Questions

In most homes, no. Modules go into the existing switch boxes behind the plates you already have. The one thing that decides it is whether there is a neutral wire at the switch box — older wiring often brings only the live wire to the switch. If yours does not have one, there are devices that work without it, or an electrician can bring one; either way we tell you at the survey, before you have spent anything.

Yes, and we treat that as non-negotiable. A house where the lights only respond to a phone is a house that annoys everyone who is not holding the phone. With smart switch modules the plate on the wall keeps working exactly as it does now, and the app, schedules and voice are additions on top of it.

The lights, switches, scenes and schedules keep working, because the hub in your home runs them locally. What you lose is control from outside the house and anything that genuinely depends on a cloud service, such as a camera stream to your phone while you are away. We design it this way deliberately: a system that cannot turn a light on during an outage is not finished.

A flat being retrofitted is usually one to two days, and we work room by room so the house stays livable. A large house, or one where curtain motors and new points are involved, takes longer. The survey gives you a real number rather than a guess, and it goes in the written proposal.

Partly, and it is worth knowing where the line is. Smart bulbs, plugs, a plug-in camera and battery sensors are all removable and leave nothing behind, so they are fine. Switch modules go inside the switch box, which is usually a landlord conversation, though they are removable too and the original switch goes back. A smart lock replaces the existing lock, so that definitely needs the landlord. We can plan a package that is entirely reversible if you expect to move.

That is what happens when a home is assembled device by device from whatever was on offer, and it is the main reason self-built systems stop getting used. We build around one hub and one app so the whole house is in one place, and scenes can combine lights, curtains and the AC in a single tap. Where a device genuinely has to keep its own app — some cameras do — we tell you up front.

The realistic risks are not the dramatic ones. They are weak passwords, a device sitting on the internet because a port was forwarded, and firmware nobody ever updates. We put devices on a separate network where the router allows it, do not expose anything to the internet directly, use the manufacturer two-factor login where it exists, and hand you a short written note on keeping it that way. Local-first control also shrinks the attack surface, because less of your home is reachable from outside it.

Bring them to the survey. Some will fit the plan, some will work but only through their own app, and some will not play with anything else at all. We will tell you honestly which is which rather than quietly pricing in replacements.

You do. The hub is yours, the accounts are in your name, and the documentation we leave includes everything needed for someone else to work on it. We think a company that holds your logins hostage is telling you something about itself.

Ask. Travel and logistics decide it, and for a larger project it is often workable. The honest answer depends on where you are, so tell us and we will say yes or no rather than stringing it out.

The parts that are local — switches, the hub, sensors, scenes — should, and that is one reason we weight a system towards local control. The parts that depend on a manufacturer cloud last as long as that manufacturer chooses to keep it running, which is a real risk with cheap brands and one we factor into what we specify. Nobody can promise you a decade, and anyone who does is guessing.

Genuinely: for a one-bedroom flat and a handful of lights, not much you could not manage over a weekend with a few hours of reading. What we add is the wiring assessment, one coherent system instead of four apps, a network that holds up under thirty devices, and someone accountable when something stops. If your project is small, we will say so.