Tower Hill
Tower Hill offers a very high level of automation, and uses innovative planning to create a slick, stylish home that’s family friendly and packed with safety features.
This stunning townhouse epitomises luxury London living, and sits right on the water’s edge at St. Katherine Docks.
Whilst the outside of this four storey home looks like any other, the interior tells a completely different story, one of streamlined, modern design and seriously well-thought-out smart home features thanks to Loxone Gold Partner JSJ Smart Homes.
About This Project
Nestled in the heart of London, this Smart Home combines stylish design and high-end technology with innovative family-friendly features. Automatic lighting is triggered in the event of an emergency to guide residents to their closest exit, whilst intelligent zoned heating ensures the house doesn’t waste money heating unused rooms.
Highlighting The Best Features
Such a beautiful house deserves to be shown off in the best lighting, and through clever design and planning, the owners can now look forward to really impressing their guests by highlighting different features of their home – whether it’s the sleek, clean lines of the kitchen, the incredible glass staircase, or the full height textured stone wall behind it.
Lighting scenes can be customised through the Loxone App, so the owners can choose to have different settings for cooking, dining and entertaining. The ground floor of the house is open plan, so having different lighting scenes is a great way of creating ‘zones’ to divide up the space.
Lighting The Way
You hope it never happens, but in the event of an emergency, it pays to be prepared.
As is common with townhouses, the bedrooms are located on the third and fourth floors, with several flights of stairs between the top of the house and the ground floor. Whilst this doesn’t present a problem day-to-day, if there was an emergency at night, such as a fire, the stairs would become a serious tripping hazard, especially when the residents may be rushing down them to get to safety.
In this home, there’s no need to stumble around to look for torches in a blind panic, as the house will have already sprung into action. Emergency lighting comes on automatically to guide all members of the residence to their closest exit, with the stair lights helping to illuminate a safe path down.
No More Wasted Heat
The heating in every room of the house, including the underfloor heating and towel rails in the bathrooms, can be controlled individually so there’s never a need to heat the guest bedroom and bathroom unless they’re being used.
The owner has set up two main ‘modes’ for the house – ‘working mode’ and ‘home mode’ – when ‘working mode’ is activated, the lights, music and entertainment systems all switch off, the heating is lowered to its ‘economy’ temperature and the alarm is set. Upon arriving home the house warms up, the lights come on and the alarm is disarmed.
Safe As Houses
The house has a fully integrated alarm system which combines motion sensors, window & door contacts, and an alarm fitted by an external company. Each component works together to create a home that’s truly as ‘safe as houses’.
Upon arming the alarm, the lights and music throughout the house are turned off, helping to cut down on unnecessary energy use.
It’s also really easy to keep an eye on things at home – the live feed from the security cameras can be accessed through the Loxone App at any time, and from anywhere.
Is Anyone In?
Of course, there are times when you might want to leave the lights and music on to make the house look occupied– like whilst you’re away on holiday, for example. Instead of wasting electricity by continuously leaving a light on, this house makes use of presence simulation.
The residents’ activities are recorded over the period of a week, with the  Miniserver taking note of which lights are switched on and at what time, when music is played and when the blinds are closed. It then simply ‘replays’ these actions when the presence simulation mode is selected – so it appears that someone is always at home, even when they’re not.
Multiroom Audio, Video & More!
As you’d expect, a house as impressive as this has an entertainment system to match. The multiroom audio system leaves nothing to be desired – the owner can have his favourite radio station wake him the morning, and follow him throughout the house as he takes a shower and heads downstairs to make a cup of tea. At the weekends, the children can each choose to play their own favourite music in their bedrooms, without interrupting anyone else in the house.
Partner’s Favourite
Climbing Into Bed
This house really does have something for everyone. For the ‘grown-ups’ it might be the stunning glass stairs and walls, the beautifully modern bathrooms, or simply the motion sensors built into the walk-in wardrobes to save the hassle of finding the light switch (and remembering to turn it off again!)
For the kids (and the young at heart!) it’s got to be the bedrooms. One of the children’s bedrooms features a cabin bed with a climbing wall and a slide, so you can quite literally ‘climb into bed’ and slide out of it in the mornings! What more could you ask for?!
Neat & Tidy
In this Loxone Smart Home, the Loxone installation is held neatly inside an enclosure, so that the wires are not visible to the homeowner. This keeps it looking neat and much more ‘user friendly’. If you’re looking for a suitable DIN rail enclosure for your Loxone installation, try Future Automation.
For tips and advice on smart home wiring, visit our Standards & Recommendations page, or take a look at our blog.
“Since partnering with Loxone, business has never been better. We’ve achieved far smarter, better quality and more reliable smart systems using Loxone automation products. With such leverage to hand, we pride ourselves in bringing affordable smart homes to the UK and beyond and our mission is to provide a reliable and constant service.
As a company we’ve worked with customers across London, the UK, Europe and the Middle East for all our Electrical & Smart Home Services and at present are delving into parts of Africa. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (@JSJElec) to see where we end up next.”