Copper gains the limelight again in smart home
era
SYDNEY
AN ARMY of builders in Australia are in training to install
electronic "brains" into new homes to make them smarter
than their 20th century predecessors.
At the core of the pioneering initiative is a central nervous
system of copper wire tentacles installed before the walls
go up.
Homeowners are offered such options as accessing the
internet from kitchen appliances, bedside panels, even the
bathroom. Security cameras can be turned on even if you
are overseas; energy consumption can be monitored and
adjusted automatically. That's just for starters.
Carry the portable television into the kitchen to watch over
dinner? How 20th Century. Why not just turn on the
refrigerator door, or the kitchen wall for that matter?
Appliance makers are trial-testing internet-based
refrigerators and ovens with promising results and may
eventually move on to microwaves, washing machines and
other household goods.
A new breed of architects and homebuilders regard most
conventionally built houses as dumb and gluttons for
energy. "Interior reform" is the latest catch-phrase, and
experts say it won't happen without copper.
Smelted as early as 3,500 BC, copper is about as far from
a new age material as you can get. Or is it?
The first thing many miners working in Bingham Canyon,
Utah, did when they bought their homes from the
Kennecott Copper Company was rip down the copper
roofing, replace it with brick or shingles and sell the metal
as scrap.
Built decades ago as a company town, it seemed natural
at the time to use copper from the giant Bingham Lode to
help erect the sprawling suburb.
But by the time Kennecott had decided it no longer wanted
to be a landlord as well as a mining company, copper
roofing in houses worldwide was on its way out, deemed
yesterday’s metal for such purposes and too expensive to
boot.
The role of copper in 21st century applications flys in the
face of doomsayers of the last century who predicted the
advent of fibre optics would relegate the metal to the most
basic of industrial uses. — Reuters |
