Invisible Automation Marries Style and Smarts in a Manhattan Townhouse

When the team at Rich AV Design started working on a seven-story townhouse in Manhattan, New York, about three years ago, the client didn’t give any budget restrictions. This enabled the whole crew to really stretch its limits for smart home automation design.

Rich AV Design had completed a smart home installation for the client on another property, and they loved the results so much that they hired Rich AV Design again to complete this townhouse on the Upper East Side.

“It was a unique project in that the client didn’t have a set budget,” says Joshua Rich, owner and CEO of Rich AV Design. “It was the kind of job where the sky was the limit. You could make it really nice, and it makes you stretch your limits and see what you can do since there are no barriers.”

Digging a Space for A/V

The townhouse previously housed 14 apartments. Since it was an older building and hadn’t been maintained properly, the only aspect of the property the homeowner and architect wanted to keep was the exterior facade.

During the initial phase of construction, the workers had to dig out the floor by hand to create a wine cellar, mechanical room, and A/V room. Originally this crawl space was only three feet high, so the integrators at Rich AV Design took a month to dig out the space to create a normal height of nine feet.

Completely Invisible Automation

The goal of the project was to fully automate the house – including lighting, shading, audio, video, security, intercom, phone system and HVAC – and everything had to be invisible. The client wanted the best of the best smart home products and components, but didn’t want to see it at all.

To meet this objective, the team concealed all of the equipment. The only pieces of technology apparent are the Lutron HomeWorks keypads – one in each area to control the lights – and the tablets, which are hidden in closets when not in use.

 

For example, the HVAC system was very complicated since the client wanted a traditional cooling and heating system along with radiant heating. The Rich AV team integrated all of the moving parts together under the aegis of a Savant home automation system.

Three equipment racks, five Lutron dimming panels, and four Lutron shade power panels were placed in the cellar’s A/V room. A commercial-grade generator sits on the roof and is capable of running the entire home if power ever goes out in the city, allowing the family to still fully use their smart home.

This is complemented with redundant cable, Internet and satellite TV providers.  A fully managed Cisco/Ruckus wired and wireless network was built by Access Networks and is the foundation of it all functioning properly.

Lights, Media, Action

The multipurpose media room on the top floor features surround sound, complete with invisible speakers by Stealth Acoustics, and a Samsung TV. The room can be used for entertainment or simply reading a book.

The lighting designer on the job worked carefully with the team to make sure every light dims properly and can be fully controlled. Every aspect took a lot of attention to detail. Intricate finishes on the walls made installing the whole-house music system was particularly challenging. For example, one of the main rooms had custom millwork, so the team had to cut out wooden panels to recess the speaker in it and then refinish the wood so that it could be acoustically transparent. The millworker created a custom spackle with a wood texture to match the wood paneling, and then lacquered over it to match.

Custom Scenes & Remote Monitoring

A couple of the custom scenes the team configured for the family were Good Night and Arrival. When Good Night is engaged from a keypad, smartphone app, or tablet all of the lights in the house turn off except for the ones in the master bedroom.

Also, if a person takes the elevator up to one of the seven floors, the lights will turn on before they even take a step out of the lift. The lighting control sequences make it easy to control the home so that people don’t have to run up and down the stairs to turn off the lights.

The townhouse is also remotely monitored by the Rich AV team, so they know if a system is down immediately – even before the homeowners do in many cases. The home can be serviced and repaired remotely, as well.

“We want our customers to know that we have what it takes to see a major project like this through, and do it successfully from start to finish,” says Rich. “We did go in with an estimated budget, even though there were no limitations, and we stuck to that.”

The post Invisible Automation Marries Style and Smarts in a Manhattan Townhouse appeared first on Electronic House.

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