Last minute suggestions on tech wiring, or expansion

8 years ago

I am throwing in my mineral wool insulation as fast as I can cut it since I absolutely hate how it irritates my skin and covers the entire house with fine steel particles. I had to pull out a couple batts already because I forgot I wanted to add some cat 6 cable in to the wall instead of the floor in my office and living room.

I am going to order a 1,000 foot of cat 6 cable and also 500 foot of 16AWG speaker wire. Possibly 250 foot of 16AWG 4 pair speaker wire too for future volume controls. I am just running wire, not going to install speakers or controls at any time soon. So far I have thought of:

1.)installing cat 6 cable to future designated cameras in the attic/soffit.

2.) Running speaker wire to a central location in the living room and from there running it to all four corners of the room for a future 'surround' sound. At least two front and two rear speakers is the idea.

3.) Same thing with 4 speakers in the master bed all ran into the designated tv/computer area

4.) A couple long runs of speaker wire from office amp area to the living room/dining (all open floor plan) and the back deck near the soffit for a future outdoor speaker, and maybe one to the garage. This would just allow me to stream music in the whole house since it's an open concept I would get music in the office, living/dining/kitchen, back deck, and garage for those days off that I get to mess around. I don't see any reason for a lot of speakers in each room and figured just a couple in the living area would be good.

5.) Running a volume control wire down the wall in the living space, garage, and back deck to be able to adjust those speakers individually.

6.) Running cat 6 to the future TV and Computer locations. I am thinking about just having the cable and fishing it through a 1/4" hole in the drywall instead of buying the expensive boxes and keystones. I don't want to put any extra boxes in my wall because it eliminates that much more insulation on exterior walls.

Anything else I should consider? I will have an open unfinished basement for future runs, but I wanted to get all the attic and wall runs done before I complete insulation. I have a relatively small home but I do want to have these wires ran now since the wire is fairly cheap - at least compared to the equipment it feeds!

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Comments (5)

User
8 years ago
Good job, I think. I wasn't able to do my own because of distance. I had to rely on the architects plan which was decent enough but we left out the wire for the cameras so good thinking on your part.

We also did cat 6 to the main floor guest suite as this can potentially be the master/office if we are no longer able to climb stairs.

Cat 6 to the kitchen, where I could potentially set up a laptop or small tv. But the wireless works decently in there so I am not sure we will use it.

We did not do speaker wire to the exercise room as I assumed we would want our own headsets but it would have been nice.

I did all the cat 6 and speaker runs twice in the great room in case we wanted a different location for the tv. But I think thst was unnecessary.

Good luck.
ontariomom
8 years ago
Just tagging along on this thread as your questions are very pertinent to our build stage. It is hard to find sites/blogs/books etc to research this area.

Carol
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kdion7
8 years ago
A couple of additional thoughts:

1) For security cameras, you almost certainly will not need cat6, and could use cheaper cat5e instead (unless you will really need that additional throughput available on cat6 and will be using 4k cameras or something!). Also if you will not be using PoE (power over ethernet) cameras, make sure you have power near the camera locations. Save the cat6 for high-bandwidth needs like computer networks and video streaming.

4) Depending on how long these runs are, you may need intermediate amps or additional amps at the ends to compensate for power loss over long runs. I bet you can find calculators online that take into account the length of the run, the wire gauge, and amp power to see if you'll need the extra help or not.

5) consider running Cat5e for the volume control so you can decide to go with a fancy touchpad or something if you want. I would expect the 'regular' volume control wire is just 22/4 or something, so even if you don't go fancy with the controls, you could just use 4 wires of the cat5 anyways.

And a few additional possibilities:

7) If you think you might ever want a security system, put wiring in for sensors to all doors/windows now, as well as for control panels, door intercoms, etc. If you run multi-conductor wire (like cat5) you can potentially piggyback the window sensor wires if you want to add motorized shades later as well.

8) Run 1-2 RG6 cables from the central media location to the attic for a tv antenna and a cell repeater antenna (if you think you might have cell reception problems in the house)

9) If you have a large house, run Cat6 to additional locations in the house for wifi repeaters/boosters to increase coverage.
Rachel (Zone 7A + wind)
8 years ago
We ran everything to a central closet we have made into a tech room. It's about 8x4'. Here is where we will install an AV rack which is starting with a Cisco switch, NAD amp and receiver combo, and will house our power conditioning. We did a dedicated 20amp to run this space.

From there we did Cat6 to each TV location, bedrooms for personal computing for our kids.

Speaker wire was run in a 7-2 configuration with 2 speakers outdoors on our patio. This wire is terminated in wall plates from the speaker locations behind the built ins that will house receiver / br DVD / etc in our great room.

We did do a conduit from the attic to the crawl space as well to help with future drops and the wire to the patio is in smurf tube. We did smurf from the AV closet to the great room and from the built ins to where the TV will live as our Smart TV has a proprietary cable required that was not in-wall rated. We can switch TVS easily in the future now.

Wireless Internet is great but for security and speed reasons with our jobs we needed wired connections. For streaming wired is more reliable.

Our home also has a home theater that is on its own HVAC zone so we did a lot.

Maybe it's overkill? I don't know.

Try the forum Audiogon for lots of help and examples of what others have done.
neonweb US 5b
8 years ago
Add a wire connecting your surveillance box to your wireless router location so you can view the cameras online. Make sure your surveillance box is not in with all the other electronics so it doesn't get stolen as well if you have a burglar.

Last minute suggestions on tech wiring, or expansion

Comments (5)

User

ontariomom

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kdion7

Rachel (Zone 7A + wind)

neonweb US 5b

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