Brief
The owners of a large and impressive family home set in a village in the outskirts of Nottingham wanted music in various rooms in the house including the kitchen, indoor pool and steam room. They also wanted a large screen in the seating area of the swimming pool where they could watch the TV or a film as well as view the images from the underwater cameras in the pool. In addition they wanted to be able to create different lighting moods in the pool area and all the systems needed to be easy to control.

Major Renovation Project
We were first contacted by the owners of the house when they were planning some major renovation work on their home – the perfect time to design and install a sound and vision system.

Our designer worked with the family to finalise the brief and to plan the approach to the installation to fit in with the building work that was going to take place.

Discrete Sound
A key requirement was to have a sound system in the house that was discrete rather than obtrusive so we installed speakers in the ceilings in the rooms where the family wanted music – the kitchen and dining area, the swimming pool and the steam room. These were all then painted to match the décor in each room and linked back to a central music system located out of sight in the plant room.

A large and impressive building was added to the side of the house to accommodate an opulent 10m heated indoor swimming pool and jacuzzi. Adjacent to the pool the owners wanted a luxurious seating area where people could sit and relax and in this area they wanted a screen on the wall – a large plasma to make viewing easy in an environment where there was going to be a lot of light. We mounted a Pioneer 50” screen on the wall above a cabinet which was specially made to house the DVD player and AV amp.

Underwater Cameras and Lighting
With three children in the family who are keen swimmers and a mum who is a swimming coach, the pool was designed not just to be a bit of fun for the family but also to be used for training. With this in mind four underwater cameras were installed in the pool, fed to a hard disc recording system to film the children’s progress. The film could then be played back on the plasma screen and analysed with control being simple to operate.

It was also important to get the lighting right in the pool but with such a large space to illuminate and a combination of different lighting sources ranging from underwater lights, chandeliers above the pool, wall and ceiling lights, and table lamps, this proved to be complicated. We solved the problem by installing a lighting control system that we programmed to create different lighting scenes.

In the steam room adjacent to the pool, changing colour LED’s were installed in the ceiling to provide the light along with special waterproof speakers specially designed for wet environments.

Loudspeakers were also installed under the water in the pool just in case musical inspiration was needed during training sessions.

Easy to Use
With so many different elements of the system and such a large area to cover, control and use of the system was a complex issue. We arrived at the perfect solution combining wall mounted AMX control panels with remotes that we programmed to control the sound and vision systems as well as the lighting. For the family it meant that everything was simple to use.