About to build house, advice needed.
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Posted by John on August 21, 2007, 2:48 pm
Please log in for more thread options I've been researching a lot and reading this group's archives. I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's" I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can think of. My thoughts currently are HAI Hi-Fi for the whole house audio, 2 cat6/2 rg-6 to each room. I'm kind of lost at all the options. Power catches on the doors? Outdoor video surveillance? HAL 2000 voice control? I don't have to use all the options right now, just need to know how best to wire it to help me install this stuff in the future. All help appreciated. Thanks. John | |||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by RickH on August 22, 2007, 10:55 am
Please log in for more thread options I wouldn't get bogged down on all the minute details of you can do at this point, especially voice control. But concenrate on wire paths throughout the home instead. So before the insulators and drywallers get there you need to get some buddies and wire/conduit it up. Or better yet home run 1.25 or 1.5 inch plastic conduit from termination room to a point near the floor in each room, from those points run 1 inch plastic conduit to wall switchs, speaker jacks, phone jack locations. Then let them drywall it up. Then when you move in just pull the wire yourself, thats what I did. And I have not even bothered to wire all the rooms yet based on lifestyle, but if I need to all I have to do is pull/push the wire down to the basement termination room. Last week I wanted another network jack in my wifes office for a fax, and it took all of 15 minutes to drop another cat5 to the basement and install the jack, I dred how long it would have taken to get the wire from the second story over the garage all the way down to the basement without conduit. With good open wire paths you can do anything you want later. Choose a central termination room first and hopefully you will be able to figure out everything while the carpenters are framing and you can actually see the passages/ blockages for wiring. If you want you can put in the dual runs of rg6qs and 3 runs of cat5 (voice, data, wallswitch) without conduit, but install conduit along those paths anyway for other wires in the future. Also consider pre-wiring the motion sensors so you wont have to use wireless ones, speakers, cameras (use wire with coax and power piggybacked for cameras). Getting caught up in anything other than having good accessable wiring paths at this point like software, brands, etc is jumping the gun. By accessable I mean having access panels, conduit, or whatever is needed to make new wire easier to install later as well as the pre-wire/conduit being installed before the drywall goes up. | |||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by BruceR on August 22, 2007, 5:04 pm
Please log in for more thread options You can never have too much wire! In my home I ran a minimum of 2 cat
5e + (usually) 1 RG-6 cables to every wall in every room, to every closet, and to upper wall (near ceiling) wherever a plasma screen TV might be mounted - including all bedrooms and the kitchen. I ran 16ga speaker wire to everyplace I might want a speaker as well as to potential volume control locations. I also ran alarm wire to doors and cat5e to control locations. Except for the TV, speaker and alarm wiring I use cat5e for everything else including security cameras. Baluns are a cheap and effective way to carry CCTV signals to locations where I don't have RG-6. Don't forget to run a cat5e and an RG-6 to the bathrooms for TV's and throne phones. Although more and more can be done with wireless I still like to have the hardwire installed. John wrote: > Hi, all.
> > I've been researching a lot and reading this group's archives. > I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's" > I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm > system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can > think of. > > My thoughts currently are HAI Hi-Fi for the whole house audio, 2 > cat6/2 rg-6 to each room. > I'm kind of lost at all the options. Power catches on the doors? > Outdoor video surveillance? HAL 2000 voice control? > I don't have to use all the options right now, just need to know how > best to wire it to help me install this stuff in the future. > > All help appreciated. Thanks. > > John | |||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Robert Green on August 24, 2007, 5:01 am
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> I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's"
> I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm > system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can > think of. I'd make sure you ran CAT-6 to every spot that you possibly, remotely thought you'd ever have a need to relay some sort of information. Whether it's an instruction, a voice, a picture, a video signal, a low voltage electrical signal, an Ethernet signal and just about anything else that travels through wires, you can likely run it through CAT6 with some sort of adapter. It's probably going to a universal standard for quite some time. Run RG6QS for TV to the places that you never want to have to dig out and repair ever and as a backbone because in my (not universally agreed upon) opinion, the extra shielding provides some degree of protection from cable nicks and other mishaps. Run RG-59 and CAT6 to places where you might want to mount a video camera (attic, garage, bird feeder, etc). There are adapters that can run video, audio and 12VDC to power the cameras through a single coax cable. If you use those you won't have to run separate power cables and audio cables if you want sound as well. Run conduit between floors and anywhere you think that adding cable is going to be very difficult in the future. An important consideration is the dollar per foot it costs to install cable in an open-walled, unfinished house as opposed to one that's finished and occupied. I'm sure that someone's worked those numbers. Off the cuff, I'd guess that it's a ten-to-one difference, especially if you're willing to convert SAF to $. The costs get even higher if some carpenter leaves a broken hammer head inside the wall cavity you're trying to drill through. (-: -- Bobby G. > Hi, all.
> > I've been researching a lot and reading this group's archives. > I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's" > I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm > system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can > think of. > > My thoughts currently are HAI Hi-Fi for the whole house audio, 2 > cat6/2 rg-6 to each room. > I'm kind of lost at all the options. Power catches on the doors? > Outdoor video surveillance? HAL 2000 voice control? > I don't have to use all the options right now, just need to know how > best to wire it to help me install this stuff in the future. > > All help appreciated. Thanks. > > John > | |||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by CWatters on August 28, 2007, 2:06 pm
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> Hi, all.
> > I've been researching a lot and reading this group's archives. > I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's" > I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm > system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can > think of. If you are instaling Underfloor Heating or similar zone based heating... Don't forget the room thermostats. Some now have network capability if you run the right number of wires to them. Some use CAT5 for example. At the very least this allows you to set all the time clocks from one location! | |||||||||||||||||||
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>
> I've been researching a lot and reading this group's archives.
> I'm about to build a house and want to wire it up to "the nine's"
> I'm looking at whole house audio, distributed ir and video, alarm
> system, outdoor audio, x10 or insteon, and anything else you guys can
> think of.
>
> My thoughts currently are HAI Hi-Fi for the whole house audio, 2
> cat6/2 rg-6 to each room.
> I'm kind of lost at all the options. Power catches on the doors?
> Outdoor video surveillance? HAL 2000 voice control?
> I don't have to use all the options right now, just need to know how
> best to wire it to help me install this stuff in the future.
>
> All help appreciated. Thanks.
>
> John