The story
A local developer was building a forever home for their client in Southwell, one of Nottinghamshire's most historic villages. We were brought in early, sitting down with both the client and the developer to work out how technology should sit inside it.
The brief was clear from the start. The homeowners wanted the technology woven into the house, with none of the clunky boxes or visible cabling that break the look of a room. Everything was to be tucked away in a purpose-built plant room, so the house felt calm and the workings stayed out of sight.
Location
Southwell, Nottinghamshire
Property
Private residence, four interconnected buildings run as one home
Pillar
Live, Play, Protect
Platform
Control4, with Lutron lighting
Scope
Lighting, heating, network and Wi-Fi, video intercom, intruder alarm, CCTV, multiroom audio, video distribution, basement cinema
Scale
250+ CAT6A network points, 150+ lighting circuits, 22 audio zones, 12 TV locations
Relationship
Delivered with a local developer for the client's forever home
The Process
Because we were involved from early in the build, our design team could plan the whole system properly rather than retrofitting around finished rooms. We designed a single interface to bring every part of the house together, and laid the infrastructure to support it: more than 250 CAT6A network points throughout, with Wi-Fi reserved for mobile devices so the wired network carries the real load.
Connecting four buildings into one home is the kind of job that only works when it is planned as a whole. That is what being in the room before the walls go up allows.
The Solution
Everything runs through one Control4 interface, with the same logic across all four buildings.
Live. Lutron handles the lighting, with over 150 circuits and dedicated table-lamp control, so any room can be set from bright and practical to low and warm. Heating, network and entry sit in the same system, controlled from anywhere in the house or away from it. As certified Control4 and Lutron integrators, we built it to behave consistently wherever you are on the estate.
Play. A basement cinema anchors the entertainment, with 22 zones of audio and 12 TV locations distributing sound and picture across the home. Music and film follow you from room to room.
Protect. A monitored intruder alarm, CCTV and video intercom give the family a single, reassuring layer of security, managed from the same interface as everything else.
The Result
Four buildings that behave as one home. The technology does what is asked of it and then disappears, exactly as the brief intended, with every box and cable kept in the plant room and out of the living space.
The relationship continues past handover. The home is covered by TrustPack, with round-the-clock support from the same team that designed and installed it, so the people who know the system are the ones looking after it.
"Four buildings that behave like one home, run from a single screen, with every cable and box out of sight. It is exactly what we hoped for and never quite believed was possible."
