North Jersey · Chatham and Madison, New Jersey
Smart Home, Lighting & AV in Chatham and Madison.
A borough, a township, and a neighbor with its own power company: historic districts on both Main Streets, estate lots in Chatham Township, a river that floods, and a generator fee written into the township code. Chatham and Madison want a system that fits the town it is in.
Chatham and Madison, Specifically
Three Towns, Three Sets of Rules.
Chatham Borough's Main Street Historic District requires Historic Preservation Commission review for any permit affecting the exterior appearance of a property in the district, and the Planning Board can deny or condition the permit. Madison has about 110 individually designated historic sites in addition to its downtown district, with applications referred to its own commission, and both the Madison Civic and Commercial district and the Bottle Hill district are on the State and National Registers.
Madison runs its own Electric Department, which has served the borough for more than a century and restores Madison first; Chatham is on JCP&L, which left nearly 2,000 Chatham-area homes without power during one summer heat event. Chatham Township charges a $75 electrical subcode fee per residential generator, the Passaic River gauge near Chatham passed 8 feet during Ida, and Chatham's three-month median sale price reached $1,549,224 in July 2026.
01 · Review
Two Main Streets, Two Commissions
In the districts and on Madison's designated sites, exterior changes go to the commission before the permit. We draw cameras, fixtures, and vents for the application and keep the system inside, where the commission has no say.
02 · Power
Which Utility, Which Outage
Madison's municipal utility and JCP&L fail differently, and both have. A generator sized for the house and a battery-backed rack, permitted with the licensed electrician, cover the gap on either side of the town line.
03 · Water
The River Decides the Basement
The Passaic passed moderate flood stage in 2021. Racks, transfer switches, and the generator are placed with the gauge history in hand.
At a Glance
Chatham and Madison in brief.
- Chatham review
- Chatham Borough's Main Street Historic District requires Historic Preservation Commission review and recommendation for any permit affecting the exterior appearance of a property in the district; the Planning Board can deny or condition the permit.
- Madison review
- Madison has roughly 110 individually designated historic sites in addition to its downtown historic district, and development applications affecting them are referred to the Historic Preservation Commission; the Madison Civic and Commercial and Bottle Hill districts are on the State and National Registers.
- Generators
- Chatham Township charges a $75 electrical subcode fee per generator installed in a one- or two-family house, separate from the standard fixture fees.
- Electric service
- Madison operates its own municipal Electric Department, in service for more than 100 years, which addresses outages within Madison first; Chatham is served by JCP&L, whose equipment failure left nearly 2,000 Chatham-area homes without power during a summer heat event, with more than 4,000 customers affected the day before.
- Outages
- Madison saw two borough-wide outages within 24 hours after a lightning strike and a fallen tree, the second lasting nearly eight hours.
- Internet
- Verizon Fios and Optimum both report wide to full coverage in Chatham and Madison, alongside 5G home internet and satellite.
- Water
- The Passaic River gauge near Chatham has a flood stage of 6 feet, moderate at 8 and major at 10; the remnants of Hurricane Ida pushed the forecast past 8 feet in September 2021.
- Market
- Chatham Township's median sold price reached $1,457,250 in mid-2025, up 15.9 percent; Chatham's three-month median was $1,549,224 in July 2026 at $694 per square foot, and Madison's median was $1,310,000 in March 2026 (Redfin).
Sources: Chatham Borough, Historic Preservation Commission; Borough of Madison, historic preservation summary; Chatham Township, ordinance 2026-01 fee schedule; Borough of Madison, Electric Department; Borough of Madison, outage notice; Patch, Chatham outages amid summer heat; Allconnect, internet in Chatham; Patch, Ida in Chatham; Saritte Harel, Chatham Township report, August 2025; Redfin, Chatham housing market; Redfin, Madison housing market.
Reading for Chatham and Madison
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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 Chatham and Madison
Chatham and Madison, Answered
Who installs Lutron and Crestron systems in Chatham and Madison?+–
Cave Group does. We are a Crestron Elite Gold Partner and Lutron Gold Dealer with an office in Fairview, Bergen County, and we design, install, and service lighting control, shades, cinema, audio, networking, security, and backup power for houses in Chatham Borough, Chatham Township, and Madison.
Is Madison really on a different utility?+–
Yes. Madison runs its own Electric Department, which has served the borough for more than a century and restores Madison first, while Chatham is on JCP&L. Both have failed: Madison had two borough-wide outages in 24 hours after a lightning strike, and a JCP&L equipment failure left nearly 2,000 Chatham-area homes dark in a heat wave. The generator and the battery-backed rack are sized the same way on both sides of the line; the transfer switch and the permit follow the utility.
Where can a generator go, and how loud can it be?+–
New Jersey's Noise Control Act caps sound at a neighbor's property line at 65 decibels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and 50 overnight, and the exemption for an emergency generator applies only while it is actually supplying power in an outage, so the weekly exercise cycle is not exempt. We size the generator for the house and the rack, place it where the town's zoning permit allows, specify the enclosure, set the exercise cycle for a weekday afternoon, and have the licensed electrician pull the permit.
Does the commission review cameras and outdoor lighting?+–
In Chatham Borough's Main Street district and on Madison's designated historic sites, exterior changes go to the Historic Preservation Commission before the permit, and a camera, a fixture, or a vent on the elevation is an exterior change. We draw them for the application and keep the equipment inside, where the commission has no say.
Which internet providers serve Chatham and Madison?+–
Verizon Fios reaches most of these towns, Optimum is building fiber at up to 8 gigabits in several of them, and Xfinity serves parts of Morris County. 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.
Nearby
Other North Jersey towns 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 which permit comes first in your town.
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