Just bought a two storey flat in london approx 1100 sq ft.

Upstairs: Bedroom+Ensuite, study/spare bedroom, bathroom
, landing

Downstairs: hall, Sitting room, Kitchen, understair loo


It needs completely redecorating, new kitchens bathrooms, plumbing etc

only thing staying is the original georgian floorboards i found under the carpets.

I am getting people in to do the bathrroms kitchen etc, but the bit i wanted to try and plan myself is the home entertainment side of things.

I dont really fancy paying silly money to sevenoaks etc to plan stuff for plasters to do.

I want to rip out the fire place and embed a plasma in its place, hide all the wiring, network (cat5) the house, have sky installed with no wires. etc etc

I think you get the idea, but the thing i dont really have a clue where to start. I understand some basic principles like running channels for speaker wires and the replastering over them, but i am finding the whole project a little over whelming.

Can anyone reccomend a good place to start researching, a book maybe or a website?

a help would be greatly appreciated.

One thing I would suggest... don't touch mains yourself if you're not savvy.

The rest is pretty easy, just run multiple lentgths of cat5 to all rooms and individual multicore (digi, analogue 75ohm etc) to AV locations coiled and labeled behind blanking panels until you are ready to terminate them.

[hornydragon]

Few questions then i can help.
1: Do you want Multiroom Audio and or video???
2: DO you want serious money kit or functional???
3: What is going where ie which rooms.
answer these and I'll take it from there. As much ifo as possible,

A few to ponder TV in the shower? Music in the bedroom without seperate Hi-Fi? CD in bedroom while Radio in Kitchen while DVD in lounge?
Lighting control?


BUDGET?

Thanks for the replies guys,

I don’t know how sensible or practical any of this, so feel free to be critical:

1. I was going to try and have multi-room audio but they way i was going to implement it would mean video would come with it, but there aren’t that many zones to contend with, as the kitchen and sitting room will be open plan.

2. Kind of a mix, serious in the sitting room but then more functional in other zones.

3. Sitting room: Panny 50PHD6, Denon 11SR (want to change to a 2nd hand rotel pro/power), HCPC, SKY+, Xbox, ps2. I was going to feed everything to amp in svid, video switch to the HCPC, and output in DVI to the plasma. This set up will cover the kitchen as well. I would network the hcpc to the server to store vid and music

4. Master bedroom (upstairs): My initial suggestion was to have a shuttle pc networked to the server running either a pair of active speakers or to my roksan kandy amp and a pair of speakers. I have an en-suite shower room so I kinda thought I could just leave the door open to listen to music

5. Bathroom (upstairs): hadn’t really considered the possibility of having music or video in here. I would have thought it would be quite expensive and I wouldn’t be able to use pc technology etc.

6. Study I was going to keep a server in here with the internet connection and router. So music and video would be the least amount of hastle in here.


Thanks for any help.

[hornydragon]

If your happy using networked PC's then my help is limited as i specialise in systems that are bespoke front end and require virtually no technical savvy

got you, tbh i was looking for some advice as to where to learn how to do all the cable routing/management/planning. A book or a website as to learn how to do it.

[hornydragon]

erm this is possibly the best bet or a a data cabling book/ Sparkie guide. Use conduit to run cables and cross mains cables at 90deg and dont run mains and video/audio in the same conduit. and run string as well so you you can pull extra cables through if you need to.