What is an integrator? They are the latest trade that should be working on your new or highly remodeled house. They are like the plumber, HVAC tech, or electrician. They are the one that plans out the smart home and internet for the home and makes sure that all things play well together.

We talk about in todays episode why you might need one for your next project and how do you start planning on adding smart home tech to your home. Maybe its just a doorbell or its a complex system... You might want to consult at least once with these experts.

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[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: They're going to make sure that the internet works in all corners of the house. They're going to make sure. All of your new stuff that comes in your house plays well together. So when the garage door company comes out to put the new garage doors in that garage door opener, that garage door is going to work with your system when it comes to and renovating your home.

[00:00:51] Intro: though, we got you covered. This is

[00:01:08] Eric Goranson: doing better. Doing better and full disclosure. Guys had a wonderful time in Florida and I brought back a Florida parting gift. COVID-19

[00:01:25] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah, I've

[00:01:45] Eric Goranson: So that's a good. Thank

[00:01:51] Eric Goranson: yeah, you've talked to me every day, so it's, you know, I have good days and bad days and I'm on the, on the mend now, so that's good. And, uh, all as well, but I tell you [00:02:00] what, um, some of the remodels I did this last year were life savers, like my steam shower.

[00:02:30] Eric Goranson: I'm telling my story about what I'm doing. So there. I literally would go in there and I would take a couple drops of a eucalyptus oil, put it right at the, in the little, well that they have for the steam generator on there. And I would drop a little bit of eucalyptus soil in there and then crank that thing up to 114 degrees and spend, you know, 20 minutes in the steam shower and man coming out of there, I would always feel reinvigorated and my head is [00:03:00] clear.

[00:03:08] Intro: and it was awesome. Yeah.

[00:03:18] Intro: shower.

[00:03:30] Eric Goranson: That was a huge deal for me. And it was a huge deal for her. So that was a, definitely a lifesaver. And it's not like if I didn't have that, I could go to my gym or something. I've been, you know, closed up at the house. Cause I don't want to give it to anybody else

[00:03:49] Eric Goranson: Yeah, I've got the Thermo Saul system in there, and that is a, they're a well total wellness package. It is wonderful. There's a lot of other steam shower brands out there that are good too. But for [00:04:00] me, Thermacell was the one and, uh, you know, I could get in there and really control the temperature and it gives out really quick steam and, uh, yeah, just go in there and just like oven, just like the oven I'd go in there and just bake it up for a little bit.

[00:04:21] Caroline Blazovsky: we're going to talk at some point. No, we've never talked about it since I've been on the show, but I'm dying to get a sauna and like how to build a sauna and really do it. Right. Cause that's another thing that I think when you're sick, so helpful just to detox

[00:04:43] Eric Goranson: From steam showers to saunas to do things

[00:04:55] Eric Goranson: one. Redwoods one. There's a lot of different stuff. I'm not sure about Poplar. [00:05:00] Um, I haven't seen one, but you know, I'm a west coast guy, so a lot of the, you know, it's, it comes down to really trying to control.

[00:05:26] Caroline Blazovsky: like in Europe. I mean, they custom do these in everybody's house.

[00:05:37] Eric Goranson: to me. Yeah. I just love that high humidity for me. It was really. Cleared my head and make it so I could function during the week. So it was impressive.

[00:06:04] Caroline Blazovsky: Let's talk a little bit about home tech.

[00:06:32] Eric Goranson: The cool thing this year is it wasn't so much the new products that we saw. It was the kind of the keyword for this year's inner operability. Nice word. Yeah. So it's, here's the thing when you're talking about home tech, and this is what we're going to talk a little bit about today, when you're talking about home tech, the problem that you run into is that many times you have.

[00:07:24] Eric Goranson: Cause you have to go through and you walk into a room and instead of touching the light switch, you're like, hold on, let me get the app for that. And you're looking through your phone, you're going in the folder and I'm like, man, you could've just hit the light switch faster. That's that's that's dumb, smart

[00:07:41] Caroline Blazovsky: I think that's why I don't have. Oh good. I think that's why I don't have a lot of smart tech things because I hate the apps. I hate having to look through the app. It's so cumbersome. It takes time. So you were telling me about these hubs and these apps that sort of combine everything. So I think it would be great for the listeners to [00:08:00] know what you're using and how you're bypassing all those nasty apps

[00:08:07] Eric Goranson: Yeah. That's the thing with, with smart home hubs and that's one of the ways to do this, and that's really the main way to do it when we come back. We'll talk about that. I do have one question for you, Caroline though. What smart home things do you have around your

[00:08:33] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm a little suspect of one, how much people can watch me. Not that I'm doing anything bad, but I just get that kind of feeling like, you know, how much information do I want out there? And then the other thing is I'm lazy. I don't like dealing with all the

[00:09:01] Eric Goranson: If it was. Secure and you could run it

[00:09:05] Eric Goranson: User-friendly maybe we can get you a little farther. So you keep trying to get me to get a little healthier. I'm going to try to get you a little techie. I like

[00:09:27] Caroline Blazovsky: Um, but with Gary, you know, remember Gary was on talking about cybersecurity. I think there's gotta be ways to make it more secure.

[00:09:45] Intro: you should be allowed, be so high[00:10:00]

[00:10:02] Eric Goranson: back to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B. Well, we've been talking home improvement every single week and you should be tuning in every single week. And if you don't just catch it on the podcast, hit the subscribe button and guess what it'll show up and you can listen to us including that mid-week special.

[00:10:24] Intro: Hey, talking about toxic. Yeah.

[00:10:38] Eric Goranson: so up until now, I've always said that you should figure out your, your smart home plan of the things you want to add around that smart home base, that hub, right?

[00:11:11] Eric Goranson: Right. So I can put in all these different, you know, things. And so you have to almost think about a smart home hub. Is that universal language that will work with all the different. Smart home devices around. So when you look at, you know, when you look at a box, for instance, there's all these different kinds of languages that your smart home pieces use, maybe it's on wifi.

[00:12:00] Eric Goranson: And so it's kinda cool how it all plays together. So

[00:12:20] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And so what happens is, is that when you load that up and now here's one change that's happened. Samsung has let a third party come in and start to use and create this hub. And so if you have the smart things platform out there, it's also made by a biotech, a E O T E C smart home. And so it's about 135 bucks.

[00:13:07] Eric Goranson: So for instance, when I go to bed at night, if I want certain lights on outside certain lights to be off, I want lights on, you know, what, what do I want to happen when I go to bed every night so I can go through and hit it. So I hit the good night button that I've created on my smart things hub. It does all these 20 different things for me.

[00:13:40] Intro: And blinds

[00:13:51] Eric Goranson: So if you want like a hallway light, just to be low dim, you can set it to when you hit goodnight, it takes. And it just sets it really well. That's where it's [00:14:00] kind of cool. So if you like at your house, you could set it. If you had your blinds were compatible and I don't know if they are or not, but if they were, you could set it where it automatically closes.

[00:14:17] Intro: That's nice.

[00:14:25] Caroline Blazovsky: go in there. Yeah.

[00:14:28] Eric Goranson: Many of the, of the thermostats will work with that as well. But to be honest, I set my thermostat in my thermostat. So rarely do I change the thermostat through my hub just because I've got it pretty much set up. I don't have to change it anymore. I, I know what it needs to be. It's set up. It's smart. It's it's doing its own thing.

[00:14:56] Caroline Blazovsky: So give me some ideas of things that would go on there because like [00:15:00] I'm thinking about my house, right? So I have an Ecobee thermostat, so that probably wouldn't be on there.

[00:15:07] Eric Goranson: If you had door locks, that could be a big thing. Garage door openers. That could be a big thing. Uh, light switches, uh, especially on exterior light switches. You never remembered to, you never forget to turn them on or turn them off because you have have it happening. You know, you can create it.

[00:15:30] Caroline Blazovsky: that because we've got a bat spotlight, bats love our house. So we have this huge spotlight to prevent the bats from coming. And I like hate having to go outside and plug this huge spotlight.

[00:15:49] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. In Lu Tron makes, it was just a real one, 10 outlet. Lu Tron makes an exterior plug that goes in line to that. So you could just plug it in all the time and then it would control that.[00:16:00]

[00:16:21] Eric Goranson: And, you know, I did a lot of speaking at the show I gave what, 16 seminars that I gave to builders, remodelers, and designers, and the message I wanted to get across. We'll talk about some of the new things that happen here in the next segment. But I wanted to really start getting across that there's a new trade in the organization out there for people that are building a remodeling.

[00:17:06] Eric Goranson: That's going to come on the job site that is going to make sure that you have all the low voltage wires going, where they need to go. They're going to make sure that the internet works and all quarters of the house. They're going to make sure that all of your new stuff that comes in your house plays well together.

[00:17:41] Eric Goranson: And they're also going to be your tech support and you,

[00:17:58] Eric Goranson: I mean, I'm not an [00:18:00] integrator. I don't pretend to be one. I speak about it a lot. And I'm teaching builders, remodelers, and designers about it, but let's be honest. If I'm building a new house, I'm hiring an integrator because I'm hiring that plumber. I'm hiring that electrician. They're going to be coming out and doing it, and I'm going to let them use their expertise.

[00:18:51] Intro: Hey, this is

[00:19:07] Intro: The color red never looked still. Good. So good.

[00:19:35] Caroline Blazovsky: Integrators. I love that word

[00:19:59] Eric Goranson: [00:20:00] When do they come in? They should be coming in. When you have a set of plans, you should be bringing them in so they can have the discussion with the electrician and the plumber and that kind of stuff.

[00:20:14] Intro: with all those guys.

[00:20:27] Eric Goranson: You know, large remodel, they should be in there and people go, well, why would you do that? Well, because many times, all of these smart home things, you need some kind of power source, right? So if you're bringing in and you have a, a high level security system that takes power for the cameras, that electrician needs to know where those boxes are going to be right around the outside of the house.

[00:21:16] Eric Goranson: Because so many appliances, these days are running off of wifi, but I'll be honest if I have a smart refrigerator or a smart range or the same. I would much rather plug that in and get a more secure connection than I would. And

[00:21:36] Caroline Blazovsky: So we had to incorporate, they were incorporating all of the filtration and then also the HVAC, which was interesting. Cause I, that, that word was the first time I think I had heard it, you know, probably going back what, 2020? Yeah, 2020. It's a big deal. So it's going to be also involved with your HVAC system and all of that, which are what I consider to be your heart and lungs of the bill.[00:22:00]

[00:22:18] Eric Goranson: So now you have to plan to make sure that you've got. You know, either a mesh system or something around that. So you want to make sure that they are involved early in the process, because to be honest, that's going to save you money. And I don't care if you just want to have, you know, half a dozen or a dozen smart home things around there, I would bring that integrator in to make sure it's all going to work together.

[00:22:44] Caroline Blazovsky: I've got the big question for. How do we find an indicator and where do we go to find this person? You know, one

[00:23:05] Eric Goranson: So they are one of the biggest groups out there. Now there's another one out there that's fairly new compared to. Which these guys are great to the home technology association. And so what's cool about what HTA is doing and these guys both kind of play well together. So that's the nice thing is it's not like a McDonald's burger king battle here, or a Ford versus Chevy.

[00:23:56] Eric Goranson: Right. You know, we're not going to get that in. I'm not putting in [00:24:00] a smart home system. That's like a 30 or $50 million house. But I want to do something that's going to fit my needs in my house. So they've got different levels of integrator based upon their expertise and what they've trained for. And I think that's really valuable because I'll be honest.

[00:24:30] Caroline Blazovsky: You know, you, I'm S I'm thinking about something and maybe you can clarify this for me, but we had a lot of audio and video companies, you know, 10 years back that would come out and do specialized audio and video.

[00:24:55] Eric Goranson: your integrator? They have taken greater, has taken over maybe a lot of [00:25:00] that whole. Home sound stuff, because there's so many new systems that are using wired or wireless connections that are part of that smart home system.

[00:25:41] Eric Goranson: I want to have this just perfect in my house. I'm going to get ahold of that Avi person, not my integrator, but I'm going to have those two words.

[00:25:56] Eric Goranson: technology. Absolutely. So you want to make sure those play well together [00:26:00] and, and of course there's integrators out through the do both, but that's my theory is that I would bring it as with anything.

[00:26:12] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm a music buff. So music room that's integrated. That's

[00:26:29] Eric Goranson: And it sounds like you've got the band circled around you in your right there, and you could put a mask on and go I'm there in the room playing with me. This is amazing.

[00:26:50] Caroline Blazovsky: And between the soundproofing and the integration and the technology and the, you know, all of that. It's

[00:27:07] Eric Goranson: You want this stuff to work. And the problem though is, is, is you want it to work in three years or four years. You don't want to design and go, Hey, I made it perfect for today. You want to design it? So you have the flexible. For the next generation of what what's going to happen. Because as we all know, home technology is evolving every year.

[00:27:48] Eric Goranson: So my internet connection is wired because I'm out in my garage. My house was built in 1977. I have foil faced insulation, great for [00:28:00] heat back in the day, but horrible with wifi signals and it's an exterior wall and I've got a washer and dryer heat pump, water heater, and an HPAC systems. So that signal does not in a fire door.

[00:28:34] Eric Goranson: Let's do that just as soon as around the house returns.

[00:28:57] Eric Goranson: I'm already command from even. I love [00:29:00] spam and you're listening to around the house

[00:29:06] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to around the house with Eric G N Caroline bay. This is not your grandfather's home improvement show. This is a new kind of home improvement every single week.

[00:29:30] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah, I'm a little scared, but I mean, I think more, it comes down to being lazy. I don't like the apps I'm on my phone enough with texting and making sure we have social media and making sure I'm on for work and my clients, any extra stuff that I have to use on the phone just becomes a nuisance.

[00:29:50] Eric Goranson: open to it. So one of the cool things that might be kind of a good one to play with. And I've got a few of these around my house and it's a brilliant light switch. [00:30:00] There's a lot of different types of lighting controls out there. But one little DIY tip for you is you might try putting one of these in now.

[00:30:29] Eric Goranson: So you add that music to the house. It also will control that light switch as well in a smart home way. But the thing I like about it is is that it actually has a camera built in. So it's also can be a video screen there where you can talk to somebody on the other side of the house. If they had a similar light switch there, or you can jump onto the app on your phone and you can see what's going on at your house.

[00:31:12] Eric Goranson: So it's kind of cool. And it's got a lot of security to it as well.

[00:31:25] Eric Goranson: Where's up just like a regular light switch and then you hook it up to your wifi. So no different, but what's cool about that video feature is that if you don't want to use the video feature, it's got a little plastic door that you slide across the camera and there's no you're physically doing it and now they don't, they can't see out of it.

[00:31:46] Caroline Blazovsky: Mechanical don't want anybody spot.

[00:32:04] Eric Goranson: So there's none of that storing that you have. So there's no way

[00:32:12] Eric Goranson: you could put it in the smart things app. So I have that, that controls my. Lights. And I can see where the front door with it. Now, what I like about this, and I don't want to spend too much time on this switch, but they're good people.

[00:32:52] Eric Goranson: Playing cards, whatever they're doing, you can have that. So you can keep an eye on them. If you want to. Of course, with their permission. [00:33:00] And be able to see that they're doing okay. The other thing was smart home stuff, as you can do too, is if you, if you set this up correctly, you can also tell if grandma has turned on the lights or grandpa's turned on the lights in the house, because if you hook up the smart home system correctly, you can go, oh, well we knew last night, this light was off.

[00:33:25] Caroline Blazovsky: And that's the brilliant,

[00:33:42] Eric Goranson: Now, one thing that's going to really change how we do this is the year of integration as we talked about earlier. Right? We have a couple of things happening. We talked about the home technology association, where we've got the HTA that is now taking all these brands like Samsung and [00:34:00] GE and, uh, all of these different brands, American standard Trane, and they're sharing information.

[00:34:23] Caroline Blazovsky: And that's a technology called matter M a

[00:34:35] Eric Goranson: So this is going to be the universal language because you almost have to think about, we have all our smart home stuff is like the world. We've got all these different languages and they can't communicate. So some of these things will apple versus Google, Amazon, Amazon, right? All these things don't work well together.

[00:35:26] Eric Goranson: VHS beat out Betamax. Blu-ray beat out the HD DVD. So they're now creating this new standard, which is going to be really cool. Right now we've got wifi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave ZigBee, but none of them have gone all the way across the board. Right. So now we're going to have that. What that's going to do is you're going to be able to buy the device, plug it in, and it's going to work with the rest of the smart.[00:36:00]

[00:36:22] Eric Goranson: All those different guys, this is going to be super cool. How this all plays together. So many people are calling this, the new Renaissance of the smart home.

[00:36:39] Eric Goranson: the, yeah.

[00:37:01] Caroline Blazovsky: like the network so they can talk to each other, but then you still need the app.

[00:37:12] Eric Goranson: That's going to be a big, big deal. So I'm, I'm excited to see this work. And I think it's going to change how we look at smart homes from here on out. It's something that I've been saying we've got to do for probably five years.

[00:37:45] Eric Goranson: And I think like you and I had talked about, we're going to have things now, starting to anticipate what we want them to do versus us having to grab our phone and tell it what. And it

[00:38:06] Caroline Blazovsky: One to help them live longer, help them to navigate, you know, as you, as you said, aging in place, all of those things. Right. So it's gotta be more user-friendly and I think that's where this is going. Hopefully. I joke. Cause my dad always says, he goes, I don't have to learn technology. He goes, eventually I'll just be able to speak to it and it'll do what I need it to do.

[00:38:35] Intro: Shop or

[00:38:51] Eric Goranson: All right, Caroline, I'm hearing the music, which means we got to go. We have a giveaway coming up in the next hour. [00:39:00] $250 visa gift card. We're not giving away a product we're giving away money. You can spend thanks to our friends at Sashco. And we'll do that just as soon as around the house returns. .