Ok so a few items.
Best pool alarm = fence. The first thing I did when my son was born was fence the pool. I also use a pool alarm I believe it is a patrol but that is more to keep my neigbors kids from swiming at night.
Zwave is good no doubt. I went with insteon due to pricing and unit selection. I have played with homeseer, misterhome, girder, HCA. Overall I stuck with mControl because it was fairly easy to use and for the price had alot of options. Issue with mControl is that it is harder to integrate than something like homeseer.
I use mControl to manage my AC and furnace plus my whole house fan. The thermostats are proliphix and I like them better than my prior attempts with Venstar and RCS.
Anyway I am starting to figure out how to do plugins for Hal. Once I get it down I will likely try to integrate it to mControl so if it works out I will post it. Now if I can only find the time to get it done