LV requirements/needs

[bohornback]

Hey all,

Building a home and need some advice on what wiring to run based on desires/limitations.

Desires:

1) hard wired internet (cat6) in living room and all 5 bedrooms, master closet, and closet under stairs next to family room.
2) coax in "other" bedrooms for tv box.
3) closet next to family room will house all electronics related to family room A/V (blu-Ray, dvr, surround sound)
4) master closet will hold electronics for master bedroom (same as family room)
5) home run everything to yet decided location (haven't even broke ground yet so I have some time)
6) not really interested in multi-zone distribution of audio or video.
7) not sure if I want to deal with hard wiring for security although a camera at front and back doors and one in baby's bedroom that I can see on any tv would be sweet. (Yes I know this is getting into whole house distribution)

Restrictions
1) builder is flexible but I'm not sure how crazy they will let me go. They seemed fine with home running everything related to data and coax.
2) I don't know if they will just let me run conduit throughout the whole house. I know they will let me run it for tv above fireplace.

Type of people we are:
1) pretty much just watch movies and tv. Will be streaming a lot of stuff through internet most likely.
2) home automation sounds neat but I'm not sure how much I would really use it.

Throughs on setup:
1) family room closet:
- 2 R6/2 cat6
- 2 hdmi ports
- all surround sound will terminate here for reciever.
2) family room
- 2 R6/2 cat6 and 2 hdmi above fireplace.
3) master bedroom closet:
- same as closet for family room
4) master bedroom:
- same as family room but ports will be at wall mount location.
- 2 cat6 on wall of bed.
5) other 4 bedrooms:
- 2 r6/ 2 cat6
6) cat6 to front and rear doors for cameras
7) cat6 to one or two bedroom cielings for camera.

Is there anything I'm missing based on desires.

One question i have is location of distribution panel. House will be two stories. Laundry room isn't very big but is an option. Wife ok'd master closet (shocker) which would might make it easier to get everything ran (proximity to attic)

Please give me any and all feedback (including telling me I'm dumb for not including or including certain things!!

Thanks all!

 

[pete_c]

Welcome to Cocoontech bohornback!
 
Many folks here have done the same as you and documented here what they have done. 
 
Have a quick read through the variety of FAQs/Blogs relating to the low voltage wiring done.
 
Here too one home construction builder let me do most of the Low voltage stuff in a couple of days during construction. 
 
Reflecting back to the early 2000's when this was done; I would have probably added more wires during construction; but that is me.
 
I recently helped a friend with his low voltage wiring for a new home.  Its been now close to may be some 4 years. 
 
That said today he is using some maybe 5% of what was wired and most likely will not ever utilize most of it. 
 
The cost of the LV and physical installation though was relatively inexpensive when compared to the price of the home.
 
That said too I did let the contractor run the base RG-6, telephone and also included was an alarm pre-wire. 
 
Post what you decide to do and let us know as whatever you post will be a teaching / learning endeavor for the next person.

 

[tmbrown97]

Always run more than you think you'll need... and when I'm doing bedrooms I always account for different furniture arrangements and put appropriate cabling in two sides of the room; also allowing for phone/ethernet by the bed and cable/ethernet where the TV will go.  More runs of ethernet are better than cascaded switches - so a master bedroom could have smart tv, blueray and appletv - so having 4 ethernet runs could be better than just having one or two and having to get a switch to put there.
 
I strongly suggest prewiring for complete security - it doesn't cost much now - just have every zone home-run (instead of daisy chaining in the walls) and any motions you might want - exterior doors/windows are the hardest thing to retrofit.
 
Audio is the next one since the routing of the wires is definitely easier with walls open - since you're often looping a speaker through a keypad location where cat5 picks up then running both back to the central amp location... so if there's ANY interest in whole house audio, now's the time.