A homeowner wanted an outdoor living area straight out of the olden days, with a very rustic cottage-style pool house…and a 65-inch TV. The only issue was that, in the original pool-house design, the architect called for a TV to be installed in a faux window. “The major two problems with that idea,” says Harry Blanchard of Creative Systems USA, “was the window was small and it was facing away from the pool by 90 to 120 degrees.”
Hmmm.
So Blanchard suggested instead that a TV be installed in a stone wall to be constructed around the back patio, which would help maintain the cottage look and feel of the property.
“It wouldn’t look out of place at all, and it would give me the container and overall height needed to hide the TV and lift.”
The solution was acceptable except for one thing: The wall was only two feet tall.
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“We could have had a pocket built in the ground to create room for the TV and the lift,” Blanchard says, “but the TV would not have been high enough to see from the pool.”
In any case, the patio furniture would have blocked the view, and “the builder wasn’t thrilled about the pocket below grade.”
Blanchard sprung to the rescue with an idea for a fake wood-storage structure: “It wouldn’t look out of place at all, and it would give me the container and overall height needed to hide the TV and lift.”
Architect happy. Builder happy because the design didn’t require a pocket below grade. Homeowner happy.
I asked Blanchard what the biggest challenge was on this job.
“Outdoor-rated TVs and lifts aren’t cheap,” he says of the 65-inch Seura Ultra Bright display, and the Future Automation outdoor lift system with swivel. “If the client didn’t trust me to make it cool and right, the cost would have been the biggest challenge.”
Creative Systems tied the TV and lift into a Crestron home-automation system already installed by the company. All of the A/V sources and head-end gear are housed in the home located about 150 feet away.
The relay modules are located in the pool house. Crestron lightning-strike protectors are employed to protect the main house processor from lightning strikes at the pool house. Surge protection is provided by Furman.
Topping it off is a landscape sound system from James Loudspeaker.
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