private individuals and housing corporations have different wishes than care institutions and schools. “The potential buyer of a housing unit is informed there about what domotics can mean to him in the area of energy, user facility, luxury, comfort, security and multimedia. All options are indicated and explained on a separate specifications drawing. Very clear to the interested party,” says Schrijvers.
KNX protocol
Schrijvers Elektrotechniek works within the KNX protocol, the communication protocol for networks in intelligent buildings, introduced globally in 2003. About one hundred and fifty prominent manufacturers joined this protocol. Says Schrijvers: “Compare it to the video systems of the past. VHS eventually ended up as the standard for this. The KNX protocol for domotics means that this is a safe and good investment.”
Showroom
In his present showroom at the Willaertstraat, Michel Schrijvers shows with enthusiasm how “it” all works in practice. He shows that domotics security is much more than the outside light, the siren and the smoke alarm, and that comfort also has everything to do with climate control, sunblinds and ventilation. Furthermore, he says that the life-cycle durability of domotics offers cost advantages in maintenance or remodeling. And what will it cost? Says Schrijvers: “There is a domotics package fitting every budget. You can already have a domotics infrastructure in your home for about fifteen hundred euros. But actually, the following applies: a great deal is possible in the domotics area in order to make spaces liveable to the full extent.”
|
