Fun House: Builders’ Show replete with high-tech gadgets for home of the future

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004 | 8:15 a.m.

In the kitchen of a spacious, three-bedroom home, Paul Barnett demonstrated how he can use his cellphone to call a refrigerated oven.

"I put the casserole in here when I want to," Barnett said, referring to the Internet-connected appliance that both chills and cooks.

"At a certain time of day I tell it through my telephone to warm up so when I come through the door, dinner is ready."

Scheduled to enter the market in January 2005, the Tonights Menu Intelligent Oven ($5,000) is one very smart oven living in a very intelligent home.

Built in the parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center for the International Builders' Show, which ends today, the NextGen Demonstration Home is designed and wired to showcase the evolution of household technology.

A voice-enabled Gateway kitchen computer lets you ask for recipes or check the weather while cooking; a Microsoft media center controls every device in the home while a Home Automated Inc. system (HAI) lets you activate the air conditioning and lights on your way home from work.

"There's a lot of mobile control," said Barnett, president of iShow, a communications company that provides connected solutions to the home construction industry.

"Say you're in Las Vegas and you went away for the weekend. An hour away from home you can dial in and tell it to turn up the air."

You could even get a call from your water pipe.

"If there was a problem and a pipe broke, this would close the valve and it would contact you," Barnett said, referring to WaterCop ($279-$620), a device that connects to the water line of your home.

Looking around the NextGen home that comes with stealth speakers ($600 a pair) and a smart toilet, Barnett said, "It's just an extension of the pace that we're running these days. It's creating time. There you are at work telling your oven to heat up."

Smart and efficient

Whether it's connected homes, smart appliances or just high-end, innovative products, signs of the future could be spotted throughout the builders' show.

Salton Inc. showcased its Countertop iCEBOX kitchen entertainment center (part of its Beyond Connected Home line) that provides a television, Internet, DVD, CD player and radio and can be used to program a compatible bread-maker, microwave and coffee maker.

"You can program your week's worth of coffee brewing," Kristen Howard, a representative for Salton, said, referring to the Countertop iCEBOX ($1,800). "You can hook up a camera to your baby's room or front door."

With a wireless and waterproof remote control and keyboard, Howard said of the computers, "They're designed for messy."

The Beyond Connected Home line also features a microwave ($179) that cooks meals according to bar codes on food packages. It comes with 4,000 recipes and will program itself for more recipes as new bar codes are scanned in.

Kenmore offers an intelligent dishwasher that's touted by the phrase, "Knows if you've had lasagna, sloppy Joes or both."

For homes that aren't connected, there's Whirlpool's Polara Refrigerated Range ($1,899), a refrigerated oven introduced last year that chills the item, then cooks it at the pre-programmed time. Don't worry about running late.

"If you tell it to cook by 2 p.m. and you're not home, it will keep it warm for one hour," said Herb Caldwell, Michigan sales trainer for Whirlpool. "If you're still not home after that, it starts cooling again."

Pointing to Whirlpool's g2microven (a $719 microwave oven) Caldwell explained that sensor technology determines the level of moisture in the food so it won't dry while cooking.

"It's getting to a point where you're going to be talking to your appliances," said Dan Gilbert, a senior repair technician for Sears, who has been repairing home appliances for decades.

And why not? The appliances are already talking to each other.

Connected homes with smart appliances are a sign of times to come, said Bob Vila, a home improvement expert whose syndicated television show, "Bob Vila's Home Again," features home restoration, remodeling and construction projects.

"Without a doubt," Vila said. "That's what consumers are looking for is efficiency. I think the problem I have -- and the middle-aged population -- is figuring out how to operate them, the diagnostics."

Vila uses an iCEBOX FlipScreen in his kitchen, but he ran into trouble with his smart oven when it started beeping while entertaining. He couldn't stop the beeping and finally had to pull the circuit breaker.

"The challenge is living with it diagnostically," Vila said. "Younger people who are growing up in the digital age can adjust better."

Up for grabs

Two years ago the Internet Home Alliance, a network of companies working to advance the market for home technology, surveyed homeowners on home networking and learned that 48 percent of U.S. homeowners are not interested in adopting a connected home. Seventeen percent said they were likely to adopt a program and 25 percent were willing to consider it.

According to the survey, those who said they'd consider adopting a connecting home were married couples between 35 and 44 years old who had teenage children.

Regarding connected smart ovens, Vila said, "I love to cook, but not at that level. That doesn't appeal to me. In the busy household where there's three or four kids, it makes a lot of sense to have these short cuts."

Though many smart appliances have been available for some time, Vila said, "The development is a new discovery for people. All of those changes are an awakening for people about what they are living without."

Steve Rodgers, a Sears district manager from Fort Meyers, Fla., sees it happen all the time.

Pointing to the Maytag's new Neptune Drying Center ($1,199 to $ 1,489), which includes a drying cabinet with mesh shelves for drying sweaters and a rack for drying and de-wrinkling shirts and slacks, Rodgers explained, "It's just got stuff on it that makes people say, 'You know what? I gotta have it.' It does it all."

Whirlpool offers a similar product called Dry Aire that circulates warm air through a drying cabinet, but its Personal Valet ($800-$1,200) goes a step further by removing wrinkles and odors.

"About 80 percent of clothing taken to the cleaners is to remove wrinkles and odors, not to remove stains," Whirlpool spokesman Grant Deady said. "A warm mist inside treats the clothes."

Movin' to mainstream

As with any new products, company representatives admit that the appliances are high end and costly, but anticipate drops in prices as more generations of the product are created and moved into the mainstream market.

"As it gets adopted in the broader marketplace the price continues to drop," Barnett said. "There are more affordable prices and more appliances to come."

Thomas Pickral, founder of HAI, has seen his security, lighting and ventilation systems move from millionaires to the middle class.

"The technology has been around for a while," Pickral said. "But it's really been available for high-end homes, million-dollar homes. It's not just $1 million and up anymore. It's $100,000 and up. "We've gotten to the point where it's cost effective to everybody. The big obstacle this time is awareness."

The system costs roughly $1 for each square foot in a new home. Retrofitting can cost 25 percent to 100 percent more. Pickral said the product is already in 65,000 homes throughout the U.S.

HAI had record sales in eight out of 12 months last year.

"Transitioning into the mainstream markets, we're growing by leaps and bounds," Pickral said. "Having a system like this can save 10 to 30 percent on energy bills.

"There is still manual control. The idea is to make it more convenient. It allows you to have the house to a higher-level intelligence and react to your lifestyle."