HOUSE OF A THOUSAND GADGETS
From the Early Summer 2006 Issue
The home that Nick and Lynn Briggs built at Thunder Point on the shores of Georgia’s Lake Lanier has all the down-home warmth and comfort of your grandfather’s house. But Grandpa never lived in a place like this. Rustic, yes. But with magical technology right out of a sci-fi thriller.
Located outside Gainesville, Ga., the Briggs home is a log structure of 6,000 square feet on three levels with a garage apartment out back. It has not the slightest resemblance to the log cabins occupied by our forebears. Its wall paneling, floors, and ceilings are of beautiful hardwood, and the stone fireplaces are enormous.
Built with open ceilings that soar to 28 feet, the house is equipped with a sophisticated lighting system that not only eliminates shadows and glare but can create many moods.
Grandpa could have built a house with the stones from one of them.
He couldn’t, however, have envisioned anything like the house the couple created on Lake Lanier’s Thunder Point. For what Nick, a 1999 retiree as regional manager and vice president of United Parcel Service, and his wife Lynn, chose to build was a “smart house.”
THE OLD AND NEW
The design is rustic and ultra-modern at the same time, a high-tech dwelling so magically equipped with step-saving electronics and high technology that it will do everything except take out the garbage.
Smart homes originated in the 1990s with the wondrous conveniences built into Bill Gates’ new home in the suburbs of Seattle. The popularity of such homes is spreading across America, perhaps a bit slower than a prairie fire because of expense, yet those who can afford it can equip a smart home like the Briggses for between $400,000 and $600,000.
“I think all of this began as evolution of technology,” Nick says, but as he demonstrates what his system will do, it occurs to me that as technology advances further, one day a house may indeed be able to take out the garbage.
ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES
A handy security device, the television in this sleek and handsome kitchen can be used simultaneously for entertainment and for scanning all areas of the property.
From one of three strategically placed panels in the house, Nick and Lynn can control lighting, security – including camera surveillance of the entire two-acre, fenced-in lot – heating and air conditioning, all of the house’s audio-visual equipment and the front gate. The system is so controlled that Nick could call it up on a computer from Amsterdam or Tel Aviv and operate it from there. It is also geared to safety.
“If something happened and we had to call 911,” Nick says, “we would touch ‘Police,’ and they would immediately respond.”
In addition, both have a remote gadget called an F.O.B., with which, coming down their driveway, they can unlock the gate and security, and turn on the lights.
A MODERN WONDER
The best word to describe the smart home is “amazing.”
Take lighting, for example. At the touch of a control panel, Nick or Lynn can choose how to light each of the three floors. The downstairs and main level have 28-foot open-beam ceilings that can be lighted in various ways, depending on the mood the Briggses wish to create, either for themselves or for party gatherings.
“A lot of lighting is required to light the house properly,” he says, “so we don’t have a lot of shadows or glare, and this system is programmed to do it. It is also energy-efficient.”
Installation of the system did away with one standard element.
“You noticed coming in,” Nick says, “that there were no switches on the walls. Installation of electronics eliminated having to cut large holes in the logs for on-and-off switches. You can imagine how many we’d need for a house this size.”
Music is another thing the Briggses leave to electronics.
“We have a CD recorder in the system,” he says, “that can take up to 450 CDs, record them, and automatically put them in any sequence we want – by artists, country-western, classical, whatever. We can put the system in a certain mode and spend hours enjoying it.”
Today’s technology allows the Briggses to pre-set the heat and lighting of their beautiful log home for early morning or early evening and from cities across the world.
CREATING ILLUSIONS
A visitor might be attracted to a classic piece of art on the wall, but at a touch of the control panel the picture rolls up and turns into a television screen. On that set, the Briggses can call up any visual information they want, any television channel, for instance, but can also see all areas of the home from strategically-placed surveillance cameras.
The cameras record all movement, and when Nick and Lynn are away for a week, or even a day, they can view film of everyone who came by in their absence.
Another plus for this system is programming capacity.
“We can pre-set it for how we want the house to look and feel at seven in the morning,” Nick notes, “or how we want it to look at 10 at night so when we get up in the morning we don’t have to turn anything on. It’s already on.”
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
The Briggses started groundbreaking for their home in January 2003; in October 2004, they occupied it. The house was built of logs, supports and beams all supplied by Tennessee Log Homes of Athens, Tenn. Builder-contractor was North Georgia Log Homes, and a firm in Cummings, Ga., HomeWaves, did all of the electronics through a small subsidiary company called Light Logistics.
The brains of the system, located in a small off-room, appears to have miles of wires and cables running from it to all points of the house. Just the wiring took more than a year.
On several occasions, the couple went to the Tennessee Log Homes office to design their home and have the timbers cut.
“We worked with a design architect named Diane Wilson,” Nick says. “We had an idea of what we thought the floor plan should look like. She put what we wanted into a computer and it showed where all the logs should go, how the structure should be formed, and everything else we wanted to know. Basically, the house is a timber frame with logs. We always wanted a log home and we think we chose the right place to build it.”
THE DREAM TAKES SHAPE
Nick and Lynn Briggs, transplanted Atlanta-area residents, are now happy to stay home and enjoy their smart home for days
at a time.
When construction began, the Briggs home did not contain its present electronics.
“We didn’t include them in the original plans,” Nick says. “We changed course about November 2003 and decided to go the electronic route. Once we became involved in the project, it became a little bigger than we initially planned; I didn’t want to put 1980s technology into a 21st century home. Although my wife and I aren’t really high-tech people, we knew our daughters and grandkids had a little more propensity to use that type of stuff. We wanted to look forward but we kept the system pretty simple so we could operate it ourselves. Actually, we have five-year-old grandkids who know how to work this panel better than I do.”
A GREAT LOCATION
Lake Lanier itself is a huge body of water with 700 miles of shoreline, 250 feet of which is part of the Briggs property.
Underneath its handsome exterior, the home is outfitted to control lighting, security, heating, air conditioning and all audio-visual elements, including a music system that can record up to 450 CDs and coordinate them according to artist or style.
“It’s an interesting lake,” Nick says. “On most summertime weekends, boaters are extremely busy, but come Sunday about six o’clock, the boats go away and from Monday until about four o’clock on Friday afternoon, we own the lake. I love to fish, and that gives us plenty of time to do so.”
The couple relocated to Lake Lanier six years ago from Alpharetta, immediately northeast of Atlanta.
“We just got tired of battling traffic,” Nick says. “We moved first to Lake Lanier to spend weekends or a week at a time and soon found that we were spending more time here than in Alpharetta, so we said, ‘Let’s find a piece of property, build a house, and be here all the time.’”
Sitting in the house, Nick and Lynn look out large windows and see the lakefront and a large island in the middle of the lake, and imagine they are in Canada, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.
“We love it here,” he says. “Sometimes for two or three days at a time, we don’t even leave the property. We just stay here and enjoy it.”
