Austin · Tarrytown, Texas
Smart Home, Lighting & AV in Tarrytown.
Central Austin's oldest luxury neighborhoods, with houses from the 1920s to the 1950s, city landmarks on the best blocks, and teardowns on the rest. Tarrytown wants technology that respects an old house and survives the Texas grid.
Tarrytown, Specifically
Old Houses, Landmarks, and a Grid That Fails.
Tarrytown, Pemberton Heights, and Old Enfield together form the Old West Austin Historic District, a 6,500-acre National Register district developed between 1886 and 1953. Pemberton Heights alone has about 613 residences, more than 40 of them with City of Austin Historic Landmark status, and a landmark triggers design review of exterior changes under the city's 2021 Historic Design Standards.
The neighborhood sits on a limestone shelf above Shoal Creek, which shapes trenching and drainage for anything outdoors, and about 10 percent of the city lies in a mapped floodplain. Winter Storm Uri left more than 215,000 Austin Energy customers without power in 2021, and the city's noise ordinance caps construction at about 85 decibels and residential sound at 75, which decides where a generator goes.
01 · Landmarks
Review for the Outside
A city landmark means design review for exterior changes, judged against the Historic Design Standards. Cameras, fixtures, and vents get drawn for the review; the system itself stays inside, where wireless Lutron keeps old plaster closed.
02 · Power
Built for the Grid
Uri took power from more than 215,000 Austin Energy customers. A generator sized for the house and a battery-backed rack keep the network, the control system, and the cameras up; Texas now lets third-party professionals inspect backup-power installations under SB 1202.
03 · Site
Limestone and the Creek
The limestone shelf above Shoal Creek makes outdoor conduit a planned excavation, and the floodplain maps decide where racks and transfer switches sit. We put both on the drawings before anything is dug.
At a Glance
Tarrytown in brief.
- Historic district
- Tarrytown, Pemberton Heights, and Old Enfield form the Old West Austin Historic District, a 6,500-acre National Register district developed between 1886 and 1953.
- Landmarks
- Pemberton Heights has about 613 residences, more than 40 of them with City of Austin Historic Landmark status or markers; the city applies its March 2021 Historic Design Standards, based on the Secretary of the Interior's Standards, to exterior work on contributing properties.
- Licensing
- Texas exempts low-voltage signaling, communication, and data circuits from the state electrician license, but the 120-volt feed that powers them is licensed electrical work, and monitored alarm and camera installation falls under Department of Public Safety private-security licensing.
- Backup power
- Senate Bill 1202, effective September 1, 2025, lets third-party professionals review and inspect home backup-power installations such as generators and battery storage up to 600 volts for one- and two-family homes.
- Noise
- Austin's noise ordinance generally limits residential sound to 75 decibels, bars audible sound between 10:30 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., and caps permitted construction noise around 85 decibels at 50 feet.
- Market
- Tarrytown recorded 77 sales in a trailing year with a median sold price of $1,784,500, ranging from $750,000 to $7,650,000, at a median of $677 per square foot.
- Electric service
- Winter Storm Uri left more than 215,000 Austin Energy customers without power in February 2021; about 10 percent of the city's land lies in a mapped floodplain, and the maps are being updated under the NOAA Atlas 14 rainfall study.
Sources: Old West Austin Historic District (Wikipedia); Pemberton Heights Neighborhood Association; City of Austin, Historic Design Standards in practice; Anna Morrison Lee, Pemberton Heights' three markets; Tsai Electric, low-voltage work and Texas licensing; Texas Electrical Authority, low-voltage systems in Texas; City of Austin, stand-alone permits and SB 1202; Local Noise Laws, Austin noise ordinance; Austin Real Estate Homes Blog, Tarrytown; CultureMap Austin, Austin Energy outages, February 2021; City of Austin, floodplain management.
Reading for Tarrytown
Guides and work nearby.
- Automation where the plaster stays closed →
Wireless Lutron, Ketra in existing fixtures, and shades that fit the window.
- Retrofit or rebuild: which smart home path fits →
- HomeWorks QSX or RadioRA 3 →
- Generator and UPS planning for the rack →
- The complete security stack for a house →
- What a home theater costs →
What We Install and Service
Every System. One Keypad.
Lighting & Shades
Lutron HomeWorks, Ketra and Rania light, Palladiom keypads, and shades that disappear into the ceiling.
Lighting →Whole-Home Control
Crestron and Lutron on one set of keypads and touchscreens, programmed the same way in every house you own.
Residential →Cinema & Music
Dedicated theaters, media rooms, and music in every room without a speaker in sight.
Residential →Network
Enterprise Wi-Fi and fiber sized for a large house, guest houses, and the far end of the lawn.
Networking →Security & Gate
Cameras, access control, gate intercom, and an alarm that a UL-listed central station answers.
Security →Outdoors
Landscape lighting and outdoor sound on one buried infrastructure, on the same keypad as the house.
Outdoor →Upgrades
Older Crestron and Lutron systems brought current, reusing the wiring already in the walls wherever possible.
Upgrade paths →Support
Monitoring, remote fixes, and priority response under one plan.
Cave Watch →Questions From Tarrytown
Tarrytown, Answered
Who installs Lutron and Crestron systems in Tarrytown?+–
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, shades, cinema, audio, networking, security, and backup power for houses in Tarrytown, Pemberton Heights, and Old Enfield on a project basis, on site with Texas-licensed trades.
Our house is a city landmark. Does that change the work?+–
Outside, yes: exterior changes go through design review against the Historic Design Standards, so cameras, fixtures, and vents are drawn for the review. Inside, the standards have no say, so a wireless Lutron system keeps the plaster closed, Ketra lamps fit the existing fixtures, and the equipment lives in a closet.
How does a New York firm work on an Austin house?+–
On a project basis. Our offices are in New York and New Jersey; the design and the drawings happen with your architect and builder from there and in person at the key milestones, the installation and commissioning happen on site, and Cave Watch supports the system around the clock afterward. The licensed trades Texas requires, a licensed electrical contractor for line-voltage work and a Department of Public Safety licensed security contractor for monitored alarm work, are local.
What about the grid?+–
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.
Who is licensed to do what in Texas?+–
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.
Do you take over systems another company installed?+–
Yes. We assess and document what is there, recover or rebuild the programming, replace what has reached end of life, and bring the system under a Cave Watch support plan, so the next problem has a phone number.
Nearby
Other Austin areas we serve.
Start Here
Walk the House With Us.
Bring the drawings if the house is on paper, or the list of what no longer works if it is already built. We will tell you what we would do, in what order, what it would take, and how we run an Austin project from New York.
Start a Projector call · +1 (888) 712-2283 · [email protected]