The Manor Home
Background
Our brief was to provide a solution for 21st Century Tech within this 17th Century Home. Our client and English Heritage wanted the least amount of tech clutter visible, and so only the display screens and essential wall mounted controls were on show.
The project spanned across 3 years, due to strict planning and the governance by English Heritage. A large stable block was to be seamlessly integrated allowing Audio, Video and Network services from the main house.
This whole house project encompassed numerous technologies and luxury smart features, so we first upgraded the properties network range and wireless performance necessary for seamless connectivity, control and buffer free streaming services. This was achieved with the installation of a complete Ubiquiti wireless network with access points strategically placed around the property.
‘Providing 21st Century Tech for a 17th Century Home’
The house is under control of a Crestron Home system. Crestron Home was chosen for its simplicity and ability for us to remotely change any aspect as the clients need change. The consistent interface controls all the Audio, Video, Lighting, Heating, Security and Shading. Each room includes Crestron Keypads for simple lighting control and key rooms have 7" touch screens for more complex operations. Included is room to room intercom. The use of the Crestron Home app allows the client to adjust heating etc as they are heading back towards the home.
A second Crestron processor was installed that is programmed using Crestron SiMPL, this allows any functions not supported natively by Crestron Home to be accommodated. This allows us to add complex conditional logic to Crestron Home by using triggers and events between the processors. Literally anything is possible. We utilise this to allow the client to set their thresholds for Lighting and Heating events.
Lighting
Each floor contains Crestron Din-rail lighting panels, in total 72 dimmed circuits and 40 switched have been commissioned. There are 42 dedicated Crestron engraved lighting panels as well as the main touchscreens. The Crestron Home system allows the client to create their own lighting scenes that immediately propagate to all interfaces.
Heating
Every room has a remote Crestron temperature sensor, essential to keep the walls clean of clutter. The water UFH manifolds and electric UFH are all controlled by Crestron Din Rail thermostats. This allows scheduled heating scenes and direct override in any room via the touchscreens.
The heating system is complex due to the variety of Radiator, Electric and water UFH these are all programmed to interact.
‘Literally anything is possible’
Shades
Crestron Horizontal sheer blinds are fitted in strategic rooms and bathrooms. These perform as privacy screening and filtered light into the room.
Scheduled events occur to lower and raise blinds throughout the year.
Network
Our network solution uses a Unifi system comprising a UDM Pro router, dual Wans from separate BT and Sky lines provide failover connection, switches utilise 10Gb fibre connections and a 1gb copper connection to the Stable. Crestron and general network traffic are segregated on VLAN's and we have secure VPN access to the property. This allows us to see all network devices and remotely configure any of them via their web interfaces if necessary.
The dense stone and thickness of walls meant most rooms have a
Wi-Fi 6 access point meaning the benefit is un-restricted roaming about the home is a reality.
Audio
The distributed audio system was constrained by the listed nature of the property therefore we provided every room with Amina plaster over speakers and compact freestanding active subwoofers.
In each room resides a hidden Bang & Olufsen Beosound Core Media Steamer with Airplay and Bluetooth capabilities. The rooms TV display is also connected into these units allowing TV sound to automatically play through the ceiling speakers when the TV is switched on, no other user interaction is required.
Audio from each room is transported back to the AV rack via a CAT 7 infrastructure, this triggers the room amplifier to play.
The amplifiers have gain adjustments so we can equalise the levels between each room and also protect the speakers from inadvertent quick changes of volume, especially as when using a mobile app volume can be 0-100% at the flick of a finger. The rooms subwoofer again takes its line level signal from the AV rack via the CAT 7 infrastructure.
The Music room is where the clients turntable resides and this feeds into the networked audio system allowing playback of this in any room or group of rooms. Also the music room is equipped with sockets for high quality freestanding speakers, either active or passive.
