Casa accessibile e sostenibile per Persone con Disabilità

Castelfranco Veneto, Treviso – Italy 
System: Smart Living
Year 2013-2023

Air conditioning for the home

Accessible and sustainable home for people with disabilities

Innovation and Autonomy with Paolo Berro's SMART Home, the accessible and sustainable home for people with extreme disabilities.

Casa accessibile e sostenibile per Persone con Disabilità

The challenge

The aim of the 'Smart Home' project was to create a home that would guarantee wellbeing and autonomy for people with extreme motor disabilities while at the same time being sustainable.

Engineer Paolo Berro, paralysed in the neck following a car accident, supported by architect Aldo Cibic of PLAY Architetti and for the HVAC part by Clivet, was able to meet the challenge by creating a home that integrates the most advanced home automation, green building and energy-saving technologies to allow him to live independently and with maximum comfort.

The house, built in wood according to green building and energy-saving criteria, is equipped with voice-controlled automations for doors, windows, light switches and other electrical devices. A central computer manages the voice commands, while microphones, speakers and sensors contribute to making the house accessible and functional.

The solution

For the air-conditioning part, engineer Berro had already relied on Clivet in 2013, installing an air-conditioning system equipped with a Gaia heat pump for heating, air-conditioning and domestic hot water, an ELFOFresh air renewal and purification system, temperature and humidity sensors, and distribution with low-inertia ceiling radiant panels to ensure precise control of temperature and humidity, minimising any perceived discomfort.

All, managed by the ELFOControl2 management and control unit, which Clivet had adapted to enable it to communicate with its home automation system 
In 2023, Berro decided to upgrade his system, switching to the Control4 NRG comfort and energy management system, natively connected to his ecosystem, and installing photovoltaic panels and two Sinergy energy storage systems with 20 kWh capacity.

In this way, as well as achieving significant cost savings on its energy bills, it has the security of having continuity in the supply of energy to power its assistive devices even in the event of an interruption in supply from the grid.

Casa accessibile e sostenibile per Persone con Disabilità

Engineer Berro's comment.

"When I decided to build a new house, I chose all suppliers representing Italian excellence, and for air conditioning I immediately turned to Clivet.

Its technology allowed me to control all the comfort parameters of the house via voice recognition software: from the temperature of hot water to the air exchange mode, from the temperature of each room to dehumidification.

All this bypassing my complete paralysis in my upper and lower limbs.

Now, with the addition of the storage system I have total control over all data in the house and comfort is at a maximum!"

Comment by Luca Micheletto - Business Unit Digital Manager Clivet S.p.A.

"For Paolo, the main need was to have high comfort values in the rooms and to be able to manage the system autonomously, as he has thermoregulation problems and suffers a lot from the cold.

ELFOControl optimally controls the Gaia acqua heat pump with geothermal operation for the production of water for sanitary use and for the system, the air renewal unit, and the distribution of water to the low-inertia ceiling radiant panels, continuously and accurately detecting the temperature and humidity values of the rooms through its sensors.

Furthermore, the integration of ELFOControl2 with the home automation system of the house was a prerequisite and was the most interesting part of the project.

After a few years, Paolo decided to also integrate energy management by installing Sinergy storage systems and upgrading to Control4 NRG. This was possible, in a simple way, while keeping the other components of the system intact.

With Control4 NRG, Paolo will now be able not only to manage room comfort, domestic water production and air renewal, but also to achieve a level of energy independence thanks to energy storage and to control his consumption in an integrated way through a single system, and what's more, voice-controlled."