St. Joseph Catholic Church in Cottleville, MO was recently presented with a difficult dilemma. A large Lightolier dimming system was installed when the church was built in 1999. In recent years, the system had become unreliable due to failures in the controller portion of the system. Unfortunately, the system is out of production and the manufacturer no longer supports it (repairs or parts). Bob Emery, Maintenance Director for this large facility was able to patch the system together for a while, but in February of 2020 a large portion of the system stopped working altogether, leaving the 1500 seat church in the dark. Bob was fully aware that he was going to have to replace the aging system at some point, especially since it was designed for incandescent lighting, not LED. He also knew this was an important and costly endeavor. The church needed time to redesign the system properly and to budget the needed funds. Everyone he spoke with told him he would need to replace the whole system right now or waste resources on a stop gap solution that would be discarded later. He needed an alternative. They found a company that has been serving the technology needs of churches for the past 32 years.

Elite Technology Solutions (www.elite1988.com), a local systems integrator and technology specialist was brought in. Elite performed a careful inspection of the system and a needs analysis with Mr. Emery. Elite determined that with a bit of creativity, the existing dimmers could be maintained with a custom control solution from Elite. This solution would use readily available parts from an established, reputable manufacturer (Crestron) that would get the system back up and running right now using the existing dimmer panels. To save on cost and time (learning how to use a new system), Bob needed the new lighting controls to remain as part of the system when the rest of the lighting system is replaced.

“This new control system not only got us back up and running in a short period of time. It is much easier to use than the old controls plus it added many features we always wanted such as remote access and user programmable scenes/scheduling. I cannot say enough about Elite. Their technicians were personable and professional. They did a great job. They even cleaned up after themselves.” (Bob Emery, Facilities Maintenance Director).

Elite specializes in technology solutions including sound & acoustics, video, lighting, Wi-Fi and data networking, live streaming/recording and much more.