Advice needed - Cabling New House

[claned]

Hi Guys,

We are in the process of buying a new house in a development in Dublin, Ireland. The house is currently being built and we are looking at this being the ideal time to install all the cables in the walls....

Thing is, the more I read the more I get confused. I've read a good few threads on here aswell, and found them very useful, and is why I took the plunge and signed up in the hope for some help.

We have a utility room just beside the kitchen, where I plan to have the central point. Initially we are just looking to have the ability to control audio in different rooms in the house (zones) and are looking at about 4 of these. Tv will be connected to the main living room (looking to have 5.1 surround sound) and master bedroom. I plan to utilise wireless technology, so would not be too interested in network points for laptop / computer. However, I'd like to get all the cables in, and worry more about the setup in future.

So question is, what and where should i be putting these cables. From reading, I see I should be wiring coaxial, cat5e and speaker cables to the rooms. A few places here suggested that I should run a minimum of two cat5e cables to each room. So questions are:

• Should all cables run back to the central point in the house?
• Should I consider any other cables in my installation / or install more cables of anythign?
• Where in the room should these cables terminate? I guess speaker cables should be in the ceiling, but where do I route the cat5e and coax cables to?

Sorry for such a long post, but wanted to cover everything.

Thanks in advance for all the help!!

[mossym]

what are you planning in ceiling speakers with in wall volume control? wall speaker with volume control built in? do you want different sources to be played in each room? do you want to be able to control the audio from each room? (i.e. choose a differnt track/album)

what sources will they be for the audio? or just speakers in each room driven by a common amp? will all zones be able to be on at the same time?

afraid you'll have to give a lot more detail before anyone can really help..

[mossym]

also, chances are any sparky working for a development company in ireland won't have a clue how to wire all this up..you might be better looking for someone with some experience to do it

[claned]

Hi, Sorry I thought I covered most of these but probably wasn't too clear. I want the ability to control different audio / volume in each of the rooms. Volume should be controled from the same unit you select the track from, built into the wall. I haven't even looked at equipment yet, but saw a development with one piece of Nuvo equipment that allowed the ability to control volume / track playing in each of the rooms. We are looking at ceiling speakers (unless someone recommends better) for kitchen / bedrooms and a 5.1 set up in the living room.
I have most Albums ripped to MP3, so would ideally like a unit that would be capable of adding a external disk and cabable if reading the ID3 tags from the disk to display on all wall units.
I know all this affects what cables should be laid, but as in the previous post, I'd like to future proof the house, so currently I have no intention of builiding in multi-room HDTV, but if in the future prices are reduced and this becomes the standard, I'd like to already have the necessary in place.
I have gotten a quote already for cabling of just over €2,500 which included ceiling speakers, but was wondering if I source the cables, and have specification of what goes where the spark might be able to do something.

[mossym]

on the audio side, check out sonos, works wirelessly or wired , and you can add as many zones as you want. it's not in wall though.

central storage on a nas or some type of server is probably best bet for storing all the music and streamign to each location.

i know you said wireless, but wired is really the way to go here. wireless is okay for audio, not good enough for video.


i'd be looking at running at least 4 network cables to your main point( if, as you say you want to do video distribution in the future. (Current hdmi over cat5 needs two cables). at least 1 then , preferably two to each other control point that you would have.


bring all the netowrk cables back to one point. Run your main phone line to that point as well, if you get dsl you'll be able to distribute it to all points in the house.

i used cat5e, as for a house i don't see why cat6 would be any better, you'll get gigabit speeds over cat5e in the distances in a house, you may want to go CAT6 , that's your call.

no offense meant, but if your sparky isn't up to speed on this stuff, you need a very clear idea of what you want and need to be able to tell him. even after spelling it out completely and walking my sparky through it i ended up with coax cables where i wanted cat5, and vice versa. getting someone into do it may be more expensive, but at least you know it'll work.

your quote for 2500, do you know what inwall misuc system it was based around?

[claned]

Hi
Thanks for the advice, I had checked out Sonas before. And was reasonably impressed. Saying that, as I said...I'd just like to get the right cables in the right places at the mo.

When I said wireless, I meant for internet only. Audio / Video etc I prefer to run via cable (hence the post). Sorry for confusion, I should actually proof read these posts!!

On the amount of cables, thats exactly the same as another post I saw in the Networking thread. 4 to the living room, and 2 to other locations. Should COAx only need to go where TVs will be, or should I run one to each of the rooms aswell?

We have identified the main point for all the cables and plan this to be the hub of the equipment. When running the Cat5 into the rooms - should these terminate somewhere beside the lightswitch (i.e. where you would put a control unit for the music?) Or would you recommend somewhere else? The last thing I want is to have to break more holes in a new wall to chase cable around the room!!

I agree on needing to know what your talking about (clearly I'm a newbie), but I do plan to talk to the electrician first to see how aware he is of the setup and if it is something he can do. If I have any doubts, I wont even consider it.

The quote of 2500 was for cabling and speakers / faceplates. He never said what system it is based around, but said it is something we can talk about once the cables are in. It is soemthing I plan to ask though, as I saw some posts saying that different systems require different setups. I guess he's put in standard enough cabled that would work with X% of the equipment out there?

[dj-dulux]

Claned,

As you are not sure which hardware you want in the future (like most people) it is best to cable up in a generic way. With a bit of thought it is possible to use a wiring scheme which will enable you to use any muti-room system in the future, that may be Sonos, Netstreams, Nuvo, simple passive volume controls etc etc, (avoid wireless if possible).

Using a box like this, CRIS enclosures, flush mounted 3 sizes, scaleable home networking solution, will also mean that you can get the whole thing looking nice from day one. This can contain your RF distribution for normal TV, radio and satellite along with all the data points you need for data, control etc.

In general we recommend a combination of CEA2030 cable spec (American) along with a few additions to screens and room. So 2 coax and 2 cat5 to every screen location, 2 cat 5 and 2 loudspeaker to every key pad location and onto the speaker positions and finally 2 cat 5 points in every room for data and telephone points. All these come back to your under-the-stairs location and can terminate in the enclosure ready for you system.

Once you have a generic infrastructure you can do pretty much anything...

Also, I 100% agree with mossym, if your sparkey in not cabling to some standard and is experienced then be very careful. We have had to rip out many a house to re-cable due to poor design in the first place, usually by developers.....

Dupe...

[mossym]

run 4*coax to your main tv point. Sky+/SKy HD uses two cables. you'll want another for terrestrial OTA transmissions (analog + digital, as rte can't get their act together and get on fta satellite), plus you can use the fourth to distribute the sky output around the house using a distribution amp. Run at least one coax to evey screen location(actually just saw dj-dulux's post, two is even better)

cat5e is very cheap, i'd run it everywhere. even to a light switch lets you do home automation if you wanted.

what i would run, (and did)
to main room tv point
4 coax. 3 cat5e
to Home cinema
3 coax, 3 cat5e
to every room
1*coax, 1*cat5e

i didn't bother with in wall speakers i have decent sound setups in both my HT and my sitting room. so you need to add on those cables

Do not let your sparky put in all the cables and then talk about what system to used. this needs to be planned properly before any cable is run

[noel-pilot]

have a look at Automated Home - Home it's a UK based home automation site and has a wiring guide.

To give you the info that I think you're looking for.

You need to cable to the following locations:

Media points i.e. where tv's or audio equipment would be in each room
Wall boxes: for control of volume or similar
ceilings for speakers possibly walls as well.

if you flood the house with cat 5e thats capable of handling pretty much all signals with the use of converters/baluns.

speaker cable to all ceilings and wall points and you'll be able to run in the future the last bit with minimal hassle.

consider also do you want intelligent lighting? if so then consider running mains rated cat5 to light switches. Also consider star wiring all lights back to the consumer unit instead of normal ring wiring.

ct100 coax is useful too to each of your possible tv points.

With this approach you don't need to have any clue what hardware you're going to end up with. You just need to think of where you might have anything that might need connectivity so thats wallboxes, comms areas, tv's etc.

As a guide for your main lounge area with tv etc i'd reccomend 10-12 cat 5 connections. a minimum of 4 to 6 cat 5 for each bedroom but more if possible. You can run HD over cat 5 but it uses two cables so what can seem like a lot of cable can quickly get used up.

You can also use cat 5 for infra red distribution for remote control from around the house.

Finally you need to specify a central location for your equipment cupboard.

Ideally this would be a reasonable space that could house pc's, amps, sky boxes, network switches etc etc

Cheers and good luck

Noel

[mossym]

Originally Posted by noel-pilot

ct100 coax is useful too to each of your possible tv points.

given teh tv that's available in ireland, coax is not useful, it's essential. and ct100 isn't made/available anymore. get the equivalent wf100 or similar. do not let the sparky use the standard rubbish rg6 or whatever they call it...

[claned]

hey Guys,

Thanks for all the help....i knew I wouldn't regret signing up to this forum based on the content / help and support that is provided.

I think my next port of call is the electrician. If he's not comfortable with this setup than I think its definitely via a 3rd party to provide the service.

[EVH]

Even though you initially said you weren't interested in LAN points, I'd buy a reel of CAT6 and run a few points. At the least 2 in each room..

A decent reel can be had on the net.. i'm sure the sparky would run the lengths if you asked him nicely.. although it wouldn't be too hard if you wanted to do it yourself. I find 6pm, when the tradesmen have buggered off a good opportunity to do this, especially in an empty shell / pre-second fix.

You can then a) use it as a phone distribution system if you are certain that you aren't going to use it after a few weeks living in the house or b) you'll have a decent LAN for your gear if you ever decided to stream media to each room.

I say CAT6 because it's generally more robust, and less likely to get twisted (which will reduce the data speeds) in the walls after they've been laid. HDMI over CAT5/6 is a good example of a great use of the stuff.

In fairness, a lot of this advice is mentioned above, but I'd like to echo these comments