Got asked by someone about prewiring as he literally just poured the foundation for his new house, dug up this from an ancient thread that I wrote 4 years ago. How much of this would you say no longer applies? Any new stuff that needs wiring that I missed?
Will cross-post on CT as well.
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BTW, all this is IN ADDITION to running at least 1 empty 2" conduit from your wiring closet to each other primary location for thhe stuff you forget.
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Security & Safety:
1) Occupancy: Motion sensors for every room, run 18/4 for that. You can integrate a home automation system in here to do occupancy-based rules about what to turn on/off/etc.
2) Security: Siren/CO/Smoke/Heat/Glassbreak sensors, most of them use 18/4, heat may use 22/2. For smoke/heat, you'll need to use fire-rated 18/4, typically red jacket.
3) Driveway and or/fence gates for open/close status: 22/2 or CAT5. I have young kids, plus live in Oakland, so it's nice to know and have the system be able to announce that someone has just opened up the driveway gate.
4) Gate phone/gate opener. A couple direct burial cat5 if there is a gate in drive way.
5) Safety/Elk:Water Sensors near hot water heater or other flood-prone locations. CAT5 I think.
6) Security Keypad, prox sensors, pin readers. CAT5. Put 1 at each point of entry/exit, plus 1 in each bedroom to serve as a 'panic button'.
7) Usage: Door sensors for every closet door in case you want to do auto-lighting-on, run 22/2 (or CAT5 to a central location) for that. Sounds dumb, but my wife really likes not having to manually turn her closet light on/off, and gets really pissy when the cheap-ass zWave switch I got doesn't work.
8) Window sensors: 22/2, or if you have multiple together you could do CAT5 to the middle one and 22/2 to each window.
9) HA Speakers: Due to it being irritating to have audio pause to hear HA announcements/etc, I personally chose to mount a 2nd set of speakers just for HA (doorbell/phone/HA announcements/intruder alerts), and got the single-gang Elk $7 speakers. I ran CAT5 to the Elk, and put each of them on a relay so I can turn each of them on/off. Don't forget outside speakers too, such as patio, driveway, and front door. As mentioned in the gate bullet above, when the gate is opened, my system turns on the outside speaker and plays my gruff voice recording saying "driveway gate opened, video camera recording". That way if it's a bad guy, he knows that the house is watching.
10) CCTV. Either 18/2(power) + 1RG6(signal) or 1 CAT5 (i think you can do power & signal over one)
11) door access control. 18/2 (maybe 22/2)
12) Swimming pool alert sensor, 18/2. Also a conduit, or more wire if you want LED lighting, filter control, temperature monitoring and intrusion monitoring.
Home Automation
13) Doorbell: If you get an Elk panel, you could use CAT5 for the doorbell and have an Elk-based doorbell rather than a generic chime. Plus that way you'd be setup in the future to automatically pop up a frontdoor camera on doorbell ring, and not rely on the doorbell detector. My wife *really* likes walking by the kitchen touchscreen before the door to see who it is.
14) HVAC: 2 CAT5 to your thermo (one for integration with PC or Elk, one in case you want remote thermos)
15) Irrigation: 1 CAT5 to the controller
16) Temperature monitoring: 1 22/4 or CAT5 to any room where you want to mount a temp sensor to get temps in each room. I vote putting one in the attic, basement, each bedroom, family room, & living room. Unless you have some other temp source (ie, Elk security system keypad has a built-in temp sensor, or obviously a thermostat).
Audio/Video
17) DirecTV/Digital Cable: The new DirecTV antennas use 4 RG6 per concurrent tuner you want. Digital cable needs 1 RG6 from outside to the box. (NOTE THIS IS *not* VIDEO DISTRIBUTION, Just capture).
18) Video distribution. 1 CAT5 can handle component distro (if you use baluns), some products require 2 CAT5, or 3RG6 (without baluns). I'd recommend baluns as you can stick with just running CAT5. I believe 2 CAT5 can also handle HDMI distribution. Plus, if you run back to a central wiring closet, you can just connect the cat5 patch panel to your network if you want a local SageTV HD-200 box. HDMI is a PITA to distribute so just use local sources there.
19) Audio distribution. 1 CAT5 per every 2 directions/devices. I.E., if you have a local source, you can use a cat5 to send it back to your central controller. 1cat5 can handle two pairs, so you can either have 2 local sources, or 1 local source and 1 outbound from an unpowered zone on your WHA controller to send to a local stereo.
20) Plasma or projector control. 18/2 & CAT5 to any location you may want a projector mounted, CAT5 to your plasma for control.
21) Local device control. (ie, local receiver control via serial) - 1 CAT5 per device. You'll need more of these than you think.
22) Russound/NuVo Keypads. Route speaker wiring via this location and also run CAT5.
23) In-Wall speakers. Run 16/4 speaker wire to EVERY room, including bathrooms. You may think its nutty now (as my wife did), but once everything else is done and you have the spare whole-house-amp connections, real Whole-Home-Audio will be freaky deaky cool (as my wife now thinks).
24) Subwoofer. a 14/2 as an addition to Subwoofer connection, may be another 22/2 for IR if you intend to use Velodyn DLS-R Sub
25) External speakers. Direct burial 14/4 Rock speakers & in ground Sub
26) IR receivers. Run 1 CAT5 to any location you want an IR receiver. I ran one to 3 different rooms where I wanted an in-room IR eye, not an RF retransmitter.
27) Dedicated CCTV Distro: Additional RG6 or RG59 and 22/4 (to control) from CCTV DVR enclosure to TV locations where you wish to view activities.
28) HDTV Antenna: 1 RG6 for external antenna on roof
29) XM: 1 RG6 for XM signal cable to an external antenna
General
30) Network & Telephones. Both drops for rooms plus wireless access points in strategic locations. Yeah, I know, not HA related, but may as well list all random things that could need wiring together so you don't forget. Run at least 2, so you can have both network & telephone wherever you want.
31) Touchscreens. 18/2 & 2 CAT5 (should only need 1, but if you get a touchscreen only you'll need one for video, one for serial touchscreen control). You could merge this with above if you think you'll start with keypads and move on to TS's.
32) Water control valve.
33) hardwired lighting control. cat5e to every light switch, Lutron HomeWorks (currently) requires 2 pair conductor (18/2 + 18-22/2 STP, Class 2) to the switch
34) ceiling & bathroom fan control.
35) LAN to kitchen island/refrigerator/freezer/etc.
36) shade/curtain/shutter control and power. 18/2 & cat5.
37) skylights. 18/2 & CAT5
38) Run power to some telephone jacks (e.g. kitchen), so the phone wall wart isn't located 5 feet away.
39) Cell phone repeater antenna.
40) microphone wiring in case voice-recognition ever actually works. I believe 3conductor wire is needed, so a 22/4 would suffice. Maybe a CAT5e, no idea.
