Structured Wiring Questions

If anyone can help, I would gladly appreciate it.

I am building a new house. 3500 sq. foot, 3 levels. Basement unfinished. They are doing drywall in about 1 week so I have to do this next week. I understand data pretty well as far as networking computers and TV. However, I know nothing about security and very little on audio. I plan on pulling 2 Cat5 (or 6), 2 RG6 Coax to most locations. I will run Fiber to Home office and main TV locations. Of course also run the appropriate wires outside....at least 4 RG6, 4 Ethernet, 1 Fiber (2 if I can afford it). I also will run 4, 2 inch smurf tubes to attic space in 4 different locations and ¾ inch smurf tube to a few jacks as in the main tv locations, along with a run from the lower faceplate to a few feet higher incase I ever can splurge on a projection TV.

1) Security. Please see pg 1 at
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. I understand from one of your post to run 22/4 to each window and door I want covered and homerun (HR) them in the furnace room. Do I run Cat 5 and 22/4 to each control panel as well? What device goes in the basement and how does that work regarding the wires that get terminated to it? Also, for Motion Detectors etc, is all I need 22/4?

2) Sound. Please see pg 2 at

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.. I have purchased Monster cable for 2 locations in my house and plan on running 7.1 to these locations. However, I want to run some cheaper wire to other rooms that most likely wont get used much as far as audio but I still want it there as the wire is cheap, so most likely I will run 14/2 ( Is that good enough wire for this?) I saw in another post that you said to run 14/2 to speakers and 14/4 and Cat 5 to each Volume Control in the other rooms. Is this correct and if so does that Cat5 run from the receiver to the Volume Control or Receiver to First speaker in the room? I also plan on doing some to be terminated outside.

Are there any other structured wiring that you would think would be nice to run. Any other pointers that would pay off in the future. I would purchase a book online, but I am limited on time and I think I should be able to figure out most other than these 2 areas. I would love to be able to control lighting, fridge, etc from a computer system, but part of me thinks this is to expensive and maybe that will all be wireless. I assume however that all these run off Cat5 and most likely IP? I will run 2 IP cameras to the front door and back door, most likely D-Link (cheap, hopefully works good?)

I seriously love this home automation stuff and hope to get into it slowly piece by piece. Anyways, I really appreciate it if anyone has any pointers.

Thanks,

snipped-for-privacy@packetblast.com

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packetblast
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2) Sound. Please see pg 2 at
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.. I have purchased Monster cable for 2 locations in my house and plan on running 7.1 to these locations. However, I want to run some cheaper wire to other rooms that most likely wont get used much as far as audio but I still want it there as the wire is cheap, so most likely I will run 14/2 ( Is that good enough wire for this?) I saw in another post that you said to run 14/2 to speakers and 14/4 and Cat 5 to each Volume Control in the other rooms. Is this correct and if so does that Cat5 run from the receiver to the Volume Control or Receiver to First speaker in the room? I also plan on doing some to be terminated outside.

14 awg is plenty fine, just make sure it is CL2/3 rated for inwall use. Shorter runs you'd be fine with even 16/2.

As for method of running, pick your head end for your audio rack (multizone amplifier, discrete amps, whatever). Many will make the mistake of pulling their speaker wire back to their home automation panel, and then realize that the sound comes from somewhere else.

Pick your keypad/volume control locations in each room.

Pick the location of your speakers.

You can go one of two ways for the speaker wires:

A) From your speakers, run 14/2 to your keypad location. From your keypads, run 14/4 to your audio rack headend.

OR

B) From your speakers, run 14/2 through the keypad location and all the way back to your audio rack headend.

The advantage of A, is that if you use impedance matching volume controls instead of keypads, you can attach your 14/4 to the input side, and the 14/2 to the speakers on the output side. The volume control makes a nice termination point and of course it saves you the headache of only pulling one cable (14/4) from the rack to the volume control. The disadvantage of A is that if you end up using keypads that are Cat5 controlled, then you have to make up a junction in the box, tieing the 14/4 to the two 14/2's.

The advantage of B, is no junction in the keypad, and if you still decide to use the volume control, the hookup is just as easy as if you pulled a single

14/4. The disadvantage of course is that you have to pull two cables, not one from the keypad to the head end.

Finally, run a Cat5 (two if you want to maybe hookup a microphone later, or something else...Nice to have another cat5 handy in the room) from the keypad to the Audio rack. The cat5 will connect any keypad to a multizone controller like Kustom, Russound, Elan, Xantech, Channel Plus, et al.

BTW, Monster is mostly hype...You'll be running 'cheaper' wire by cost, but not likely by quality. And for ambient grade music in a whole house audio system, you'll never know any difference.

Reply to
RM

A few comments:

1) Security - 22/2 is fine for door/window sensors. You only need to run separate wires if you want each window to be a separate zone. What I mean is, in your living room, for instance, you don't need each window on a separate zone, you can tie all of the windows together as one zone. If you prefer, you can still homerun individual wires back to your structured wiring cabinet but then you would just have to tie them together there before connecting to the alarm panel. Otherwise, you'll have a ton of zones and a lot of programming and expense.

2) Sound. - Nothing wrong with Monster Cable but I think you're paying a lot for the name.... For most speaker applications, 16/2 is fine but 14/2 won't hurt.

You also talk about 2 different technologies for the audio, The system you mention with the cat5 is A-Bus, It's a good system too. You need to just think about what you are trying to accomplish with the audio. Yes, the A-Bus just has cat5 going to the volume controls and speaker wire out from there.

For cameras, I wouldn't personally use RG6. I like running them over cat5. It's cheap, easy, and you can run both the power and the video over the same cat5. For longer runs you will need baluns but these aren't too expensive.

For microphones, I would really use shielded 16/2, not cat5.

Yes, add extra cat5 everywhere. Lots of uses - IR, controls, automation speakers, motion sensors, cameras, and the list goes on. Can't have too much cat5!

Good luck!

Martin Custer

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