The technology at Redwall is both impressive and hidden. I say that it is impressive in that we have a full business phone system, many phone lines, along with a complete home automation system that SOMETIMES includes a voice recognition agent named Martin. We wired the house with Cat5, and are currently hosting in excess of 8 computers off our proxy-server/Firewall. And that doesn't even begin to show the whole picture...
The
picture to the right shows the “Electronics” room, next to the furnace room.
It houses the proxy server, home automation server, the wireless alarm system,
the business phone system, the antenna distribution system, several battery
backup systems (powered by heavy-duty car batteries), the house network hub,
many layers of surge protection.
Telephone system http://telephones.com/panasonic.htm
Alarm System http://www.ademco.com/ademco/v40.htm
Server Hardware http://developer.intel.com/design/servers/accessories/astor/index.htm
Home Automation http://www.keware.com/
Proxy/Firewall http://www.avirt.com/
The original Furnace was larger than a Volkswagen, was covered in Asbestos, and drank oil like a …., and we had two (2) of them, one in the carriage house and one in the main house. Both had been removed from service before we acquired the property, but had been left in place, sort of. Previous owners had plumbed in small Weil-McLain boilers to the existing piping to reduce the consumption, both those too had seen better days.
After removing the Asbestos (Guys in space suits) we had the furnaces cut up (two tanks of acetylene, one of oxygen) and removed. In talking with some of the older locals, we learned that the foundation had been dug, the basement floors poured, the furnaces backed in, and the houses built up around them. No wonder we had to cut them up.
Then came the question of what furnace to replace them with. Remember, we
were looking to do the work of two furnaces and two hot water systems. The main
house and the carriage house had independent heating systems.
Our plumber, who is a craftsman, suggested tying the two houses together
and putting in a small, state of the art system by Energy Kinetics. http://www.energykinetics.com/
This required a larger trench between the two buildings than we had (it
used to be just cold water). We
actually put in three conduits: a wet conduit that contains cold water, hot
water, hot water return, heating out and heating back; a high voltage conduit
that takes 220v between the two houses; and a low voltage conduit that takes the
network, phones, alarm, intercom and all other signaling stuff.
This trench houses some of Welmoed's sweat equity: she donned a Tyvek suit in July 1997 and crawled on her stomach to waterproof the concrete patch around the trench.
As
the run from the furnace to the main house bathrooms is pretty long, we put in a
small hot water circulator that draws hot water from the far side of the longest
run so we get near instant hot water everywhere.
Speaking of hot water, that big tank is NOT the hot water heater, but a storage tank. The little white-covered box just to the right of the main furnace with the pipes leading to the water tank is the hot water heater/exchanger. Whenever the furnace shuts off, the heat is scavenged for the hot water supply. Otherwise, it's considered a "tankless hot water system." Neat huh??
Along the way we also replaced the well pressure tank (a 20 gal one) with a MONSTER tank so that we wouldn’t need to run the well pump as often, and put in a whole house filter to get rid of the typical sediment..
What did we do with the rest of the space not taken up by the old furnace? STORAGE, what else. You can never have enough.
After we took out the main house's furnace, we were left with a “Great Room” under the living room. It was HUGE, symmetrical, underground, and had a “bump-out” which was formed by the foundation of the bay window in the living room. Both my wife and I looked at the bump out and said “SCREEN.” It took another 18 months to build what would become the “Sound Room” I had wanted an acoustically correct sound room for many years, and now I had the chance, so I did LOTS of research, as I knew I wanted to do this only ONCE. After talking with many designers, architects, sound people and sales people I found an acoustical engineer/designer who had a philosophy near my own. Instead of building acoustically “Dead” or “Live end – Dead End” rooms as most due, he designed a room that was “Tunable” I could “tune” the room to be live or dead, with sweet spots or not, and much more. Many drawings were faxed back and forth, including a non-disclosure as his technique is proprietary, and then we began. It took a while, but it came together.
At one point we were wondering about colors, so we “Painted” a picture with color choices, and we were real close…
Here's the sound room, all finished and ready for a show!
The last choice was to hide the room behind a “Secret” door… but where's the fun in showing that!!
Now doesn’t every Castle have a Theater in the Basement…. Right next to the Dungeon??