Brunel's House - UK

Brunel's house

In 1836 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the greatest engineer of the Victorian Age encountered a problem when building his London to Bristol Great Western Railway.

The problem was Salthouse Village and the hill it was sitting on. On analysing the situation he realised it would take too long to go around it, it would be impossible to climb its’ slopes with a steam train so he decided to tunnel through it! But there was one further thing he needed to sort quickly - he needed to buy the house he would be dynamiting under! That house was Tunnel House.

Fast forward 170 years later and a new owner, with an equally enthusiastic view of cutting edge technology now occupies the house. While renovating and restoring this imposing property sympathetically, they are also integrating the latest AV and technology to turn the house in a modern family home.

“Blind tenacity and an absolute commitment” is how today’s owner, Jon, describes the attitude you need to take on a project as big and as complex as this, but sourcing and installing the latest technology and AV was fun too

Invisible sound with lime plaster
One early challenge was how to get the AV Loudspeakers to invisibly blend in? To find the right answer took some time, but when Jon discovered Amina his first thoughts were “Too good to be true” but it turned out to be the ideal solution.

Four Amina AIWX3 40W speakers were installed in the solid walls of each of the main rooms to provide the required high quality, room filling audio. The fitting of the speakers only took a few hours. However the traditional lime plaster used took 8 weeks for all the layers of plaster that had been applied to dry enough for the surface to be decorated and the speakers tested. The result was certainly worth waiting for. An elegant and beautiful family home combining a meticulously detailed restoration with 21st century innovation through the adoption of the latest av central control and delivery technology.