House wiring and L pads

JerryR1vers

I need some advice on what wire (brand, AWG) and L pads to use on my new house being built. I'm looking for the sweet spot for good value, better than average quality, last long time. I also need a recommendation on how to do the audio distribution and cross connects.

Web sites and deals would be a big help too. Thanks.

mantis

If you live near a Tweeter or custom shop,I would go in for look see.Niles,rusound,Elan all make great products to do what you want to do.House wiring you should leave to the Pro's,not the builder or anyone else for that matter.I work for Tweeter as an Home Installer.I wire home's all the time as well as everything we do from Multiroom audio,network wiring,Home theater and Pronto/remote programming,system for hole house automation.You can E-Mail me if you want and I can steer you in the right path.
Dan
Dmantis20@cs.com

RuSsMaN

Ha Freakin Ha

Pros, ****, if you want to be overcharged for something you can do yourself, go ahead, call someone.

Hit your local Home Depot/Lowes, pick up at least 16awg wire (or better if you can afford it) and run your house. It's EASY, use a staple gun and or duct tape (wrapped around the 2x4's) to hold the wire in place. Your signal to run should be right after the roof goes on (run just before insulation and sheetrock go up). It helps sometimes if you tell your builder you are running only low-voltage wire. If they give you hell, tell your Realtor this is important to you.

Talk to your builder first, so he knows whats going on. Get some $.19 wall boxes, and they will even punch the sheetrock for you. Simply soldier and heat shrink will make a great connection at the jacks. You can get volume controls in each room, or buy the Russound or Niles switchbox with volume controls for each zone built in the switchbox.

Piece of cake brotha, and you will have fun doing it. I have a couple pics I will be happy to send you from when I did this in my house, and others. Email me @ rgates@datamatic.com (my @home is still fubared......)

If you can climb a short ladder, and operate a staple gun, you can handle it. Planning is the key, even wire for future upgrades, its cheaper now than later.

Cheers,
Russ

TroyD

My brother in law just built a house and we wired it ourselves, VERY simple. Just as Russ described. In fact after we had it done, the electrician said that if you ask, and provide the wire, they will usually do it for nothing.

Now, if you have a house that is already built and don't want to fish the wires yourself, then, I would call someone.

Troy

jdelan

Anyone got an estimate on what it WOULD cost to rewire an existing House...Or actually A Condo...I would like to run wires throughout the place instead of all over the floor like I currently do.

Live in an older style Condo Unit. Only have ONE cable Outlet in the place and I run about 150ft of Coax along the Floorboard to the Computer Room.
Would be nice to get it wired for Cable in all the rooms. I can worry about Speaker cable later...

mantis

Lets see,
answer me this?do you know what is yeat to come??do you know what wires will carry future signals from one end to the other???Is there a center local head end or is there multible head ends?And if there is multible head ends,can they talk to each other???What wires do I run.If I run cat 5,how can I run it without damaging it??
That is just the beginning of wiring a new house.Older houses need more care as walls already have wires in them and how do I get a wire or multible wires from the basement to the attic,to the bedroom on the second floor????
The Pro's(like myself) are trained in all fields.Future wiring is very important as you might need different wires in the future.
Heres another good point!!!!If i'm going to spend all this money on speakers,wire,volume controls,Ir sensors,outdoor speakers,etc.>>......does it all work together?did I run the wires to long or in the straightest route possible?Can I upgrade to a better system in the furure and have full control anywhere in the house???
If yo can't answer any of the questions or you can answer all of them but a few......get a pro in home Audio Video installer,They aren't cheap(hey we need to eat 2)but it will assure that you get the most out of your system.
Dan
Inhome Audio Video Installer Professional

TroyD

I see what you are driving at BUT for the average guy who has an average system and is just looking to wire up his speakers neatly and maybe run some speakers on the patio. Not complicated at all especially knowing what my needs are and are likely to be.

Yes, if I were looking to do something complicated, sure I can see calling an installer but I have done it in a new house and an existing one (mine) and everything is hunky dory.

Troy

mikemokr

Thought I'd share my experience in case it might help anyone. We had a house built a couple years ago, about 250 miles from where we were living, and at a time when my wife was pregnant. So DIY on any part of the construction was not really an option. We had an excellent general contractor and when I told him my desire to have speaker and CAT-5 LAN cabling in the walls, he had me work directly with a subcontractor. This guy also wound up handling phone lines for us, as we needed four lines in the house.

We have a ~2800 sq ft house, including my office in the walkout basement. On the first and second floors we have five CAT-5 drops with two phone jacks in each of those; all the CAT-5 are home runs to a central location in the office in the basement, and all the phone wires are home runs to the telco box on the electrical panel in the unfinished half of the basement. There's an additional CAT-5 drop with phone jacks on the opposite wall in my office. We've also got six runs of 16-gauge shielded speaker wire, all terminating in a bank of gold-plated Leviton binding posts on a wallplate in the family room -- two runs of ~30' each go two pair of binding posts in the kitchen (I now have M3IIs hanging from the ceiling there) and the other four go to the posts on wallplates in the upper corners of the family room. I'll use the two in the rear for the surrounds but I am/plan to keep using 12awg direct from the receiver to the fronts, sub & soon-to-be-purchased center; someday maybe I'll hang two more speakers high up on the wall in the front for effects.

Total cost of materials and installation came out just shy of $1,200. I don't know if that was a reasonable deal or not but the job was done well and is warrantied, and I feel that if the day ever comes that we sell the house it will be a good selling point to have all that cabling in the walls. (except that of course by then "wiring" probably will be seen as terribly quaint, and people will laugh at the thought that 100Mbps was called "fast" ethernet ...)

One question I have in retrospect is whether I should've insisted on 12 or 14-gauge speaker wire, at least within the family room. I don't think it's that big a deal running out to the kitchen, anyway, and the M3II's sound just fine. Probably not a big deal for the rears either?

One other thing. The subcontractor didn't handle cable TV cabling but did mention I should be sure the general contractor was using RG-6 rather than RG-59. He was. RG-6 has nearly double the bandwidth capacity of RG-59 and is essential for digital cable and cable modem (both of which we have here).

mantis

Great reply's on this matter,
as long as you don't seal up your basement, any wires can be fished as a later date for fture upgrades.Doin the job yourself can be very rewarding.I think it' cool when a non pro home owner hobbie guy can run all of his own wiresand everything works great.
Just remember if you get into trouble,don't feel bad to call a Pro.We all love this world of audio/video/automation and it just get's better everyday..
Dan

mikemokr

one thing I'd add is that our general contractor put in a 4" PVC conduit running from the basement to the attic, to help us run any cabling we might need in the future. (the attic, for instance, is currently unfinished but might not stay that way for too long.) Simple thing but it gives us considerably more flexibility than we'd have otherwise. If you're building a house I'd strongly recommend this.