You have had a horrible day? No matter. Take heart from the knowledge that on your way home from work, in the comfort of your car, you can pick up your mobile phone and send instructions to crank up the central heating in your house, switch on the lights, draw the curtains and run a hot bath. You are out of your favourite flavour of ice-cream? Not to worry. Your fridge-freezer already knew that and had the good sense to get some in. In fact, all the groceries are waiting in a cooler outside your door.

Unfortunately, for you this is still just a dream. The lucky Steiner family, however, already lives in a house that is this intelligent. Their home near Zug in Switzerland has been switched on since November last year and visitors are welcome to drop by and take a look. Virtually, of course, at www.futurelife.ch.

All over Europe, houses are getting smarter. The "inHaus" project in Duisburg, Germany, for instance, launched in April by the Fraunhofer research institute together with 18 companies, is working on a single IT system that manages all the different components of the house.

This is easier said than done. Refrigerators speak a different language to PCs, and electric window motors have little common ground with kettles. Every area of activity is governed by different standards and the various parts of the house find it difficult to talk to one another.

In Spain, estate agents Vallehermoso and Fadesa are collaborating with Telefónica, the telecoms group, and Cisco Systems, the world's biggest supplier of internet hardware, to test the possibilities of providing digital living. In the UK projects are more advanced and housebuilders Laing Homes have show homes that are being snapped up so fast they have nothing left for would-be buyers to view.

Back in your dream, you need never worry about your house being burgled, despite all the high-tech equipment inside. The home of the future will provide superlative security systems as well as failsafe protection against fire or water damage. And there will be no more waiting in for the gasman to call. He will carry out repairs remotely by "telemaintenance". Your heating bill will plummet, too. Laziness and economising make a delicious combination as you open a window from your armchair with a remote control and know that the central heating has been automatically adjusted.

None of this comes cheap. Laing Homes estimates the cost of the network infrastructure for a single smart house to be about £5,000 (e8,210), with an additional £20,000 (e32,840) required for the essential complementary equipment. However, Cisco, involved in the UK projects as well as those in Spain, is confident that costs will fall as quickly as during the next few months.

Carlos Corugedo, the managing director of Vallehermoso Telecom, a Vallehermoso subsidiary, concurs. "We are testing to see which options really make sense and, at the end of the day, we will only build in what an averagely prosperous household can afford to pay for."

If you fall into that category, you could well find your castle in the air here on earth sooner

than you think.

gsaloga@web.de