Self-Repairing & Maintaining Homes

27th October, 2021

Why do we wait for things to go wrong before we attend to them?

Perhaps it’s just too much hassle to keep on top of property maintenance. For example, any time the central heating is not heating your home properly, someone has to manually identify the issue and arrange for it to be repaired before the boiler completely breaks down.

And in cases where the issue is difficult to diagnose, you might have to refer back to your homeowner manual (provided by the property developer) or it might take multiple on-site visits to resolve, even for a professional tradesperson.

But what if homes could diagnose and manage themselves?

Imagine if your home could automatically detect and address such issues? Here are some examples:

1) organising appointments for the central heating systems to be preemptively flushed every 5-7 years to maintain heating efficiency

2) ordering new filters for your cooker hood, extractor and/or AC systems whenever necessary to ensure clean air circulation in your home

3) calling the emergency services, and notifying neighbours within the same block, when a dangerous fire is detected

4) arranging on-site visits to address electrical/plumbing issues

5) renewing building insurance on your behalf, based on a predefined budget

Can homes learn to manage themselves? Or is it too much to ask?

With computer systems, many antiviruses can run automatic scans, download the latest version updates and conduct self-cleaning processes in the background without interrupting you. Artificial intelligence is already used in many other sectors and is likely to find itself in a home management app soon too.

So what needs to happen in our homes to get to this point? And how would it work?

We’re already halfway there with the advent of smart homes so it’s not so much ‘digital transformation’ as it is simply integrating the different smart applications that already exist within the prop tech industry – otherwise known as data interoperability – into a single homeowner app or, in technical terms, a multi-vendor decentralised platform.

And all you would have to do is access the homeowner app to set up parameters and preferences (budget, date/time availability calendar, notification priority, etc.) to help your house understand how you want things organised without it having to constantly send you permission/approval requests and other notifications for every issue.

The house could then leverage to:

- Access information about the property from various data silos
- Monitor conditions by tapping into the smart devices and IoTs (Internet of Things) in your home- Arrange or order on your behalf from online vendors or trades via APIs, automatically sharing only the necessary details with them

It could even direct trades where/when they can collect and return spare keys to your home whenever they need to visit on-site without bothering you. Meanwhile, the app would generate and archive reports/receipts of all its activities and transactions for you to download whenever you need. How convenient would that be? Especially when it comes to saving time, effort, money and having peace of mind in the long run.

What aspects of your home do you wish were self-managing? If you have any ideas on what you'd like to see in an interactive home manual, let us know.

(B031)