Automated Lighting Systems

When Joe Quarin, 42, moved into his new home in Toronto last June, he decided to get a Vantage Automated Lighting System installed.

"It's great because you can access as many of the light circuits as you want, all on one switch, so it gives you convenience," Quarin said. "When I come home, I have a button that says 'Home,' and it lights up a bunch of lights in the hallway that I need and there are a lot less switches."

Nigel Mahon, CEO of Cromulent Systems Inc., installs Vantage Control's automated lighting systems and installed Quarin's lighting system.

"Everything from the light intensity to how bright your lights are to what lights turn on and off to what group of lights turn on and off; it's controlled by a processor or a computer," Mahon said.

According to him, there are a lot of great features that come with an automated lighting system that capture people's interest.

"It knows when it's dawn and dusk everyday of the year," he said. "It knows when daylight saving time is every year. When everything switches over such as dawn or dusk changing by a minute or two minutes or five minutes, depending on the time of year, it knows to turn the lights on sooner or later.

"From one switch, you can control many, many lights," he added. "From the front foyer you can turn off all the lights on the main floor as you're leaving the house and I don't have to run from light to light to light."

One of Quarin's favourite features of the automated lighting system is that you can control different lights. This feature is particularly appealing to him because he has three small children.

"I go to bed at night and I hit a switch that says 'Goodnight' and it turns of all the lights in the house except for a few in the hallway that are dimmed in case they have to go to the bathroom," Quarin said.

You can also control how bright you want the lights to dim in order to save some energy.

"I have my lights going to a maximum of 85 per cent now and you really don't notice the difference," he said. "I have a lot of pot lights and the difference between 85 and 100 per cent is not much, so I get some energy savings out of it."

The lights can also be set up so they can turn on whenever Quarin wants them to.

"I like the fact that I got a control panel so I can control everything in the house from one spot. I also like the simplicity of it, where you can program buttons to operate multiple rooms, and I also like the fact that I can hook up all my extra lights and they turn on and off automatically at pre-set times."

Not only can the lights be controlled by the lighting system, but it can be integrated to work with your home electronics.

"One of the big benefits of automation is that you can integrate so much into the system," Quarin said. "Through the control panel, I can control all my music in the house, I can see my security camera, I can check the weather, I can check the traffic and do many other things with the system."

Quarin also added that one of the features he uses is the motion sensors.

"There are certain rooms that we use all the time," he said. "Our powder room and our walk-in closet [are serviced by] motion sensors because every time I need to go into those rooms, I need the lights on."

For more information on Vantage, visit www.vantagecontrols.com.