What do we really do at Epitome Living?

Designing and installing smart technology

The core of what we do at Epitome Living is design and install smart technology systems in buildings.

And what’s a smart technology system? 

Connected servers and sensors that link to software that automates your building’s functions. 

Those functions include everything from heating control, lighting control, shading control, leak detection, EV charging, and far, far more. 

But aside from technical definitions like the above, what is smart building technology? And what do we do with it that makes our offering different to what you can buy on Amazon?

At Epitome Living, we use smart building technology to simplify lives. 

We use it to turn on lights when you step through your front door to a home that’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We use it so people who need assistance to live on their own can find their independence. And we use it to manage the energy data for hotels catering to the needs and preferences of occupants whose body temperatures all run differently.

Smart building technology is a system of connected servers, sensors, switches and software that cuts down the number of decisions you have to make every day. It might be purely practical when defined in its most basic form, but it’s far more than that when you consider what you can use it for.

Our apprentice Lee holding a Loxone Miniserver

We design smart technology systems

Designing an intelligent building means taking into consideration the pure practicalities of its automation and its emotional impact. 

Of course we want to design your system to help you manage your building more effectively, including monitoring its energy consumption by preventing unnecessary usage of power. But we’re also concerned with how your space looks and feels. 

Our best projects come to fruition from when we’ve been involved from the very beginning of a build or renovation. Because our systems are normally wired into the infrastructure of your building (more on that later), it’s easier to strategically place a speaker if we know the bones of your build. 

Alexas, Ring doorbells and Hive thermostats do the smart home technology job to an extent, but they pale in comparison to sophisticated systems that connect every function in your building, and they really don’t scale. 

If you have more than one smart system in your home or workspace, the former requires multiple smart sockets, multiple apps, and several actions from you to set up your environment the way you want it. There’s a disconnect between functions, and most of them store data about how you use your space outside the building in different cloud storage around the world. 

We use Loxone as the foundation of most of our projects. Loxone is a cloud-free smart system that stores the data from a building within the building itself, on something called a Miniserver. Your Miniserver lives in your home so, as Loxone says, ‘sensitive data, such as the number of people at home, schedules, camera images of door intercom systems, the status of the alarm system, etc. remain in your own four walls.’ The same goes for larger scale projects like hotels. 

At Epitome Living, we care a whole lot about enhancing your life within your own four walls. How we design your system is based on the practicalities of your space and how you intend to use it. Examples from previous clients include golf simulation rooms, a projector and speakers placed strategically for watching films in bed, and feature lighting in a barn-style home where hiding cables was paramount. 

If there’s a rewire, or no wires yet at all, that’s when we want to talk to you about your design intentions - for every element of your home.

We install smart technology systems 

We work in an emerging industry that sits somewhere between a professional service (like architecture or interior design) and traditional trade work. Because we look after your project the whole way from design to installation - and into aftercare and maintenance - our team is highly-skilled across specialties. 

Our wide knowledge base allows us to work collaboratively across industries to create the best smart technology systems for your specific project. In fact, it’s essential that we work collaboratively with other industries to ensure that we a) honour their (and your) initial design vision and b) connect our hardware to the right things in the right ways.

Installing our systems involves connecting your Miniserver to power and a network connection. This ‘brain’ element makes your building ‘smart’. Then we connect this to your sensors and hardware and configure that brain of your house to operate exactly how you want it to to create the emotional impact intended. 

Hardware like boilers and heat pumps aren’t installed by us, but they do need to connect to the system. The same goes for underfloor heating, solar panels, and even light fixtures.

Installing our smart technology requires the same patience, attention to detail, and collaboration as the initial design phase, so the closer we are to the rest of the team on your project, the better we’ll perform as one unit. 

Demand for our work is growing, particularly in the Republic of Ireland, where grants are available to make buildings more sustainable. 

At Epitome Living, we care about simplifying your life with our technology so that you, or your employees, have fewer decisions to make, less gripes with clunky or outdated systems, and more time creating the environments you really want to enhance the everyday.