What cables to run in a new build?

[VEX]

ColinM50 said:

Don't know what all your Cat bits are about, but in my refurb in France in 2010 the builders ran a 2 inch dia plastic hosepipe type conduit everywhere. It had a steel wire inside so that in the future you can tie a new cable to it and pull it through. The conduit was then buried in the walls and under the driveway to where the gates were going to be installed at a later stage. Thught it was a brilliant idea and the DIY store sold it in various diameters.

a bit like this.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/tower-corrugated-conduit...

These are great if you has all stud work walls in a house and enough void behind the brick / block ones. But we struggled with building control when we wanted to chase them into an block work wall for a client. To deep, they said, it would impact the structual performance.

If you can do this, also keep your conduit as straight as possible, did another pair out houses with it all in the ceiling voids (big suspended ceilings) and the route it took made it very hard to pull cables into place afterwards.

Have a look at aca-apex.co.uk and thier kits with pre cut back boxes to hold the conduit in place.

V.

[eliot]

chasingracecars said:

BTW when ever pulling the draw cable make sure you pull another one in with the new cable.

I had a 50mm conduit with just a RG59 cctv cable in it along with a rope to pull the next cable through. Came to add a telephone cable up the same underground duct and it refused to budge. Essentially the draw rope was twisted around the first cable that went up - which meant subsequent cables (along with spare draw rope) just got even more entangled.
I learnt not to bother with draw ropes and use a "cobra rod" which is what the professionals use for putting cables through ducts. Only really applies to the bigger ducts - small 25-30mm conduit is too small for one of those.

[VEX]

I am considering using Maxcell, stuff i used to sell to the cable tv industry.

Basically little pockets that you pull into your duct and then individual cables run through each pocket, stops them tangling up.

V.

[jason61c]

Just run cat6 everywhere, don't use any system that doesn't use a standard cable(cat5/6), you can get hdmi cables in 35+m lengths. I'd still run t+e everywhere. I'd be agaisn't using wifi everything.

Where you run a cable(s), put 2 spares. Do you need remote light switchs etc at this stage? You don't need expensive cables at all.

[monthefish]

Thanks for all the comments/input.

I don't like the idea of conduit/ducts - I'm trying to avoid the need by planning for the future as far as possible. (I don't know a great deal about this stuff, hence why I'm trying to protect for when/if I do and I want to install something)

My plan is to run a Cat6 cable from every main room back to a central hub point (and this is where the router will be) and therefore every room is connected together (via the hub).

Separate to the above, there will be a few lighting circuits (and PIR's) also going back to this Hub so these can be remotely controlled. (probably a Loxone system, using their Miniserver)

With regards to TV, whilst Sky is in a transition period (they've just launched Sky Q, and apparently no longer selling multi room so as to drive people towards the pricey Sky Q), it's difficult to know what to do for this.
What do magic eyes connect using? - is it Co-ax? If so, would you then need two co-ax lines? (one to take the 'commands' to the sky box and one to take the sky signal to the TV).
Would the optimum then be a co-ax for the magic-eye and an HMDI cable to run the signal?

p.s. No need for CCTV.

Edited by monthefish on Tuesday 7th March 20:58

[chasingracecars]

Magic eyes are mainly for SkyHD there are simple cheap (ish) control systems out now that better deal with the problems of SkyQ and control. This way you get a better picture on the 2nd TV's as well.

Any questions fire them over.

[faster_stueys]

Anyone got any thoughts on Cat 7 v Cat 6a? I was pretty much going with Cat 7 (on the basis that in theory that's more future proof) but my AV guy is telling me I'm nuts, the termination effort is 5 times cat 6 and there is absolutely no need.

Any thoughts?

[chasingracecars]

As your AV and any other will say, Cat6 is more then sufficient shielded is best just in case. Cat7 is rarely used and connectors are a pain.

[megaphone]

CAT6a is big and chunky and more difficult to instal to acheive CAT6a standards. I would stick with standard CAT6.

[tactical lizard]

faster_stueys said:

Anyone got any thoughts on Cat 7 v Cat 6a? I was pretty much going with Cat 7 (on the basis that in theory that's more future proof) but my AV guy is telling me I'm nuts, the termination effort is 5 times cat 6 and there is absolutely no need.

Any thoughts?

Are you installing Loxone? If not then cat 6 is fine.

[chasingracecars]

Please not Loxone they are killing the market. A cheap nasty product that doesn't fulfill the requirements that customers want. It's not cheap and it's rubbish. The UK Director wasn't at the biggest show this year and didn't call me back despite contacting them before the show. Control4 and Crestron and AMX and many other systems. Drop me a message if you want more information!!

[gtidriver]

Id run a piece of sutible cable to an outside wall and terminate it for later use,ive got to run a piece of new cable from my main board to to the back of the house to power my new shed and its going to be a utter ball ache to do it.

[TheRainMaker]

VEX said:

Yep, toxic cat6 components all the way through but NEVER shielded unless spec'ed by manufacturer (usually heating)

Just to pull up on this, ALL the video twisted pair systems we use need to be used with shielded cable.

That's Panasonic, Barco, NEC, Epson, Kramer, AMX, and Extron.

[4Q]

Slightly off topic but if you're building from scratch it would be worthwhile speccing a couple of the light fittings as emergency lights, especially on the stairs and by the consumer unit so you can see what your doing if the power trips rather than hunting for a torch in the dark. You can adapt most lights fairly easily if there isn't something off the shelf you fancy.

[Too Late]

4Q said:

Slightly off topic but if you're building from scratch it would be worthwhile speccing a couple of the light fittings as emergency lights, especially on the stairs and by the consumer unit so you can see what your doing if the power trips rather than hunting for a torch in the dark. You can adapt most lights fairly easily if there isn't something off the shelf you fancy.

Great idea!
Also i wish i had a central vacuum system
Also i would also install a UPS

triple the amount of cat6/5 you are going to install
label everything during the install. i spent countless hours finding out what cable was what

[anonymous-user]

I used to love the idea of central vacuum systems but just cannot see the point any more with the advent of decent cordless models.

[eliot]

4Q said:

Slightly off topic but if you're building from scratch it would be worthwhile speccing a couple of the light fittings as emergency lights, especially on the stairs and by the consumer unit so you can see what your doing if the power trips rather than hunting for a torch in the dark. You can adapt most lights fairly easily if there isn't something off the shelf you fancy.

Agreed. You don't really need special lighting even, the load drawn from modern led lighting means you could feed it via a fairly low power ups.
With a new build you can wire critical loads on a separate consumer panel which can be run from a ups or generator.

Edited by eliot on Monday 26th June 23:22

[Kermit power]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

As an example...let's say you have your bedroom with one ceiling light and 2 bedside lamps, one master wall switch and a light switch at each the side of the bed. How would that be wired?

In this example the ceiling light would be wired back to the lighting control panel. The bedside lamps (assuming 5Amp sockets) would be individually wired back to the lighting control panel. All 3 of these home-runs would be wired in separate outputs on the lighting control modules. This means you can control each circuit individually (i.e. having the LHS bedside lamp on doesn't mean you have to have the RHS bedside lamp on). The ceiling light is also separately controllable.

In this example (bedroom) you would have a keypad at the entrance and one each side of the bed the two occupants can control the room and more importantly "their" bedside lamp easily.

Then, depending on the system, the keypads can be home-run individually back to the lighting control panel/processor OR one can be home-run and the other two can be daisy chained from that one.

So you could go:

Panel/Processor -> Bedroom Entrance -> LHS Bedside -> RHS Bedside

OR

Panel/Processor -> Bedroom Entrance
Panel/Processor -> LHS Bedside
Panel/Processor -> RHS Bedside

Does that make more sense?

Edited by toxicnerve on Saturday 30th March 11:27

I know this is an ancient post, but I'm struggling to understand the whole concept here!

Our bedroom has overhead lighting with a switch by the door and another by the bed, plus bedside lights controlled individually from each side of the bed.

What am I missing here? I've been reading this thread any trying to figure out what I could possibly want to automate about this, and I simply can't.

My process for lighting is essentially:

1. Walk into room. If dark, turn on lights.

2. If room becomes dark whilst in room, go and turn on lights.

3. When leaving room, turn off lights.

I can see the benefit of having a few lamps on timers to give the impression of someone being in the house when we're on holiday, but that just requires a few quid, not a massive home automation project.

What even is automated lighting???

Everything about running Cat6 cables to anywhere you're likely to want to plug in a networked device makes perfect sense, but I'm finding the whole bit about lighting rather mysterious...

[eliot]

All my lights are home run via the wall switch. This means that each light can be controlled conventionally with a light switch or automated from a central panel and be easily reverted if I sell up.

Why? Well because I can and because I wanted home automation.

Example of how my bedroom lights work;
In the evening and it's dark, it will turn a corner light on when you walk in. But after midnight It will just bring on the wall lights at a dimmed level so when i get up for a pee I can see where i'm going without all the lights on full blast.
Of course unoccupied security lighting.

Other handy things - hall and kitchen lights follow you around - so no need to worry about turning lights off when you have both hands full with drinks.

External lighting - nomal bulkhead lights follow you round the outside of the house without annoying neighbors or costing a fortune in electricity, but if it's late at night or if the house is unoccupied you can have flood lights come on (bright enough for cctv to drop back into colour mode).
Automation just means you can configure the lighting to do what you want when you want - and lots more besides.

Edited by eliot on Tuesday 27th June 08:13

[anonymous-user]

Hi Kermit - from my POV I wanted to have the ability to enter the house, touch a button and have all the hall, living room and kitchen lights automatically come on so I could come home at night and walk through the house without having to enter dark rooms and switch on individually.

I also wanted to have preset levels (moods) so, for example, if I was having people round for dinner, I could press a button and have the room nice and subdued.

The reality is that I would not do it again

In future I will simply have dimmer switches wherever I need subdued pendant lighting or, as I do most of the time, just use lamps.

I'll be building again hopefully in the next 12-18 months and the only high tech will be Cat 6 from the major TV points back to the router for
Smart TV use (and possibly distributed video depending on house layout) and ceiling speakers for surround sound.

Everything else will connect over WiFi.

I came to the conclusion very shortly after completing my self-build that centralised everything and lighting automation was just not needed and way over the top imho.