What do you do if you want to go for a nice, warm swim but live in the chilly Northeast? You can build an indoor pool, but would you use it in the summer? Sure, if it has a retractable roof. That’s what this homeowner did when he built a pool with a motorized glass roof. The top panels slide down at the press of a button on one of the Crestron touchpanel controllers. A retractable pool cover is likewise motorized.

That’s not the only entertainment in this spacious indoor/outdoor room. “He’s a big TV fanatic and wanted a nice warm pool to go into in the wintertime. He’ll also go in there to watch football,” says Bob Smith of the custom electronics installation firm Allwired Technologies of Lakewood, NJ.

So a 61-inch Pioneer Elite plasma screen is mounted to the brick wall and is accompanied by a surround-sound speaker system. Four weatherproof Boston Acoustics Voyager speakers were set in the corners, while a custom-made Leon center-channel speaker is mounted below the screen to match the plasma. Two Boston Acoustics subwoofers pump the necessary bass from the front corners.

In the equipment rack on the brick wall are a Denon audio/video receiver and a DirecTV HD satellite receiver with TiVo. The room also has access to the housewide Axonix MediaMax server that stores both DVDs and CDs to a hard drive system. The homeowner can select his entertainment pleasure from an in-wall Crestron touchpanel near the entry or a wireless touchpanel elsewhere in the room and control it with a handheld waterproof remote. The Crestron system also operates the pool cover and the retractable roof. “We just had to tie in the motorized equipment with some low-voltage relays,” Smith says.

Before the room and brick wall were built, wiring was run for the entertainment and pool systems. Smith explains that while there are no sensors to automate the roof depending on temperature or precipitation, there is a going to be a pool button in the master bedroom that will open the ceiling.

For indoor entertainment, a nearby billiards room features a 50-inch NEC plasma. The space is its own music zone with a separate HD satellite receiver and access to the MediaMax server.

When it’s time for a movie, everyone heads to the 15-seat home theater, which boasts a 123-inch screen that receives images from a high-def Sharp DLP projector, a 180-watt per channel sound system with nine Boston Acoustics speakers disguised behind fabric and in columns, and three subwoofers. To reduce noise, the room was built with two layers of Sheetrock and Sound Attenuation Board (SAB). The ceiling was painted a dark color to prevent light reflections when a movie is playing.

System Design & Installation
Allwired Technologies
Lakewood, NJ
www.allwiredtechnology.com

Pool House
Omega Pools
Toms River, NJ