EGC Electric: Downsizing? Owners of Award-Winning Home Do It With Technology

Thursday, 5 October 2017

Downsizing? Owners of Award-Winning Home Do It With Technology

When most people think of downsizing, they envision a smaller home with fewer amenities. This wasn’t exactly the case for the owners of Electronic House’s Bronze-winning Home of the Year, Traditional Smart Home, Less than $150,000 (in technology).

Go here to see all the 2017 Electronic House Home of the Year award winners.

They tackled their downsizing project with gusto—focusing more on making their new home convenient and efficient to live in than shrinking its square footage.

A Massive Rewire

The home would stretch 7,000 square feet and undergo a makeover of extreme proportions, as well. “The new home for our client is a 60-year-old home that had a complete makeover inside and out. For us to get started, we needed to completely rewire the home,” explains Atlanta Audio & Automation vice president and owner Cheryl Ampel.

All new wiring went to each room from the main control system in the basement. The home’s integrated subsystems are governed by this Control4 automation system — HVAC, alarm, garage doors, surveillance cameras, and lighting throughout the house.

Find more Control4 installations here

Atlanta Audio & Automation configured the systems so that they would operate as one cohesive unit. For example, whenever someone touches of a button on the two intercom door stations, the music system in the house mutes temporarily and plays a chime of the client’s choosing; once finished, the music comes back to its original state.

Audio & Video Delights

Speaking of music, there are eight zones of distributed audio; the home has the same amount of distributed video zones. Each room or zone has its own TV and in-ceiling speakers, the owner just engages the user interface and the system comes to life.

Learn about whole-house audio systems

Despite his effort to “downsize,” a big highlight happens upstairs, where the owner now finds a well-planned 4K projection, Dolby Atmos surround-sound media room. The space features a Sony projector that beams onto a 120-inch Screen Innovations Black Diamond screen with LED backlighting, while Paradigm Prestige speakers dole out the audio. And for a video highlight on a smaller scale, Atlanta Audio & Automation installed in the master bathroom a 19-inch Séura waterproof TV that is embedded in the tile wall of the shower.