LV Wiring Best Practices

[Bzncrewjr]

Santa brought me a bunch of great tools (thanks to this forum) for the LV wiring.
 
Is there a good resource, book, website, youtube that describes best practices.
 
So far, I've learned:
Quality wire matters.   Clad is not solid. 
Good tools make the job easier.
 
So far, my plan is to pull wire everywhere while the walls are open.  
 
I'm thinking for interior walls to leave the wire behind the wall and mark, photo and measure where it is.  After sheetrock, cut a box in the wall with an open back gang box and plate.
Or do you put the open box and let the sheetrockers cut it out?
 
What do you do for exterior walls?   Pull a wire into a closed gang box and let sheetrockers cut around it?
 
I'm thinking wiring needs to be done before blown in foam and fiberglass batting?  No?
 
My biggest concern is doing something stupid and having the sheetrockers come in and blast me for making things difficult.  
 
 
I've got some time.   Walls are just now going up.
 

 
--Russ
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[pete_c]

Good news Russ!
 
my plan is to pull wire everywhere while the walls are open.
 
I prefer to do this and add chases in some places just in case.
 
Or do you put the open box and let the sheetrockers cut it out?
 
What do you do for exterior walls?   Pull a wire into a closed gang box and let sheetrockers cut around it?
 
I'm thinking wiring needs to be done before blown in foam and fiberglass batting?  No?
 
 
I put in boxes and made the sheetrockers cut it out.  I did check and if they cut any of my stuff then made the GC rerun the cables.
 
I used mudplates for the in wall speakers and removed the mudplates when I installed the speakers (literally in every room of the house and outside lanai, attached garage et al.  This was also low on the WAF so it was the first thing done post contruction.
 
The prewire on the alarm stuff had me digging a bit inside of the door frames even though there were covers over the 22/2 stuff.
 
The boxes/covers were low on the WAF and that made me expedite the post construction stuff.
 
I also ran cabling to the outside for satellite TV on one side, ISP / antenna / telephone et al on the other side (besides what the telco company did), irrigation et al. 
 
Helping a friend a couple of years back thought his wife had already planned a bunch of stuff relating to furniture and found out she didn't.  That said rather than guess I just added more wires.  IE: bedroom - put LV wires for network on both sides of the room and guessed relating to in wall speakers.  It is a two story home and used one large (built during contruction) chase from the basement com closet to the 2nd floor attic.  Left slack in the attic for many wires. 
 
I do recall a couple of issues.  House is around ~6000 sf.  I told him we would do this in two days and we did. 
 
Friend started to ask why about this and that and I told him just do the doo and don't questions what he know nothing about. (it was slowing things down).
 
His son was in his 20's and one of those gamers that stay up all night.
 
His son was the most help for us relating to climbing on rafters and stuff. (very agile and monkey like)
 
2nd day his son was sleeping (?). 
 
I took his phone and disconnected the internet and told him that was to help us in my limited time and maybe I would give him his phone back and reconnect the internet after he was done helping us.

 

[Bzncrewjr]

I hear ya Pete on the taking the phone away.   I plan on enlisting our 16/yo son to help pull.
 
I think I will do as you have.   Put in boxes on the exterior walls and mud rings on inside.
Speakers....I might just pull wire and mark it and cut holes later.    I guess much depends on how much work this turns out to be and my energy level.
 
Already I'm thinking window alarms will be grouped together by room to reduce home runs.   There are a lot of windows and doors.  (5000 sqf).
 
--Russ

 

[Del91574]

I would recommend home running the burg devices and contacts. You're really not going to gain much by making junctions or loops in the field compared to the labor saved during troubleshooting. If cable distance is not an issue, home run. The key is to buy enough boxes or reels to do your largest room or furthest pull once, then use the remaining cable for the rest of the house. Preferably you do the lather, rinse, repeat method of pulling the cable. Wire is cheap, time isn't.
 
5000 SF isn't huge when it comes to security.
 
Don't go nuts with boxes and rings. Only use them for devices that can be mounted to them directly, otherwise it's a wasted effort and will make hte finished project look like amateur work.

 

[pete_c]

Yup; here the mud rings I installed for the speakers were a real PITA to remove.  I did leave covers on them and did cut much larger holes for the in wall speakers such that you didn't see anything left from the original mud ring.  Rest of the mud rings were utilized and left in place.  These were mounted on walls and ceilings. 
 
22/4 and 22/2 (and cheaper) was much faster to run than the catxx and 16/4 stuff.
 
For the great room multimedia stuff I did home run all of the cables to the closet along with the surround sound speaker stuff (kind of a long trip as the wires go to the middle of the house and back out to the great room).
 
All of the prewiring though put the impetus on me to get it done as soon as possible (well cuz I wanted audio right away anyways) and the security stuff came later. (but it was prewired autonomously from my stuff).

 

[Bzncrewjr]

Thanks, 
Good feedback.
 
Wife has security concerns with many external doors, so I would go far to be able to say "Doors are shut and alarmed".
 
I've pulled tons of network cable, from the days of coax to CAT6.    Nice to know alarm wire is easier to work with.  
No doubt I'll have more questions once we have doors and windows to install switches.
 
--Russ

 

[tmbrown97]

Hi Bzncrewjr - congrats on the build!  That's a great mountain view... the wife and I have family in Montana and have looked to see if we could make it work...  time will tell.
 
If you know how to run network cabling, the rest is fine...  I agree with DEL about homerunning security contacts - it eliminates splicing in the walls gives you more flexibility.  
 
For exterior walls, over-wire now.  Exterior cameras, intercom, door-boxes, etc - anything you can think of... it's the hardest thing to come back to. 
 
Good luck!