Home automation installation, setup and fixing what's already there.
Thermostats that won't pair, underfloor heating with no controller, lights that stopped listening, a hub the last owners took with them — or a bespoke whole-house system built properly from scratch. We assess what is installed, explain what can be supported and leave a plain-English handover.
How we price your project
New installations start with a free quotation survey. Diagnostic visits and written reports are priced separately and agreed before booking.
For a new installation, request a free quotation survey. We check what is needed and send a fixed quote covering equipment, cabling and labour, with VAT clearly shown.
Troubleshooting, diagnostic visits and standalone written reports are separate paid services. We agree the fee before booking and explain what it covers.
Discuss my projectThree ways we help
Set it up properly
You've bought the kit, or the developer fitted it, and it's never quite worked. We pair it, name it, schedule it and put it on the right network, then show you how to use it.
Fix or take over
Moved into a house full of smart gear nobody explained? Something stopped working after an update? We work out what's there, get it under your control and replace what's missing.
Build it from scratch
For a new system we build around Home Assistant: fast, private, no monthly fees, and it keeps working when the internet doesn't. You own the hardware and the data.
Just moved in? We sort out what the last owners left behind
A very common call: new house, underfloor heating in every room, thermostats on the walls, and no idea how any of it works. Sometimes the manual is missing. Sometimes the app is still logged into the previous owner's account. Sometimes the hub that made it all talk went in a removal box by mistake.
We visit, map what's installed, and get it working for you. That includes sourcing and fitting a replacement hub or controller when one has gone missing or been discontinued, re-pairing every thermostat and zone, resetting accounts so the system is yours, and leaving a one-page guide so you never have to guess again.
What we work on
- Heating & hot water — smart thermostats, zoned underfloor heating controllers, wiring centres, smart radiator valves. Heatmiser, Hive, Nest, Tado, Honeywell, Warmup and others.
- Lighting — Hue, Lutron, Lightwave, Shelly, in-wall Zigbee modules. Scenes, dimming, motion and daylight-aware control.
- Blinds, gates & doors — motorised blinds, garage doors, gate intercoms and smart locks, integrated so they respond to schedules and "leaving the house" routines.
- Hubs & platforms — Home Assistant, SmartThings, Hubitat, Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa. Migrations off discontinued hubs included.
- Security tie-ins — cameras, door and window sensors and alarms wired into the same dashboard, so the house arms itself when you leave.
- Energy — solar, battery and EV charger monitoring, plus automations that shift heavy loads into cheap-rate windows.
- Voice — Apple, Google, Alexa, or a fully local assistant that never sends a recording anywhere.
Things we fix every week
- Thermostats showing "no connection" or controlling the wrong zone.
- Devices that fell off the Wi-Fi when the router was changed.
- Automations that stopped firing after a firmware or app update.
- A hub or bridge that's been discontinued and needs a like-for-like or better replacement.
- Voice assistants that can no longer see half the lights.
- Kit tied to an old owner's account that can't be reset without the right procedure.
When you want a system built properly
Most "smart home" platforms send every flick of a light switch through somebody else's servers. That's slow, fragile, and a privacy choice you didn't consciously make. For a new system we put the brain in your house with Home Assistant: scenes keep working when the broadband drops, your data stays put, nothing depends on a vendor's subscription, and you can change anything without asking permission.
The brain
A dedicated hub on proper hardware with encrypted off-site backups. The thing that runs your house deserves better than a hobby board with a flaky memory card.
Wireless protocols
Zigbee for sensors and lighting, Z-Wave for door and window kit, Matter where it fits. We mix the right ones for your home, not whatever's on offer this week.
How you control it
Wall tablets, your voice, or a tidy mobile dashboard. Whatever actually fits how you live, not how the vendor thinks you should.
Network
Smart-home devices get their own private network, kept away from your laptops and phones. More reliable, and a much smaller security risk.
Bespoke whole-house home automation
For larger homes, renovations and new builds we design the whole system from the wiring up: lighting scenes, heating and hot-water zones, motorised blinds, gates and door entry, cameras and voice control on one dashboard. Cabling and containment go in at first fix, devices and the hub at second fix, and each stage is a fixed price rather than an open-ended day rate. A high-end home automation system built this way is faster and more private than anything routed through a vendor's cloud, and it never acquires a monthly fee.
Voice control that doesn't phone home
If you'd like to talk to the house without Amazon or Google listening, Home Assistant's Assist runs speech recognition and the response itself on the box in your house. "Turn off everything upstairs", "is the back door locked?", "set the heating to 19 in the morning" — answered locally, no recordings going anywhere. Prefer Alexa, Siri or Google? We set those up too. You choose, we configure.
We run it ourselves
Every product we recommend is running in our own home, every day. Same network. Same hub. Same lights, thermostats and sensors. If something isn't reliable enough for our family, it doesn't make it onto your quote.
Custom brackets & mounts, made in-house
When the off-the-shelf bracket doesn't fit your wall, your architrave or that awkward corner above the porch, we design and 3D print custom mounts, enclosures and cable-tidy parts ourselves. Small thing, but it's the difference between a clean install and a sensor dangling on cable ties.
Smart home questions we get asked
I've moved into a house with smart kit I don't understand. Can you help?
Yes — this is one of the most common calls we get. We come out, work out what's actually installed (thermostats, underfloor heating controllers, lighting, blinds, cameras, hubs), get it under your control, and leave you a plain-English note of what everything is and how to use it. If the previous owners took a hub or a controller with them, we source a replacement and set it up.
Do you only work with Home Assistant?
No. We build new systems around Home Assistant because it's local, private and doesn't lock you into one brand, but we set up, fix and take over whatever is already in the house — Heatmiser, Hive, Nest, Tado, Hue, Lutron, SmartThings, Ring, Sonos, and plenty more. You don't have to rip anything out to get our help.
Can you set up smart thermostats and underfloor heating controls?
Yes. Zoned underfloor heating and multi-room thermostats are a regular job for us — pairing the thermostats to the wiring centre or hub, naming the zones sensibly, setting schedules that match how you live, and adding app control where the system supports it. We'll also tell you honestly if the controller you've got isn't worth keeping.
Something that used to work has stopped. Is that the kind of thing you fix?
Yes. Automations that stopped firing after a firmware update, a hub that's been discontinued, a voice assistant that can't see the lights any more, devices that dropped off the Wi-Fi — we diagnose the cause and fix it, and where the honest answer is "replace it", we say so before spending your money.
Do I need a full smart home to use you?
No. A single thermostat, one room of lighting, or a doorbell that won't pair is a perfectly good reason to call. Small jobs are quoted as small jobs.
Do you design bespoke, whole-house home automation systems?
Yes. For larger homes, renovations and new builds we design the whole system from the wiring up — heating zones, lighting scenes, blinds, gates, cameras and voice control on one local dashboard — and install it in stages that fit the build programme, each at a fixed price. Because it runs in your house rather than on a vendor's cloud it stays fast and private, and it never acquires a monthly fee.
Local engineer, on the doorstep.
Based in Marlow — we work across Marlow, Maidenhead, Henley-on-Thames, Beaconsfield, Bourne End, Cookham and High Wycombe, and the rest of the Thames Valley by arrangement.