The Challenge...

We first met Jeremy and Louise Brown at Upthorpe Farm, a beautiful 16th Century Farmhouse, early in 2004. At this stage Jeremy and Louise had not told us that they had applied to be on the television programme Grand Designs.

Period Property

The project was instantly exciting as it involved installing technology into an old building. We feel that in many ways our ability to hide equipment is more important in a period property than in a modern one where technology doesn’t look so out of place.

As with any project the first stage was to take a detailed brief from the client. It was clear from the outset that Jeremy and Louise were determined to breathe new life into the farmhouse. Without their commitment the property would quite literally have fallen down. Despite wanting to retain many of the period features of the property, there was no room for compromise on making this a thoroughly modern and convenient place to live.

Entertainment

A whole house entertainment system was a priority, especially as it meant hiding most of the speakers in the ceiling. In one room where the ceiling was too uneven we used speakers hidden in picture frames. The Speakercraft system was chosen after careful consideration because it offered simple unobtrusive keypads in the rooms with high quality audio reproduction. It will also be possible for them to expand the system at a later date as we have pre-wired all the rooms in the house.

We installed a Marantz hard disk music server so Jeremy and Louise could easily access their music collection. This is capable of storing up to 2500 CDs, any of which can easily be played by using a simple menu that appears on any TV screen in the house. Four different tracks can be playing simultaneously around the farmhouse.

A plasma screen was installed in the main sitting room together with a home cinema surround sound system. Again ceiling speakers were used here to make the installation as unobtrusive as possible.

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom (known as the cheese room as this is where cheese was once left to mature) was more of a problem. The room is just so large, something that may not instantly come across on TV. They wanted a screen installed in this room but if we hung one on a wall it would have had to have been over 50" just for it to be visible! Another alternative would have been to install a screen in a cabinet at the end of the bed; however it didn’t suit the style of bed. So we came up with the idea of the projector screen.

Lighting control

Lighting control was another important aspect of the project for Jeremy and Louise. They wanted the ability to set scenes of light in the major rooms in the home. Having gone to such effort and expense to restore the property it was really important for the lighting to show this off. The Clipsal lighting system allows scenes to be created using numerous channels of light in each room for different occasions. With a lighting control system you simply think of the activities that a room is used for and then design the lighting to fit these activities. So for example in the dining room there is a scene for an intimate dinner for two, a full scale dinner party and general ambience. The Clipsal lighting system was installed in the sitting room, dining room, master bedroom and bathroom.

Initially Jeremy and Louise wanted to re-use the old Bakelite switches which would have been possible using the Clipsal system because it uses safe low voltages at the switches. However as the project progressed and they refined their design for the interior the modern glass Saturn switches became more suitable.

Lighting control requires good lighting design and so we assisted Louise and Jeremy with this. We also supplied some of the light fittings, such as the plaster lights on the staircase to the upper floor lounge.

Control

A control system is also installed which allows the couple to access, monitor and control the property remotely.

Like many of our other projects the cables were installed by the site electrician, in this case Louise's Uncle, Alan. We provided him with detailed plans and then visited the site regularly to answer questions and check all of the connections. Although he had never installed such a system before there were no problems with the cable installation. Several miles of cable are now installed in the property.

Reveal!

After many structural problems with the fabric of the building were overcome, we were finally able to commence the installation of our equipment at the beginning of 2005. Usually we don't start much of our installation until the all of the building work has been completed, but with a filming deadline looming it was 'all hands on deck'. All the major elements of the installation were completed in time.

The 'final reveal' filming for Grand Designs took place over two days in March. We were only able to give Jeremy 20 seconds training before he had to use the remote control on camera. The fact that he was able to use it without a hitch shows that simple to use remotes really do exist.

The project was installed on a fairly tight budget and is a good example of how the convenience and sophistication of home automation can be applied to traditional houses.

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Specification

• Lighting Control
  Clipsal Saturn switches
  Cipsal C-Bus lighting control
  www.clipsal.co.uk
• Entertainment
  Speakercraft multi-room entertainment system
  Speakercraft in-ceiling speakers
  www.speakercraft.com
  
  Yamaha cinema receiver and DVD player
  www.yamaha.co.uk
  
  Middle Atlantic equipment rack
  www.middleatlantic.com
  
  Universal Remotes remote control
  www.universalremote.com
  
  Panasonic plasma screens
  www.panasonic.co.uk
• Cheese room/master bedroom
  Beamax Projector screen
  www.beamax.com
  
  Epson projector
  www.epson.co.uk
  
  Yamaha cinema receiver and DVD player
  www.yamaha.co.uk