The solution for holiday ‘lock-down’!

Going on holiday; something that should be exciting, relaxing, rewarding and everything inbetween. The preparation for that week of happiness can be a nightmare though. But does it have to be?

Let’s talk about the morning of your departure for the warm beaches of Mallorca. You’ve hardly had any sleep because you were replaying your ‘have I packed the…’ list. Then you woke up late because you forgot to set your alarm. You skip breakfast because you need to use the time to double, make that triple-check that the house is ready for its week of solitude. You’ve left a key with lovely Mrs Jones next door who has agreed to come in and feed Rex (the hamster) but the idea of leaving your home unattended while you are supposed to be sipping sundowners in Spain is enough to undo the whole point of getting away from it all.

Switching Off

I know I am guilty of this; the car is packed, you should have left an hour ago so your plan to beat the traffic is already out the window. Despite this, you can’t help but feel the need to go through the house just one more time. You check that the lights are off, that the TV is unplugged, that the heating has been turned down, the doors and windows are closed and locked…it’s a bit of a never-ending list. You do that all-too-familiar act of looking around each room not actually knowing what you are looking at but running through some sort of checklist in your mind anyway.

Right, you’re finally happy that you won’t get halfway to your holiday destination before second guessing your thorough Sherlock Holmes impersonation. Or will you? Did you remember to turn off the hallway light as you were leaving? Mrs Jones is only due to go in tomorrow evening – so if the light is on, that’s a cost you really could have done without at this point.

Time Well Spent?

We know that there are so many people in the UK that can relate to this. A survey that we recently commissioned found 86% of us Brits worry about leaving our homes unattended when jetting off on holiday – with the fears of break-ins and fire topping the reasons why. Holiday-goers can end up spending as much time triple-checking that the house is locked up as it takes to watch the latest episode of The Gadget Man.

What’s The Solution?

Sound familiar? What is the solution? How can we help Brits head for their holidays with a bit more peace of mind that the security of their home is being taken care of without lumbering our neighbours with 101 things to do whilst we are away.

Installing Loxone in your home would immediately give you complete control. Control of your lighting, heating, security, blinds and more – from wherever you are in the world.

So let’s run through that scenario again, this time in a Loxone Smart Home.

You wake up on time, because the Loxone Miniserver, the brain of the operation, has started playing your morning playlist on the bedroom speakers and opened the blinds to let the warm morning sun in. No need to wake the kids either, because they’ve been gently drawn out of their slumber too.

Now that you’re awake, you and the family have breakfast in the kitchen/dining space, which is at the perfect temperature because the Loxone Miniserver turned the heating on before waking you to make sure of that.

Next, you load the car and make sure that you have enough snacks for the road and a cheesy roadtrip playlist ready to go. But what about the frantic double and triple-checking that your home has been transformed into Fort Knox enough for you to hit the road? Well, you can leave that all to the Loxone Miniserver too.

The system has a ‘holiday mode’ which once activated; lowers the temperature in the house to save energy but makes it warm enough to protect pipes from freezing, makes sure that all the doors and windows are closed, locks the doors, and makes sure that the music and lights are off. Behind the scenes it confirms smoke and water sensors are on, activates door and window contact sensors and turns the motion sensors into a modern-day Poirot; ready to detect anything out of the ordinary and sound the alarm if they do. All this can be done using a dedicated switch at the front door as you leave, or via the Loxone Smart Home App on your mobile.

What’s more – is that if you have any doubts about whether the alarm is on, or that the front door is locked or that the kids remembered to turn their bedroom lights off – you can view and control all of that from the Loxone Smart Home App.

Presence Simulation

An added point of awesome: the Loxone Miniserver can record your actions in the week leading up to your time in the sun, and then ‘replay’ those actions while you are away, making it seem like someone is still at home.

So to the 71% of Brits that go around to each door in their house to make sure that it is locked before heading off on holiday, we say embrace Autopilot Living with Loxone and give yourself a few more years before you start having to buy yourself that special shampoo to, erm, cover the greys..