Austin Houses, Fully Integrated.

Cave Group does. We are a Crestron Elite Gold Partner and Lutron Gold Dealer based in New York, and we design, install, and service lighting control, motorized shades, home cinema, audio, networking, security, and backup power for houses, condominiums, hotels, restaurants, and clubs across Austin, from West Lake Hills and Tarrytown to the lakes, the Hill Country, and downtown, on a project basis with Texas-licensed electrical and security contractors.

No, and we say so. Our offices are in New York and New Jersey, with European operations in Warsaw. We take Austin projects on a project basis: design from the drawings with your architect and builder, site visits at the milestones that need them, installation and commissioning on site, and Cave Watch support around the clock afterward, which fixes most faults remotely. The line-voltage and alarm work that Texas licenses is done by licensed local contractors.

In four stages. Design happens with your architect and builder from the drawings, with a walk of the site before anything is committed. The pre-wire and the rough-in are scheduled to the builder's milestones, with the conduit, the boxes, and the rack location set on the drawings so the trades can build to them. Installation and commissioning happen on site, room by room. Afterward, Cave Watch monitors the system around the clock, fixes most faults remotely, and schedules a visit when one is needed. Working with Cave Group →

Texas exempts low-voltage signaling, communication, data, and fiber work from the state electrician license, but the 120-volt circuits that feed a rack, a shade transformer, or a lighting panel are licensed electrical work, and monitored alarm and camera installation is licensed by the Department of Public Safety. We plan every Austin project to comply, with the line-voltage work by a Texas-licensed electrical contractor and the alarm work by a licensed security contractor.

Standby power is part of the design here, not an option. Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 took power from about 220,000 Austin Energy customers under ERCOT's load shedding, and the February 2023 ice storm left more than 170,000 without power, some for over ten days. We size a generator and a battery-backed rack for the network, the control system, the cameras, and the house, and plan the permit, the setbacks, and the noise limits with the licensed electrician. Generator and UPS planning for the rack →

Austin is unusual: AT&T Fiber, Google Fiber, and Astound compete with Spectrum, and in West Lake Hills and Rollingwood Google Fiber signed right-of-way agreements in 2023. Fiber thins out toward the Hill Country, where Starlink is listed at every address. We confirm what reaches the address, and on larger properties we design for two connections with automatic failover, so a single outage does not take the house offline. Starlink as a second connection →

In the gated communities and master-planned neighborhoods, yes. Spanish Oaks, Steiner Ranch, and the other associations require architectural committee approval before exterior work, and a camera, a fixture, a generator enclosure, or a gate intercom is an exterior change. We draw them for the submission with the materials the guidelines ask for and keep the equipment inside, where the committee has no say.

Yes. We take over existing Crestron, Lutron, and Savant systems, and when a system can no longer be supported, whatever the brand, we plan a replacement that reuses the wiring already in the walls. It starts with a survey: we assess and document the equipment, recover or rebuild the programming, replace what has reached end of life, and bring the result under a Cave Watch support plan so the next problem has a phone number. Crestron upgrade paths →

During design development, before the electrical and millwork drawings are final. Lighting control changes the panel schedule, shade pockets change the framing, the equipment room needs space and cooling, and the conduit between the house, the casita, the pool, and the gate has to be in the ground before the drive is paved. On a West Lake Hills or Barton Creek lot, the generator pad and the outdoor equipment also have to clear the impervious-cover limit and the architectural review before the site plan is final. When to engage on new construction →

It depends on how many rooms are lit, shaded, and wired for sound and video, how many buildings there are, and whether the house is new or occupied. We price from drawings, room by room, so you can see what each decision costs and cut or add with the numbers in front of you. Travel and commissioning from New York are agreed during planning, not added at the end. If you are comparing proposals, make sure each one counts the same loads, shades, and rooms. What whole-home automation costs →

Yes. The same team runs the lighting, control, and audio at Casa Cipriani in Lower Manhattan, we are Lutron HTI certified for guest-room control, and we integrate property-management systems such as Opera Cloud, Mews, and StayNTouch. Austin is building: Lodging Econometrics counted 120 hotel projects and 14,120 rooms in the city's pipeline at the end of 2025, the fifth-largest in the country, and the Michelin Guide's October 2026 Texas ceremony left the city with seven starred restaurants. Guest-room control, a dining room's lighting scenes and sound inside the city's outdoor-music limits, and a club's access and video are the hospitality page's work. Hospitality →

Yes. Cave Watch monitors the network, the control system, audio-video, and lighting around the clock and fixes most faults remotely; central-station alarm monitoring and live guard video monitoring stack on the same plan. The rack sits on battery backup with a second internet path, so an outage does not leave the house dark to us, and when a visit is needed, it is scheduled rather than improvised. Cave Watch support →