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.

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About the Author:
Lisa Montgomery - Contributing Writer

Lisa Montgomery has been writing about home technology for 15 years, with a focus on the impact of electronics on a modern lifestyle.