Leavitt home

This past May, Shanna Leavitt’s two daughters were diagnosed with Friedreich's Ataxia, a disease that causes progressive damage to the nervous system. Within a few weeks of the diagnosis, Leavitt’s youngest child was put in a wheelchair as the symptoms began to impair her muscle coordination. Leavitt realized that, in order to keep living in her Calgary-based home, she would have to invest in significant renovations to make the home more functional and accessible for her and her daughters in the years to come.

She conveyed her issues to friend Gregg Jones, a Technical Sales Manager at Product Solutions West, who realized that he could apply a smart home system design to provide “digital caregiving” for the Leavitt family. To do so, he solicited dozens of custom installation vendors— including Core Brands, Aprilaire, Centralite, and more — to see if they would donate product or services to build a wheelchair-accessible smart home for the Leavitt family.

He received instant support and many gracious donations to help transform the home. The extensive renovation included demolition, indoor and outdoor remodeling, and most notably, the integration of a customized new smart home infrastructure built on an ELAN Entertainment & Control System.

Shanna had trouble carrying her daughters up and down the stairs. With their deteriorating muscle coordination, they increasingly had difficulty turning the lights on and off, changing channels on the television, and turning the knob to answer the front door. Unfortunately, due to the quick onset of the symptoms, Shanna knew she needed to improve the functionality in her home in order to stay in it.

The renovations, entirely solicited by donations, allow Shanna's daughters as much accessibility and independence as possible. Through an extensive A/V system, they can now control the home’s lighting, front door, security, music and climate with one touch on a touch panel, tablet or smartphone.

In addition to providing necessary functionality, the new A/V system also gives the family a state-of-the art entertainment and audio systems that allow the girls to have fun, relax, and keep spirits high. While the renovation mainly revolved around functionality and accessibility, the team never lost sight of the importance of making the house feel like home.

The new ELAN-based A/V system enables Leavitt and her children to control the home’s lighting, front door intercom station, security, music and climate, autonomously or remotely, from their own tablets or easily accessible in-wall touch panels.

The touch panels were installed at switch height to make them wheelchair accessible. The new ELAN system also provides Intercom functionality, which is critical for communicating room-to-room, in addition to providing access to the front door. The system allows the girls to see who is at the door from their tablets or touch panels. ELAN’s Intercom feature communicates with a Weiser Smart Code Door Lock and a Door Station Controller, which allows for locking and unlocking of the door with any mobile tablet or touch panel and allows them to let their nurse or nanny in when Shanna isn't present.

Additionally, a newly installed Centralite and Glimmer lighting system operates autonomously within the home so that neither of the children have to worry about turning the lights on or off as they move from room to room. 34 Centralite Button Jetstream Dimmers and five Jetstream scene control switchers communicate directly with the ELAN system so that the girls can dim the lights from their iPads, or from the touchpads in the walls.

Through a six source, six zone SpeakerCraft MRA-664 Multi-Room Audio Controller, the children can listen to their favorite genre of music individually and instantaneously, in any room, on 10 SpeakerCraft in-ceiling speakers an outdoor Niles PS6SI Pro Flowerpot Speaker.

A Panamax M4000-Pro and a Panamax MB850 UPS protect the system so critical to the Leavitt family’s everyday life from power surges or outages. BlueBOLT functionality allows Jones and his team to keep the network recycled and refreshed on a weekly basis.

“The new functionality has totally changed our lives. I was overcome with emotion when it was revealed to me for the first time, and since then, it’s become an everyday staple. The girls are teaching me things I didn’t even know the system could do! The remote and one-touch functionality is really great. And beyond that, it is so cool to know that there’s a huge community behind me at a time when I really need it.”

Contact: Shanna Leavitt, shansladies@gmail.com