The company known as Building36 is named after a computer science building on the campus of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was there that company co-founders Dan Goodman and Craig Heffernan started envisioning a smart home that could conserve energy without sacrificing comfort. Today, their innovative smart home technology can be found in over five million homes.
Building36 -- an Alarm.com company -- provides advanced technology and connected devices that enable trade companies to efficiently deliver smart home solutions. Building36 smart home solutions deliver all the conveniences modern homeowners demand. They also monitor and protect critical home systems to help prevent the air conditioning from failing on a hot summer day or a water leak from causing major home damage.
Smart home solutions by Building36 are sold, installed and supported by a nationwide network of authorized service providers.
Of recent interest is the Smart Thermostat HQ, a successor to the Smart Thermostat HD. The Smart Thermostat HQ operates through a powerful, built-in Hub that seamlessly controls other smart home devices. Smart ThermostatHQ simplifies installations, reduces costs and uses less space in the home. A dedicated cellular connection and broadband backup ensures reliable performance, and supports SmartStart so devices can be quickly and easily added to the smart home.
In an interview with Contracting Business, Dan Goodman, an MIT graduate and inventor, started his career selling semiconductors for Texas Instruments. With the invention of processors and wireless devices, Goodman joined a wireless startup company that made Zigbee chips. He designed a smart meter, and saw the coming need for smart meters to "talk" to home thermostats. He started the Radio Thermostat Company and from there made the first WiFi thermostats that were used by companies such as Alarm.com, Comcast, Time Warner and Cox in their connected systems.
"Then I had a big wakeup call when I realized we were making thermostats that were being installed by cable TV companies. The people who need to install thermostats are not the people who fix them, but the people who can fix HVAC systems. That's the professional you need to reach out to," Goodman said.
"We started Building36 with the intention of taking everything we knew about making connected products and building it around the professional trades; no more retail, no more direct-to-consumer. They would be sold directly to the trades and help 'tie the trades to their customers.'"
Goodman is not an HVAC contractor, but he appreciates their need to build long-lasting relationships with customers, so that every 10 years, when the HVAC system eventually dies, there's no worry about who to call.
"It's all about forging a relationship between the homeowner and the contractor. There's not this panicked, 'I have to buy something' moment, and 'who do I trust'?
The Smart ThermostatHQ has a cell phone build into it, so that once the technician installs it, it is connected to the Internet, with a more secure and reliable connection.
"At its core, this is professional-grade hardware. You can tell a customer you're not just installing a WiFi thermostat that has to be on your network, and there are no privacy or security concerns," Goodman explained.
"Secondly, we can also control every device in the house with this. In my house I have 84 connected devices, including lights, door locks, a sump pump monitor, dry contact monitors for float switches in the condensate pan, and more. All of those can connect to the thermostat and use the cellular connection to get the data out, in one app. I now have one app that can control every device in the house."
Another popular feature is automatic wire detection and configuration.
"When you wire it up, it will know if it's a normal system or multi-stage system. More importantly, if you don't have enough wires in the wall or a common wire, you can separate the thermostat into two 'pieces,' install the thermosat backplate, run power through the wall and the two pieces will talk wirelessly. If there aren't enough wires in the wall, you can install the thermostat without installing wires."
Compatibility Feature
Smart ThermostatHQ has impressive compatibility with different HVAC systems.
"We have the ability to pull in devices that we don't make on the back end. For example, if you're using a Lennox iComfort system or a Rheem ecoNET, or Apriaire system, we can pull all those thermostats into our system as well. We can connect to all sorts of devices and bring them into our platform. We have the largest eco-system of connected devices, such as Schlage or Yale door locks, LiftMaster garage doors, Lutron or Leviton lights, RainBird sprinklers and more."
Goodman said Building36 makes the back end technology for most of the residential security companies and those in the light commercial space, and monitors more than 1.2 million thermostats in that field through its security company. -Terry McIver
Find this company at www.Building36.com, or call Dan Goodman at 781-474-0500. He speaks the language of HVAC contractors and would like to hear from them.