Life in an Automated Home: Santa Fe Homeowner Tells All

Was it the convenience of having the lights and motorized shades operate automatically that convinced Santa Fe homeowners Rick and Cynthia Torcasso to invest in a home automation system? Or maybe they took the plunge because they would be able to heat and cool their new 5,000-square-foot home more efficiently. But then again, being able to access a huge library of music from any room with just a few taps of a button and play it over nearly invisible speakers is definitely appealing as well. As Rick explains it, there wasn’t one specific reason why he and his wife hired the home systems integrators at ListenUp of Albuquerque, N.M. to smarten up their sprawling, hillside abode. Rather, it was a whole host of potential benefits to their lifestyle that drew the couple to the technology. Their choice: an Elan g! system.
“The homeowners had lived with an older Elan system in their home in Dallas, and liked the way it worked,” says ListenUp senior sales consultant Shawn Mills. “We are one of the leading dealers in the area of Elan systems, and also happen to be CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association)-certified, which was another requisite of the homeowner.” A combination of the homeowners’ familiarity with the workings of an Elan system and ListenUp’s expertise in designing and installing it bode well for the success of the project, and inspired Rick and Cynthia to integrate new features that they had never used in their Dallas home.
A security system, six surveillance cameras, every interior and exterior light fixture, 12 thermostats, and a bank of motorized window shades would join the Elan ecosystem, as well as a the same type switching system that the Torcassos had used in their previous home to distribute audio and video content to several speakers and TVs. Besides broadening the scope of control from only audio and video to now all aspects of the environment, ListenUp would add the ability for the homeowners to monitor and manage all of the electronic components from an Elan mobile app on their iPads and iPhones. Several Elan touchpanels were positioned in key locations, like the bedroom, kitchen, and family room, as other convenient modes of access to music, video, and the control of the lights, security features, temperature, and window shades.
The menu of every touchpanel was designed uniformly to minimize the learning curve for the homeowners, which incidentally, says Rick was amazingly simple and straightforward. “Honestly, the touchpanels are so easy to use; for example, it takes only seconds to prepare the house for a party thanks to quick access to the lights and music from one place.”
Of course, to turn on the lights as they enter a room the homeowners would need a device that didn’t require popping into a menu, pulling up the lighting controls, and finding the right command. For this, ListenUp peppered the residence with sleek, modern Lutron keypads, programmed and labeled specifically to the homeowners’ liking. “The ability to have precise lighting control was really important to me as a way to accentuate the home’s unique architectural design.” The colors, textures, and materials of both the exterior and interior of the hillside house were inspired by the surrounding landscape where a panoramic view of the mountains can be viewed from expansive banks of widows that open to fuse the indoor and outdoor living spaces. Being able to turn off the lights easily from an iPad to permit the perfect conditions for stargaze on the deck was as important, as was the ability to highlight the four shades of color that permeate the indigenous soil that make up the home’s rammed earth walls, two full height “art volumes” that subdivide the living space with a rich palette of colors, and beautiful pieces of commissioned artwork.
Other technologies contribute to the harmony between the house and nature, as well. For example, a radiant floor heating and cooling system together with motorized window shades ensures that the home’s southwest exposure to the sun won’t drive up the temperature to uncomfortable levels. “The window shades, which cover 180 feet of glass, work like sunglasses for the house,” Rick says. “We can close them from any of the Elan touchpanels or the mobile app, and even have them programmed to close when the sun is at a certain spot in the sky.” The shading control helps keep the house cool in the summer months, as does its thermal mass construction. “We need to run the radiant system only two hours a day to maintain a consistent temperature of 72 degrees,” Rick says. The runtime schedule was set via the Elan system, and can be altered at any time if necessary—even when the Torcassos are hundreds of miles away.
The ability to remotely access the Elan system and its connected subsystems is particularly useful to homeowners like Rick and Cynthia who travel frequently, says Mills. They can tap into the system from the app on any mobile device and monitor the lighting, temperature, and security conditions. They can also view real-time footage captured by the surveillance cameras aimed at certain outdoor areas, like the front door, the driveway, and the terrace.
It also once helped prevent what could have been a huge, potentially damaging issue. After logging into the Elan system while on a cruise and seeing that the outdoor temperature had dropped to below freezing (continuous monitoring of the outdoor climate is a standard feature of the Elan system), the homeowners called their house supervisor to check on the property, unlocking the entry gate and front door for him remotely from the mobile app. He discovered that the main water line had frozen and was leaking. The problem was immediately fixed and saved the house from damage to its radiant floor heating system.
Breathtakingly beautiful, efficient in its use of energy, and convenient to control, Rick and Cynthia Torcassos’ mountain-hugging, nature-inspired home exemplifies the impact technology can have on every aspect of a home environment. The Elan g! control system, like the home’s architecture, blends in with its surroundings while enhancing how each and every space of the residence looks and performs.