A Higher Calling. Design 2020 Sets Standards for AV & Lighting Power Systems in House of Worship

Audio, video and lighting systems are important in most installations but for Houses of Worship these components can often mean the difference between serving up a sermon that makes an impact and packs a church versus one that leaves parishioners wishing they were somewhere else.

THE PROJECT

Recently, Design2020, a consulting firm specializing in HOW facilities along with WAVE, a systems integration firm, completed a large scale House of Worship extension of the third facility for North Carolina’s Forest Hill Church. This large nondenominational church had grown & required additional space for Sunday worship services. Taking the church to the people, and serving approximately 1800 families in the area, the Ballantyne expansion for the Forest Hill Church was built as a structural extension of the local Morrison YMCA.

THE CHALLENGE

This unique venue provided some interesting challenges as the functionality of the space needed to change from sports & recreation during the week to a weekend worship facility. The expansion which houses two basketball courts, an indoor track and exercise rooms Monday – Friday had to seamlessly convert on Sunday mornings to an 800 seat worship facility. In addition, the sermons, which are recorded off-site on Saturday evenings, are replayed to the worship facility on Sunday mornings. To ensure that the messages were not lost in the playback of the previous night’s recording, providing quality technical support, truly high definition video and audio and impactful lighting became an even more critical design element for the success of the project.

THE SOLUTION

Design2020 clearly understood the importance of the technical equipment and tools that would be used in creating this multi-use worship space. They also realized that importance of properly managed power distribution for the AV and Lighting systems. In addition, monitoring and control of the AC power systems would need to be, reliable, scalable, easily accessible and user friendly to operate on an on-going basis to meet the function changes of the space.

Firmly believing in following standards for their designs, Design2020 called for two separate circuit breaker panels, one dedicated to handle the AV equipment and one dedicated for the Lighting. The AV systems included a Meyer Sound system, multiple (3) video front projection displays and all the audio/video production support equipment (cameras, switchers, etc.) to record and display the high definition playback of the services. Their creative lighting solutions needed to provide movement and dramatic lighting effects on stage and include full stage lighting, moving lights, as well as LED lighting.

THE PRODUCTS & CAPABILITIES

Two LynTec RPC 341 panels were chosen. The AV panel included an isolation transformer which provided a good technical ground for all the audio and video equipment. This panel provided all the necessary circuits with room for expansion if needed in the future. The second panel supported all of the lighting equipment including stage lighting, moving lights, flown fixtures, LED lighting etc. This was a non-dim lighting panel, providing the needed circuits to support the complete lighting system.

In both panels, the LynTec solution provided remote monitoring and control capabilities accessible over the local area network (IP based) which was important functionality requested by the client. In fact, remote monitoring was one of the prime reasons for selecting the LynTec panels. Used by the church’s technical director to manage, set programming, configure the system, monitor the incoming voltage and to see the status of each of the breakers, the client log in portal and access to the panels via the web was critical to meeting their performance objectives and Design2020’s design standards.

Says Justin Hames, Design Engineer at Design2020, “The Lyntec panels and isolation transformer were well suited for this project. We’ve used these previously on other project with similar success. There product provides a clean and efficient solution from a control and connectivity stand point.”

THE RESULT

In operation, the client has access to each and every circuit for the AV and Lighting systems. Practical yes; convenient without a doubt!

Mark Bishop, President of LynTec commented “Design2020 is one of those progressive design and engineering firms that understand the value of setting standards to ensure that clients are always pleased with the results.”

For this project and for all of their project work, Design2020 specifies two separate circuit breaker panels. They work closely with the specifying Electrical Engineers to provide them with detailed specifications on how the AV and Lighting panels are to be circuited.

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