The Hamptons, New York
Lighting, shades, outdoor sound, cinema, network, and monitoring for houses from Westhampton to Montauk — designed, installed, and serviced by one team that keeps them running from October to May.
How We Work Here
A Hamptons house is used for a season, left for the winter, and exposed to the weather in between. We design for the months nobody is home as carefully as for the week everybody is, and we are still there after the last trade leaves.
01 · Season
Only about a third of Hamptons properties are primary residences. Cave Watch monitors the network, control system, audio-video, and lighting around the clock, so a fault in winter is fixed remotely rather than discovered in June.
02 · Shore
Oceanfront parcels sit in FEMA VE zones with wave action. Racks, transfer switches, and outdoor electronics stay above the base flood elevation, and everything outside is marine-grade.
03 · Distance
Main house, guest house, pool pavilion, and gate on one Lutron and Crestron system, carried between buildings on fiber laid before the drive is paved.
04 · After Move-In
Cave Watch fixes most faults remotely and schedules the visit when one is needed, so the house is ready the day before you are.
Where We Work
Two towns, three villages with review boards, a barrier island, and the end of the island. Zoning, flood lines, and who reviews the facade change from one hamlet to the next. Seven areas have their own page.
Town of Southampton
Westhampton to Sagaponack: the villages of Southampton, Quogue, and Westhampton Beach and the hamlets of Water Mill and Bridgehampton. Large-lot zoning, an architectural review board in the villages, and the Town's electrical permits for anything with a generator in it.
The Estate Section, Gin Lane, and Meadow Lane
Oceanfront lots zoned for 120,000 square feet, an Architectural Review Board that the courts back, and a village that empties in October. Our 2024 Southampton waterfront project is the pattern.
Mecox Bay, farm fields, and five-acre zoning
The hamlet with the most protected farmland in the Town, where the Country Residence zones run to five acres and a bayfront lot's rear setbacks are doubled. Estates here are several buildings on a lot of land.
The most expensive ZIP code in the country
Sagaponack's median passed $8 million in 2023 and the house that prompted the Town's size cap stands here. Farmland estates, oceanfront in a remapped flood plain, and a village with its own rules.
Dune Road, the barrier island, and two villages
Houses on pilings in FEMA VE zones along Dune Road, a village that asks for two feet of freeboard, and permit applications that start with the coastal erosion line. The western gateway to the Hamptons.
Town of East Hampton
East Hampton Village and the hamlets out to Montauk: four historic districts in the Village, the Town's 2025 house-size code, and the most exposed coastline on Long Island.
Four historic districts and a new house-size code
Georgica, Further Lane, and Lily Pond Lane in a village that reviews every exterior change in its historic districts, and a town that cut allowable house size in 2025. The priciest village in the Hamptons.
The end of the island, in the weather
Oceanfront VE zones, chronic erosion at Ditch Plains, a town weighing flood-zone relief, and one wired provider. Montauk is where the system has to be designed for the storm, not the season.
Sag Harbor
The whaling village between the two towns, with a historic district that covers most of it and a board that reviews what the street sees.
A whaling village with a review board
Most of the village is a historic district reviewed by the Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board, the houses are the oldest on the East End, and the harbor brings the yachts. Keypads, not clutter.
What These Houses Ask For
Lutron HomeWorks, Ketra and Rania light, Palladiom keypads, and shades that disappear into the ceiling.
Lighting →Crestron and Lutron on one set of keypads and touchscreens, programmed the same way in every house you own.
Residential →Dedicated theaters, media rooms, and music in every room without a speaker in sight.
Residential →Enterprise Wi-Fi and fiber sized for a large house, guest houses, and the far end of the lawn.
Networking →Cameras, access control, gate intercom, and an alarm that a UL-listed central station answers.
Security →Landscape lighting and outdoor sound on one buried infrastructure, on the same keypad as the house.
Outdoor →Older Crestron and Lutron systems brought current, reusing the wiring already in the walls wherever possible.
Upgrade paths →Monitoring, remote fixes, and priority response under one plan.
Cave Watch →Beyond the Home
The East End's inns, dining rooms, and clubs close for the winter the same way its houses do, the Village of East Hampton's outdoor lighting ordinance is among the strongest in the country, and the yachts in Sag Harbor and Montauk want the same network as the house. Each line of work has its own page.
Residential
Lutron and Crestron for oceanfront, bayfront, and farmland houses, new builds and takeovers, with monitoring for the off-season.
Residential →Hospitality
Guest-room control with Lutron myRoom, property-management integration, and the audio, video, and access a club runs on, for an East End where Gurney's renovated all 158 rooms over the winter of 2024, Topping Rose has filed to expand its 22-key house, and The Maidstone reopened with 16 rooms and three cottages. Lutron HTI certified.
Hospitality →Restaurants
Lighting scenes that follow the evening and sound that reaches every table at the right level, inside East Hampton Town's 70-decibel daytime limit and its ban on outdoor amplified music from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m., on controls the staff can use.
Restaurants →Marine
Crestron control, Starlink connectivity, and marine audio on the boat, and a network that joins the house when it ties up.
Marine →Our Work on the East End
For Architects, Builders, and Designers
How we coordinate with architects, builders, and designers.
What has to be decided before ceilings close.
What to lock before drywall.
A sheet-by-sheet checklist for lighting control, AV, and network.
What a finished Hamptons estate hands over, and to whom.
Keypad, shade, and fixture decisions in the right order.
The technology trade on the same dated gates as the electrician.
Further Reading
Questions We Hear
Cave Group does. We are a Crestron Elite Gold Partner and Lutron Gold Dealer with an office in Long Island City, and in 2024 we completed a Southampton waterfront residence with Lutron HomeWorks QSX, Crestron 4-Series control, UniFi Wi-Fi 7 that reaches the marina, and distributed audio indoors and out with Coastal Source. We work the full South Fork, Westhampton to Montauk, and Sag Harbor and North Haven in between.
Our New York office is in Long Island City, and we work the East End year-round. Cave Watch handles most faults remotely, around the clock, which matters more in February than any office address; when a visit is needed, it is scheduled like any other job on the island.
With monitoring and redundancy. Cave Watch watches 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 network carries a second connection, often Starlink, and the rack sits on battery backup, so a winter outage does not leave the house dark to us. Monitoring a Hamptons house off-season →
Across much of the East End, Optimum is the only wired provider and there is no Verizon Fios. We confirm what reaches the address, and we design the network with Starlink or a second carrier as automatic failover, so the cameras, the remote access, and the house itself survive a cut. Multi-WAN internet for houses that stand empty →
Everything outdoors becomes marine-grade: speakers, cameras, fixtures, and the enclosures they live in. Oceanfront parcels sit in FEMA VE zones with wave action, and the villages add their own rules, so the equipment rack, the transfer switch, and outdoor electronics stay above the base flood elevation and the conduit and the generator are planned with the elevation in mind. Oceanfront engineering in Sagaponack and Wainscott →
In the villages' historic districts and estate sections, yes. Southampton's Architectural Review Board, East Hampton's Design Review Board, and Sag Harbor's Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board rule on exterior changes. We draw the exterior devices for the application, keep the equipment inside the envelope where the boards have no say, and specify fixtures the board recognizes as part of the architecture.
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 above the flood line, and the conduit between the house, the pool house, and the gate has to be in the ground before the drive is paved. The Town's electrical permit, with its generator line, goes in with the licensed electrician from the start. 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. 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. A dining room's lighting scenes and sound, an inn's guest rooms, and a club's access and video are the hospitality page's work. Hospitality →
Yes. Lighting, shades, music, and the thermostats on the control system respond from the app, so the house can be warmed, lit, and unlocked for a caretaker the day before you arrive, and a scene can close it down the day after you leave. Cave Watch confirms the system is online before you count on it.
Start Here
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 what still has to run when nobody is home.
Start a Projector call · +1 (888) 712-2283 · [email protected]