Interior Media and
EcoManor formed a green partnership.
Interior Media played a major role in an historical new home design.
The home is EcoManor: the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) certified residence in the Southeast. It is also
the first to utilize both solar and geothermal energy to power its
daily energy use. Our experience in integrating home entertainment,
communications, lighting control, and climate control for residential
properties made us the perfect partner for EcoManor. The owners
selected us to bring a "green technology" energy monitoring and
management system to their landmark home.
Faced Unique Design Challenges.
Interior Media has partnered on many projects with top local architects
and designers like Pak-Heydt, Suzanne Kasler, John Oetgen and Beth
Webb. This project presented design challenges unlike any other. A
great deal of research within LEEDS guidelines was necessary, as well
as finding known available products and technologies to accomplish the
owners' goals. We successfully worked through many scenarios to refine
the operation and the project goals.
It's like connecting a home to a heart
monitor.
We went to work installing a system that fully monitors utility usage
and manages various systems including: lighting, climate control,
security, and even water collection. All monitored via a 15-inch
touchpanel manufactured by Crestron®.
EcoManor is the first home
to have such an extensive, real-time energy
monitoring system - so the owners can actually alter their consumption.
It's all accomplished through the Crestron® TPMC-15 touchpanel --
which provides easy control of Crestron® infiNET™
Lighting and Crestron Thermostats, as well as Audio/Video distribution
and security. The EcoManor TPMC-15 shows the owners' energy usage in
real-time and lets them make changes individually or set the house to
react automatically. The house can be set to Economy mode, Miser mode,
or even Entertainment mode.
<>Building
Dashboard™,
a product of Lucid Design Group makes
the invisible flows of energy and water observable, teachable and
engaging in Ecomanor. Serving as the centerpiece
for a variety of green features and technologies installed throughout
the home, Ecomanor's Building Dashboard display allows occupants to
directly experience, learn from and respond to the positive
environmental effects of EcoManor's green design decisions.
<><>Integrating with Crestron's
comprehensive home automation system, the web-accessible touchscreen
interface continually displays "live" resource use on each floor of the
home; calculates money earnedor saved from solar photovoltaic
panels, water recycling and geothermal heating and cooling
systems; translates resource use into everyday currencies, such as the
equivilant number of light bulbs, carbon dioxide and money; and
displays current weather conditions and forecast.
Who left the lights on?
In addition,
Interior Media implemented a full array of WattStopper's®
new line of vacancy sensors, occupancy sensors
and timers designed for the home. The new Watt Stopper sensors give
homeowners a simple way to save energy by automatically turning lights
off in empty rooms, thus making ordinary home lighting more green and
eco-friendly.
The sensors replace wall switches in bathrooms, bedrooms, hallways and
other rooms. With vacancy sensors, users press the button to turn
lights on; with occupancy sensors lights turn on automatically when
someone enters the room. Then, after the room is vacant, lights
automatically turn off, ending the typical pattern of hours of wasted
energy. Homeowners will no longer need to run around the house turning
lights off.
Made it a very entertaining place to be.
Interior Media installed two Philips Plasma TV's and a Philips LCD TV.
Audio comes through Niles High Definition Speakers - found throughout
the home, and powered by Niles amplifiers. Interior Media installed
Crestron's CEN-IDOC, which brings the owners' iPod experience to the
Crestron touchpanels. The touchpanels have expanded display areas
showing multiple sortable fields such as artist name, song title, and
CD title on a single screen. The owners will enjoy a whole house audio
experience plus complete iPod functionality.
We helped show how green living can be
possible.
Interior Media helped create an eco-friendly and user-friendly
environment at EcoManor. Ecomanor was a unique project with many
features not found in most homes. The basic concepts were implemented
for as little as a few thousand dollars above the cost of typical
systems designed for a home like this. It has been a great success that
hopefully increases awareness and leads to more 'green' homes in the
future.
