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So what is a ‘Huf Haus’? Huf Haus is a name made famous by such programmes as Grand Designs and has become synonymous with modern, striking architecture favoured by many a self-builder. Distinctive for their post and beam architecture, the Huf Haus timber frame frees the designer from the constraints of load-bearing (and thus dividing) walls and results in homes that offer impressive space and breadth. The company was founded in Hartenfels, Germany, back in 1912 by Johann Huf. What started off as part of his carpentry business is now a widely-recognised company that has grown substantially over three successive generations. The company is now run by Johann’s grandson, Peter Huf, who has remained true to his grandfather’s original ideas, and still offers a friendly service to all its customers in spite of its rapid growth.

The timber houses are designed and manufactured to order in Germany, shipped to their destination and assembled by an expert team. Each house offers in excess of 4,000 square feet over three levels combined with full height glazing, balconies, internal galleries and vaulted ceilings. These five bedroom homes are thermally-efficient, have double-glazed windows, fitted external electronic blinds and gas-fired under floor heating. For this Huf Haus development at Chilworth, Southampton, the developers brought home technology experts, SmartHomeLife, on board to offer individual packages for each property. A fully-integrated home entertainment package was seen as a ‘must-have’ addition to the development since it would increase saleability and was also something that would be expected by today’s discerning buyers. Starting with a high specification package for the £1.5 million show home, SmartHomeLife set about designing an easy-to-use and aesthetically-pleasing integrated home. The brief was to seamlessly blend the home automation system into the fabric of the house, to fit with the Huf Haus’ clean lines, whilst providing HD TV and DVD distributed around the house. The brief also included the provision of a dedicated home cinema room and multi-room audio.

When SmartHomeLife joined the project, the houses had already been pre-wired by another company who were unable to provide a bespoke solution. This left a wiring scheme for all the houses, but no home automation system. Wall cut-outs for cabling need to be specified to Huf at the design stage so that they can build to order, making it important for those considering building a ‘smart’ Huf Haus to consult a specialist systems integrator at the earliest possible stage. SmartHomeLife took on this extra challenge and, by ‘reverse engineering' the cabling, designed a system to meet the developer’s exacting requirements within budget. As an independent company, SmartHomeLife is able to specify a wide range of brands and products to provide clients with ultimate flexibility and choice.

Once the show home wiring was altered to meet the system design, a control system needed to be specified. Although prefabricated from a composite material, the Huf Haus wall construction is quite solid and, along with the structural metalwork, proved to be a challenge for wireless signals, especially given the size of the property.

The Control4 range was chosen for its ability to easily control entertainment in any room from touchscreen, remote handset or onscreen TV menu using Zigbee, a recent wireless networking standard, but with lower power requirements than Wi-Fi. This means it can be fitted into smaller devices such as handheld remote controls. Zigbee uses a reliable ‘mesh’ network where signals automatically find the best way through, with ‘repeaters’ in different locations giving extremely good signal coverage across the whole house. As part of this entertainment system, a range of Pioneer plasmas and Sharp LCD screen were specified from distribution specialists AWE. A 50in and 42in HD ready Pioneer plasma along with six 32in HD ready LCD TVs were installed around the show home to provide the level of quality TV distribution required by the client. A selection of high quality speakers from German brand WHD completed the multi-room AV requirements.

“In terms of the home entertainment and automation system that the developer was after, the system integrated extremely well with the home,” explains John Peckham, director at SmartHomeLife. “The system emphasised the Huf concept of bringing space, light and air together in perfect harmony. There is no equipment on show in any of the rooms, apart from the wall-mounted flat panel TVs which were all supplied by AWE. The screens were chosen in part for their performance, but also for their look since this was a very important factor,” he says. He continues: “So much so, we chose particular products to match the stylish clean lines of the house throughout the property, for example the speakers have a frosted green glass finish to match the light fittings.”

Another important part of the entertainment system was the dedicated home cinema room which comes with a 2.4m viewable-width Projecta screen and ceiling mounted inFocus IN78 projector. High quality audio is achieved through B&W mini theatre speakers and a subwoofer. An iDyl media server was a popular addition offering simple TV browsing of music and movies. SmartHomeLife integrated the server into the local area network where the home owners can easily transfer and store their music, movies and family photos. They are then able to access any of this content from whichever screen in the house they choose.

Meanwhile, on the security side, when SmartHomeLife joined the project, CCTV cameras were already installed which were motion-activated and record to a hard drive. The company was able to integrate with this security system, not an original requirement, giving four camera views of the whole property that can be accessed from any of flat screens in the house. Kramer VP-414 scalers convert the composite video to HDTV. In addition to the usual programming required with a custom installation, the show house system required a ‘visitors’ package for prospective buyers. SmartHomeLife configured the system with sample music and movies to show off the property and its home automation package to best effect. They were also able to set up an automatic ‘kiosk’ mode for weekend viewings with a carefully designed programme of TV, music and movies playing in the background. This enabled the developer to demonstrate the whole AV system with just one touch whenever showing round prospective buyers. The Huf Haus show home has since been sold and is now occupied by a family with two children. Whenever the house becomes unusually quiet and the children are nowhere to be seen, they can often be found in the home cinema room!

SmartHomeLife has also designed and installed a home automation system into the second £1.5 million Huf Haus at the development and has commenced work on the first of the two £1.25 million homes at the site. Already a popular development, these Southampton properties illustrate a combination of clean architectural design and seamlessly integrated home automation systems using high end equipment from distributors like AWE Europe. The result is a highly unusual development which really is something special.

For more information contact Smarthomelife

This story originally appeared in Custom Installer Magazine

Contact Michael Kitchener 01342 844444