Each year the Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) honors exemplary projects completed by home technology professionals. Winners of the Designer Awards competition are determined by a panel of expert judges that include home technology professionals, architects and interior designers. This project received awards for Gold Technical Design and Best Overall Integrated Home.
Why should primary residences get all the love? How is it that they’re so lovingly accoutered with the finest of furnishings while second homes tend to receive the lowly hand-me-downs? When the owner of this “cottage in the city” started building her weekend getaway, she focused on making it a special retreat where life would be simple, easy, and comfortable, and the aesthetic would be refreshingly different from her main home hundreds of miles away. Bottom line: It would be smarter and more striking than any other residence she lived in.
Part of the architectural plan would include an advanced home automation system specially programmed to efficiently manage the lights, heating and cooling components and a home security system. The new home automation system would also be used to beautifully accentuate the home’s unique architecture, which is comprised mainly of glass and concrete. The duality of functionality would govern the design and implementation of every electronic component planned for the house.
Designing the Crestron home automation system to supervise the home’s electronic amenities was the easy part for the home systems integrators from Graytek Solutions, Coquitlam, BC; blending the gear into the architecture and design of the house was another matter. The unforgiving nature of glass and concrete left little room for error when routing the essential cabling through the steel framing prior to the foundation being constructed, according to Graytek’s Wes Morris. “Once the concrete was poured, it would be impossible to go back and reroute the wiring. We had to be spot on with the layout.”
Naturally, thermostats, speakers and other common components of an automation system would be tough to recess into concrete and glass, but the architect’s incorporation of “floating” wooden wall panels as a design element throughout the 2,500-square-foot residence became a blessing in disguise for the Graytek team. In addition to adding an eye-catching three-dimensional quality to the home’s modern aesthetic, the 4-by-8-foot panels, which were mounted to protrude a couple of inches from the concrete walls, also served as a welcome termination point for keypads, touchpanels and temperature sensors and LED light fixtures and even the small surround-sound speakers. The keypads and touchpanels could be recessed into the wood; the sensors, lighting and speakers were tucked behind the wooden wall panels.
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Given the home’s striking architectural form and the owner’s need for simple, straightforward functionality, the Graytek team focused much of its integration energy on control and automation of the home’s lighting. Residing in a specially designed equipment room, a Crestron lighting control system enables a combination of LED, incandescent and compact flourescent fixtures—77 lighting circuits total—to brighten and dim to preset levels to accentuate the home’s architecture and provide the precise amount of illumination for certain tasks. Special scenes were created by Graytek, too, so that one touch of a button on any of 25 custom-engraved Crestron keypads or three touchpanels elicits a housewide alteration of the light fixtures in the home, as well as in the detached garage and landscape. These scenes prepare the lights for the owner’s arrival, departure, bedtime and other activities, and also enable her to turn on and off each floor individually from a keypad conveniently located at each landing.
As useful as the Crestron system is to the homeowner while she’s enjoying her weekend retreat, it’s also the times that’s she’s not there that the value of the system realized. From a Crestron app on an iPad or PC, the owner can control the lights and thermostats, turn off the valve to the main water line, monitor the status of an HAI security system and view a log of people who have entered the house during her absence. The latter provides peace of mind, as it allows service personnel, including technicians from Graytek to enter the mechanical room without setting off the alarm. A preprogrammed keyfob opens the door to the garage, which grants access into the mechanical room. A Keyscan access control system records the fob code and time of entry and departure–data that the homeowner can view remotely via her iPad.
Maintenance is hardly an issue, though, says Morris, thanks to a clever diagnostic tool that the Graytek technicians programmed into the system. Should a component in her media room act up—which sometimes happens when a software update is initiated (like for the owner’s AppleTV unit), the owner can fix the problem herself by simply pressing a button on an RTI handheld remote. “Usually these minor issues are remedied by rebooting the equipment,” Morris explains. Rather than having to physically get at the equipment to reboot, she can just grab the remote and get things up back up and running.” If the problem requires a professional touch, Graytek can access, diagnose and remedy issues remotely from a laptop at their office, or even while they’re on the road.
Graytek mitigated other potential problems, namely finicky Internet access and cellphone reception caused by the home’s concrete structure, by installing powerful, reliable wireless access points from Pakedge throughout the residence as well as a robust cellular repeater system from Wilson Electronics. Wise product choices like these, combined with architecturally friendly integration of the electronic systems and owner-focused customization of the automation routines, resulted in a stunning home that’s a joy to look at and live in.
View the slideshow for more photos from this project.
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