LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

Doug Fikse demonstrates how to use one of the Vantage touch-screens, located throughout the house, that can control lights, fans, room temperature, music and television.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

Located on the downstairs "street" is a wine shop with a four-top table and access to a temperature-controlled wine room.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

The lower level includes a movie theater that seats 15 people in leather recliners.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

The rear of the house includes an outdoor kitchen, complete with a built-in grill.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

Doug and Polly Fikse spent two years on the design of their house in The Water's Edge.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

Doug and Polly Fikse's 11,000-square-foot home in The Water's Edge was a multi-year process, including two years of design and two years of construction.

LAURIE EDWARDS | Laker Weekly

Doug and Polly Fikse spent two years on the design of their house in The Water's Edge.

Doug and Polly Fikse's relatives really know how to push their buttons. The couple's 11,000-square-foot home in The Water's Edge is outfitted with a variety of smart technology equipment that puts all of the home's electronic features at their fingertips.

"What we found is if we have a big family reunion, people start punching buttons," said Doug.

Like when Polly's brother kept pressing the all-lights-on, all-lights-off buttons. At the time, Polly's parents were sleeping and awoke when the lights started blinking.

But her brother isn't the only person guilty of button-pushing. Like someone riding in a limousine for the first time, the desire to push buttons to see what they do is strong with visitors to the Fikse house.

Every room features a six-button light switch made by Vantage, a luxury home-controls manufacturer, that are programmed to adjust the lighting to various settings, such as full-bright, all-off or mood lighting.

All the switches, along with all the house's other electronics, such as the thermostat, radio and security system, are controlled through a core Vantage system in which homeowners can set their own modes for operation.

To deter future button-punching incidents, Doug set up a guest mode, which disables some buttons. Others still are accessible, but only if the user knows how many times to press the button in a particular time period.

Another mode, away is designed for when the Fikses are at their Pennsylvania home. At a touch, the home's thermostats are lowered, the security system is armed and certain lights will come on periodically to make the house appear occupied.

The lighting system is just one of the many smart-technology features throughout the house. Eight LCD Vantage touch-screens give the user full control of every light in the house, the temperature, music, television, security system and the outdoor hot tub settings.

From the master bedroom, the Fikses can check and set the temperature of the outdoor hot tub and turn on its jets so it's ready when the couple wants to use it. In fact, they can do it from any of the touch-screens.

The touch-screens also show the interior and exterior temperatures, as well as the lake temperature and a five-day weather forecast.

Users can pull up various menus to play Internet radio stations or stored CDs in one room or throughout the house. Doug has already set up his own playlists so he can quickly access his favorite tunes, including a station he found that plays a lot of Frank Sinatra songs.

Some of the screens are portable, so the Fikses can take them from the wall mounts and use them while reclining.

"These touch-screens are literally wireless PCs," said Doug.

The Fikses can use them to surf the Internet. The touch-screen in the wine room is bookmarked for sites such as wine.com.

"You can do research on the wine you're drinking or buy wine," said Doug. "Everything is at your fingertips."

The settings are a work in progress, he said.

"The system takes a lot of time and fine-tuning," he said.

Some of the software and technology are not yet available, but will be in the coming weeks. The Fikses got their hands on them early because Doug is president of the Legrand home system division. Legrand is the parent company that oversees several technology companies such as Vantage and On-Q, which make much of the equipment in the Fikse home.

In addition to the light switches, touch-screens and core system, the Fikse house features Vantage's energy-management system, which is in development.

"I'm monitoring our energy use," said Doug.

He can compare his monthly usage to previous months and to that of similar-sized homes in the area.

"The first thing you have to do is start measuring stuff," said Doug. "Then I can start setting up energy-saving modes."

The house also features sensors, which calculate the natural light coming in through the windows and adjust the ambient sources for optimal lighting. There also are sensors on the closet door frames that turn the lights on and off when the door is opened and closed.

Although the energy-management system and light sensor could be called green technology, Doug said he didn't set out to have a green house.

"I didn't build it to be a green house, I didn't really build it to be a smart house," he said. "It was to use technology to ultimately simplify living in a large house with complex systems."

Doug declined to comment on how much the house or the technology cost, but said the technology is not out of reach.

"They're very affordable and very available to people at the lake," said Doug.

But there's more to the Fikse house than cutting-edge technology systems. The couple spent two years designing the house with Danny Goins, architect and president of The Highlands Group Architects in Roanoke.

For interior design, the couple worked with Kris Willard, interior designer and owner of Interiors by Kris and Inside Out by Kris at Westlake. Along with Goins and Willard, various contractors including Sound Decision, Shively Electric and Williams Electric, helped get each detail just right during the two years of construction.

Some of those advisors were on site for a year or more.

"You have all these advisors," said Doug. "Sometimes they didn't all jive."

And they didn't always jive with the Fikses. When Goins suggested the exterior window frames be dark, rather than the white traditionally seen around the lake, Polly disagreed.

"That was a struggle for me," she said. "But you have to say, we hired this architect and he knows a whole lot more about it than we do. You have to trust him."

Polly caved and the house now features dark exterior window frames, which are white on the inside. Polly said she had to admit Goins was right.

The Fikses spent a lot of time fine-tuning all the features because they plan to make it their permanent home in about five years when Doug retires and they sell their Harrisburg, Pa., home.

Doug teases that Polly spent a full year picking out the lighting fixtures for the two-story, plus lower level, five-bedroom house.

"It took me like half an hour to pick out all our lighting fixtures for our home in Harrisburg," said Polly. "Here, there were more lights to coordinate."

Doug created cardboard mock-ups of light fixtures Polly researched to see what they would look like in the desired rooms and to ensure they would be the right size.

"He built a mock-up chandelier out of cardboard," said Polly of the large dining room fixture. "It was a riot."

Part of what drove the house's design was the anticipation of grandchildren, said the Fikses. To date, they have none, but they hope their four children -- ages 17 to 24 -- eventually will change that.

"We both come from reasonably large families," said Doug.

The lower level's layout and design were heavily influenced by dreams of future grandchildren. It was set up to resemble a European street, with the rooms representing storefronts.

The shops include a wine room, fitness room with sauna and adjacent "locker room," a toy store, hardware store and a theater. The toy store and hardware store, which will be Doug's workshop, are works-in-progress.

The 15-seat movie theater is located at one end of the hallway. The speakers and screen will soon be installed; the slowed economy caused some of the companies the Fikses were working with to cut back on production. It's the one room the Fikses said they can't wait to complete.

"It's designed to have curtains in front of the screen," said Doug. "We can make it a big fanfare. The lights will start dimming and the curtains will open."

The fanfare likely will be a big hit with the grandchildren the couple hope to have. But if none of their children has any, Polly has an idea how to hear the pitter-patter of little feet on the downstairs "street."

"We'll just borrow other people's little kids," she said.