Equipment from Dynalite plays a pivotal role in a home automation control system installed at a prestigious eight-bedroom residence in South London. Orchard House incorporates three floors, an adjoining indoor swimming pool and spa complex, a multiple-car garage, a security lodge, a cinema, a library, four separate living rooms and dedicated staff accommodation.
The fully automated Dynalite system controls the light circuits, air conditioning, underfloor heating and gas fires in the main living rooms. It constitutes a crucial component of the home automation installation carried out by Kent-based CEI.
Located at the entrance to the building, the colour touch-screen control panel for the Dynalite system enables the user to control and adjust the lighting in each of the rooms, as well as the pool area, sauna and steam rooms. Each of the controllers on the main control panel can be used to raise or lower the level of light, allowing the user to create their required ambience or mood-lighting combination. Mood settings can be recalled at the press of a single button; alternatively, the operator can alter the settings via the touch-screen to reflect their current mood.
In order to reduce energy wastage and to extend lamp life, the lighting control system has been programmed to operate all of the dimmed lighting circuits at 95%. Ballast controllers have been incorporated into the design to enable the Dynalite system to dim all the circuits, including cold-cathode varieties.
Other notable features of the lighting installation include passive infrareds (PIRs) with daylight sensors in the centrally positioned glass atrium area. The PIRs enable the Dynalite system to detect when natural light reaches the designated lux level and then automatically extinguishes the appropriate lighting circuits to reduce energy wastage.
Each of the houseís climate-control systems is fully integrated into the Dynalite network, including the under-floor water heating system and air-conditioning system, which is integrated via a LonWorks interface. This solution enables the heating and air-conditioning systems to be linked to Dynaliteís organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays that are built into the control panels.
According to the manufacturer, the Dynalite system at Orchard House ìsets a new benchmark for future home automation and lighting management projectsî.
