“Small” Home with Big Tech

This no compromise 4,800-square foot townhouse gets packed with mansion-size technology.

Jan. 15, 2008 — by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Gabriel Karlis is accustomed to working in some very large homes. His Fort Lee, NJ–based home systems design and installation company, JD Audio and Video Design, specializes in incorporating high-end electronics into mega-estates. These abodes sport enough square footage to easily accommodate dedicated theaters, spacious listening rooms, rec rooms brimming with built-in speakers and big-screen TVs, and air-conditioned spaces designed to hold floor-to-ceiling racks of sophisticated processors, receivers and audio/video components.

Finding enough room for all that gear has never been difficult for Karlis. That is, until he signed on as the lead integrator of a newly built 4,800-square-foot townhouse. As Karlis relates, the size of the home really wasn’t the issue; it was the amount of electronics the homeowner wanted to incorporate. “[What he wanted] was something we would normally put into a 15,000-square-foot home,” says Karlis. But that didn’t matter to the tech-savvy homeowner. “He grew up in homes loaded with technology, so he was accustomed to having cutting-edge systems—and lots of them,” Karlis explains. “He wasn’t about to compromise on anything.”

Mountains of Technology
No compromises meant having a system that would distribute audio and video throughout the house, automate the lights and the thermostats, and allow the owner and his wife to visually inspect certain areas of the property remotely from a laptop computer. The home would have 50 speakers, nine flat-panel TVs, 17 surveillance cameras, and 14 interactive home control touchpads, among other devices—all managed by one Crestron automation system. More than 100,000 feet of low-voltage control wire would be routed behind the walls to connect the Crestron MC2E control system to the various lighting, heating and cooling, security and audio/video devices, forming a robust, reliable network that gives this townhouse the home control horsepower of something twice its size. “[The low-voltage contractor] pulled more wire in this house than he did in the whole [rest of the] development,” Karlis notes.

That wiring prepared the house perfectly for the huge array of electronic devices that would be installed by Karlis and his team. Many of those devices, including the thermostats and lighting controls, would bear the Crestron insignia. Having lived with Crestron systems for most of his life, the homeowner felt comfortable sticking with that tradition. Karlis, too, was pleased with the decision to go all Crestron, noting many benefits of using a single source for products. “For us, it alleviates the headache of consulting with multiple manufacturers, streamlines programming time and allows us to offer excellent service to the customer,” he explains. “For the client, using products from a single manufacturer provides peace of mind. He’ll know who to call for upgrades and where to go if there’s ever a problem.” The homeowner concurs: “My biggest concern going into this project was reliability. We’ve been using the Crestron system for more than a year, and it’s never broken down.”

Automation for the Road
That’s a good thing for these particular homeowners, who spend much of their time on the road. They rely on their control system to keep things running smoothly while they’re gone. Karlis programmed the Crestron system to automatically alter the settings of the lights and thermostats to evoke a lived-in look. At 6 p.m., the system turns on the foyer lights. At 6:30 p.m., those lights switch off, and the kitchen lights turn on. Then, at 8 p.m., the hallway and exterior lights join in. In this away scene, the thermostats lower to an energy-saving level.

For extra assurance that all’s well at home, the owners can keep tabs on their house from anywhere in the world through an Internet connection. While vacationing thousands of miles away, for example, they can use their web-enabled cell phone to adjust the temperature or log on to any of the 17 surveillance cameras to peek in on certain areas of the house. Even some of the home’s entertainment components can be accessed remotely. A Slingbox device can pull a chosen TV program from the owners’ DVR or a piece of music from their AudioReQuest music server and relay it to a remote laptop computer or PDA. “No matter where they go, they have their favorite shows and music with them,” says Karlis.

Creature Comforts
Even so, the owners agree that the best place to enjoy the creature comforts of technology is right at home. There, music from an AudioReQuest server, XM Radio tuner, AM/FM tuner, iPod and digital cable box can be played in 12 independent listening zones. The owners pick what they want to hear from a music menu displayed on one of the 14 Crestron touchpanels located throughout the house, and a combination of built-in and freestanding Sonance and KEF speakers pipe the audio into the chosen rooms.

In some areas, like the master suite, den and living room, the speakers are joined by Fujitsu flat-panel plasma TVs. Using the same touchpanels that command the whole-house music system, the owners can enter a video selection. For now, that includes programs recorded on two DVRs, high-def cable stations, satellite TV programs and shots from surveillance cameras. All of the audio and video equipment is located in an equipment rack in the garage. A Crestron distribution system delivers the music and TV programs to the appropriate speakers and TVs over a network of high-speed cabling.

Using the Crestron touchpanels, family members can access a complete audio/video menu or jump to a page of shortcuts programmed into the system by Karlis. “For the weekends, there are shortcuts that help me get the house ready for entertaining,” says the homeowner. “I just touch the party icon, and the Creston system will set the cove and recessed lighting perfectly and turn on the music to a preset volume level.”

Partygoers will often convene in the home theater, a space the homeowners are particularly proud of. “It’s not like one of those theaters where it’s dark and you have to navigate your way to a seat,” explains the man of the house. Equipped with a bar at the back, a 12-inch touchpanel that doubles as a TV and an Xbox 360 gaming console, the room is “more of a living space than a theater.” But that doesn’t mean the owner skimped on components. A self-professed videophile, he gave the nod to high-octane equipment, including a 110-inch Stewart Filmscreen screen and a Sim2 Multimedia C3X Grand Cinema three-chip DLP video projector. The Sim2 projector was particularly well received, given its superior brightness levels. “We use the room primarily for watching sports,” says the homeowner. “Football games start at around 1 p.m., so the projector needed to be bright enough to handle the sunlight that enters from two large windows.”  While the homeowners are happy with their projector, they didn’t want the machine to become an eyesore. In keeping with the clean, contemporary lines of the residence, JD Audio and Video Design concealed the projector inside a cabinet at the bar. An equipment rack recessed into a side wall holds the rest of the equipment, including a Lexicon receiver, Parasound amplifier and Sony DVD player. Italian-designed seats with built-in heat and massage mechanisms provide a comfy spot to kick back on game day. The homeowner calls all the shots from a seat with an armrest specially configured with a docking and charging station for a portable Crestron touchpanel. From there, he can gear up the theater, access the surveillance cameras, view his music library or turn off all the lights.

Squeezed but Pleased
There’s no doubt that this home is filled to the gills with technology. Karlis and his crew had to be creative when it came to packing it all in, resorting to the garage as a place to store much of the equipment and using tiny surveillance cameras that could be recessed into the ceiling like light fixtures. The use of flat-panel plasma TVs and in-ceiling cameras and speakers freed up floor space, and a single source of control offered a simple, clean, unpretentious way to manage every electronic device in the house. The result has the homeowners beaming from ear to ear. “I have no regrets whatsoever about how this all turned out,” says the man of the house. “I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.” True to his word, he and his wife are in the process of building a new house. This time, he says, it’ll be much larger so that even more electronics can be squeezed into the space.

Home Control System
Crestron MC2E home control processor
Crestron TPS12L in-wall touchpanels (2)
Crestron TPMC-4X wireless remotes (2)
Crestron STX-1700C wireless remote
Crestron CNXRMC room solution boxes (2)
Crestron TPS-4L in-wall touchpanels (2)
Crestron TPS-3100L in-wall touchpanels (5)

Whole-House Audio/Video System
Crestron CP2E control system
Crestron CNX-PAD8A audio distribution processors (2)
Crestron CNX-PVID8x4 video distribution switcher
Crestron C2N-IVIDS24x24 intercom video distribution switcher
ReQuest F250 hard-disk drive media server
Sonance SI-1230 12-channel amplifiers (3)
Sonance FS-4 iPort docking station
Active Thermal Management ventilation components

Speakers
Sonance Symphony 624TR in-ceiling speakers (10)
Sonance Symphony 623SSTR in-ceiling stereo speaker
Sonance Mariner 62W outdoor speakers (4)
KEF KHT 5005 speaker systems (2)

Audio/Video Components
Yamaha YSP-1000 audio system
Sony STRDA3200ES receivers (2)
Sony DVPNS3100ES DVD players (2)

Flat-Panel TVs
Fujitsu 55-inch plasma TV
Fujitsu 50-inch plasma TVs (2)
Sony 32-inch LCD TV
Sony 23-inch LCD TVs (2)

Lighting Control System
Crestron C2N-MNETG wireless gateway (2)
Crestron in-wall dimmers (30)
Crestron in-wall master dimmers (9)
Crestron in-wall slave dimmers (9)

Surveillance System
ProVideo LE-DOME cameras (4)
NetMedia NF-VIDEYE recessed color cameras (13)
Nuvico hard-drive recorder with Internet access

Home Theater
Sim2 Multimedia C3X Grand Cinema DLP video projector
Stewart Filmscreen 110-inch fixed VeLux screen
KEF Reference Model 207 tower speakers (2)
KEF Reference Model 204 center speaker
KEF in-ceiling speakers (4)
Velodyne SPL-1200R subwoofers (2)
Lexicon RV-8 receiver
Parasound MC-1 monoblock amplifiers (3)
Sony DVPNS3100ES DVD player
Crestron TPMC-8X Wi-fi touchpanel
Monster Cable HTS 2600 MKII PowerCenter
Panamax Max 1500 UPS

Mounts and Racks
Middle Atlantic EFK-4025 racks (2)
Peerless SA740-P articulating wall brackets (3)

Electronics Design & Installation
JD Audio and Video Design
Fort Lee, NJ
www.jdavdesign.com

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