Wired for Reconstruction

To look at the interior of this house in San Francisco, one does not immediately recognize it as 100 years old. Thanks to a complete gutting and reconstruction, this house will see another hundred years, doing so in technological style. It is filled with features and functions any tech-lover would want.

The homeowner wanted control of as many elements of the house as possible. Total control is accomplished through the one-of-a-kind, touch-screen control panel, which is based on the home’s floor plan. The control system allows the user to touch a specific room on the layout to gain control of everything in it.

“All our touch panels are floor-plan based,” says Randy Stearns, president, Engineered Environments in Alameda, Calif. “Every project we do includes the floor-plan-based control. Homeowners can visually go from floor to floor and room to room to observe the status of windows, doors, motion detectors, occupancy, temperature, lighting or if the TV is on. They can get full feedback on everything that is going on in the house.”

Few if any electronics contractors use a floor-plan-based touch-panel, Stearns says, because it’s very complex and difficult to execute. “We’ve got a full-time graphics interface developer on staff to create these controls. It’s a challenge, and is not something that is easily done.”

A total of 14 touch panels of varying size throughout the house controls everything. The larger 12-in. touch panels are for whole-house control with one per floor. Wireless units also provide whole-house control but in locations where the home-owner might want to move around with it, Stearns explains.

“The one in the theater is just for theater control. He has one panel in his office, and one in the pool room where there was not a good in-wall location. The 4-in. panels are for smaller rooms like the master bath where they don’t need to control as many things except maybe the music, or TV or basic lighting. There’s also a panel at the front door that acts as a security keypad, plus other functions if they choose to use them,” Stearns says.

The best feature of the house, according to Stearns, is the ability to have whole-house control through one single, easy-to-use interface. “The floor-plan touch-panel control is the ultimate in home electronics,” he says.

Specifically for a sports junkie, the best feature is in the theater room, where a video scaling device splits multiple inputs into four different windows on one large screen, or combines them into one large image. “There are many different ways to configure the screen. From a touch screen, the owner can go to the multiview format, and select which window to control, and also which one he wants the audio to be coming from.”

Engineered Environments designed versatility into the controls. From a main whole-house touch panel, anyone can see which TV is on in which room, and what source is selected; TiVo or DVD or XM or am/fm radio, for example. “And if the equipment delivering a source is capable of providing feedback, the home-owner can see what’s actually being watched or listened to,” Stearns says.

Old house, new technology

Much like the final score of a baseball game does not tell the game’s entire story, neither do the photos of this house. The 8,000-sq.-ft. 100-year-old house sits in front of a level street on a downhill lot facing the bay, says architect Bill Remick, president, Remick Associates in Oakland, Calif. “The outside is traditional looking but has a contemporary wow factor on the inside,” he says.

“We shored up the street and hollowed the back yard and added a garage underneath,” Remick adds. “We gutted the interior and designed it to gain amenities. It was a simple old boxy house with a stairway with many landings that dominated the interior. We modified it so it is a continuous curving stairway that is the main traffic path through the house.”