The smart choice
Bhavik Dabasia, technical director at Everglade Windows, explains why being an Ultion Smart launch partner was so important.
Smart technology: it’s literally everywhere. When you wake up in a morning and check your phone. When you see if the heating is on at home for when you get in from work. When you ask Alexa to play your favourite song or what the weather is going to be like at the weekend. Smart technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives.
As for the next generation of home improvement buyers, smart is second-nature to them. They’ve grown up with the technology. They’re more than happy talking to robots and controlling their entire lives through their smart devices. Everything that’s important to them needs to be accessible, at their fingertips, 24/7.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Connected Home 2.0 survey indicated that £10.8 billion will be spent on smart home devices in 2019. 23.7% of respondents reported that they already have some smart home security systems in their home, with a further 23.3% looking to purchase in the next two years.
That’s fantastic news for the window and door industry. It proves that there is real appetite from homeowners for incorporating smart technology into their homes. This was reflected at this year’s FIT Show – smart tech was everywhere.
At Everglade Windows, we are always looking for the next trends, ahead of the curve, so that when they hit, we already have the products ready and waiting to offer to customers. How we could integrate smart technology into windows and doors has been on our radar for a long time, so we were thrilled when we discovered that the guys at Ultion were working on a smart lock.
As we were already fitting the Ultion lock as standard on the majority of our door products, and offering the Sweet and LockLock ranges after launching them at our 2017 conference, we knew that the Ultion Smart Lock would offer the level of quality that Everglade Windows customers are used to.
Ultion was the right smart lock choice for Everglade Windows, because it offers so many options for homeowners.
The auto-lock feature keeps homes secure. Homeowners can set the amount of time that is left between the door closing and the door automatically locking and have peace of mind that the door is locked.
There’s also the handy auto-unlock feature, so when homeowners have their hands full of shopping or are holding onto little ones, the door will automatically unlock and let them in. No more fumbling around with keys when you’ve not got a spare hand. It’s really clever. Through the app, it can be set to an activation radius and when the registered phone enters this zone, Ultion Smart prepares to unlock the door when homeowners are a few feet away.
This is a great feature for accessibility as well, so people who struggle with getting keys into locks can easily get in and out of the house – knowing it will always be secure.
The other option is the easy PIN access. Easy to set up, homes can have up to 20 pin numbers, so there’s no need to give a spare key to the neighbours for them to feed the cats when homeowners are on holiday. It’s great for big families too – no need to get loads of keys cut – just give each of them their own pin number – no more lost keys.
Ultion Smart is simple to fit, taking a matter of minutes, and batteries are easily replaced by homeowners, reducing callbacks for installers.
Making homes smart is going to be a big market for installers. Ultion Smart isn’t just smart technology. Its clever, intuitive design makes life easier for the end-user and that’s what we strive to achieve on all Everglade Windows products.
