Project Story
CEDIA Awards Winner 2013 - Best Integrated Home
Project overview
Our West View project won the Best Integrated Home category in the 2013 CEDIA Awards.
Our clients were building a new family home and wanted to incorporate a few added luxuries that their old home did not have. The property was being completely refurbished with an extensive extension being added to the rear of the house which has spectacular views. The owners were not, by any stretch of the imagination, technophobes, but they wanted a flexible solution which was easy to use and incorporated a number of technological features.
Project in detail
A whole house music and lighting system was required with particular attention being made to the ease of use. As the owner also works from home, they specifically wanted to ensure they had a robust and reliable Internet access and Wi-Fi solution throughout the home.
We worked closely with the architect who was very particular about the aesthetics of this property. Every aspect of the design had been thought out to provide fluidity from one room to another. The AV and lighting control systems were not to interfere with this.
Automation and Integration
Our first task was to locate all the equipment. Three separate lighting hubs were opted for; Basement, Attic and Garden Studio. The AV hub was located in the Media room within a purpose built piece of joinery that was ventilated and sound insulated too. We installed Lutron Homeworks for the main lighting control and this was complimented by a Control4 system which included a number of 7” colour touch panels throughout to provide a simple, universal interface for audio, TV, and lighting as well as to monitor the CCTV cameras and a PTZ door entry camera feed. This interface can also run on the home owner’s iPad and iPhones and is supplemented with simple hard button hand held remotes controllers for TV viewing.
Whole House Audio Distribution
Whole house audio distribution was achieved with a Control4 audio system using Linn Digital Streamers as the sources, which allowed for music to be played independently in different rooms as well as a party mode. We also installed two separate DAB tuners to give a ‘his-and-hers’ set up. This was particularly essential to achieve the ability to turn on and control the radio from a Lutron keypad within the Master Bathroom.
Structured Wiring
The final part of the system was to ensure a stable network was installed. We use Cisco enterprise level hardware on our installations, which also gives us and the client full remote access for remote monitoring of security and support of our systems.
Basement:
Only one TV was required but being such a large room positioning it was difficult to ensure each zone had an optimum viewing angle. To overcome this issue we installed a motorised wall bracket set to presets for the living area and kitchen that can be angled via the Control4 touch panel or wireless remote.
Media Room:
The Media Room comprised of a cinema system with in-ceiling speakers and all equipment located within the main AV hub. The Control4 system also controls the gas fireplace.
Outside Terrace:
For the ‘Summer’ month(s) a motorised awning was installed over the Terrace. This was also controlled by the whole house control system.