Michael McGrath is sitting at the controls in his command center. He's adjusting temperatures, turning out lights, checking for motion in distant rooms, reading the latest weather data.
He's the master of his realm, which includes 10 miles of wiring, nine computers, six phone lines, integrated lighting and security systems, and a weather station.
You might expect him to be ensconced before a vast console on some futuristic spaceship or scanning the skies at a NASA facility.
Instead, he's sitting in bed in the master suite of his home on the coast of Maine.
His command center is a 15-inch portable touch panel that rests lightly on his lap. This wireless black monitor with its colorful, Las Vegas slot-art windows allows McGrath to control every facet of the state-of-the-art electronic architecture that weaves its way throughout his large house.
On this particular evening, he's taking inventory before retiring for the night. He checks each room to see if there are any doors or windows open and sets the security alarm. He turns on the "goodnight" switch that turns out most of the lights in the multi-level house but dims others to their night setting. He checks the temperature throughout the house, turning it down in the large living areas and making sure it is at the correct setting in his 7-year-old daughter Molly's room and the master suite. He then settles back to listen to music or watch television before he and his wife, Diane, fall asleep.
"When most people move into a new home," said McGrath, founder and chairman of Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath, a management consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Integrated Development Enterprise, an application software enterprise in Concord, Massachusetts, "there's always last-minute work being done, usually by painters or floor people. But in our house, the last people to leave were the system programmers who were sitting in the foyer doing last-minute touch-ups on programming."
The McGraths bought their 1.2ha property in 1993 and began building what Michael calls the "house of our dreams" in 1998. It took two years to complete and doubled in size along the way. It now holds a commanding presence on a rocky promontory overlooking the crashing surf below.
Although the actual house was built in less than a year, it took an additional, initial year to blast through the craggy coastal rocks and erect a series of Corinthian granite walls in preparation for laying a foundation for the house.
"We had to blast a lot of rocks," said McGrath, sitting in one of the seating areas in the living room on a recent weekend afternoon. "Some parts of the house are 20m above sea level, other parts are 6m above. Diane wanted a garage that would lead into the kitchen, so we started with the garage and kitchen on the top level and worked from there."
Steel infrastructure
Because the house stands virtually naked before mother nature, great care had to be taken to construct a home that could withstand the fiercest northeaster. To this end, the home's infrastructure is all steel, including steel frames welded around the windows. Extra-heavy shingles were used on the exterior.
"The house wraps along the coast and is one room deep at every point so every room has an ocean view," said McGrath, motioning to the vast panoramic view of the sea seen through a bank of glass windows. "The crescent shape helps to protect much of the house from northeast winds."
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