Data, phone, FTA and speaker wiring plans

Almost finished running all the cabling for phone, data, free to air and fox but just wanted to see if there is anything else my sparky or i may not have thought about.

Below is the phone plan. Pretty standard except we have included a point in the linen closet for security (apparently it can text our mobiles when triggered ) and one in the media room and the lounge for foxtel, so we can order movies, pay per view etc.



Next is the data plan, we will have our main pc in the study and run a network switch to distribute data to each room as required. I cant see any need for any more than 1 point in each bedroom (internet) and 1 point behind each TV (to stream movies etc from the pc). Any need for any more?



Next is the FTA via rg6, didn't need sparky for this so i sent him packing, he said to run from the antenna at the back of the house to the central point and split it to all rooms. i figure i could put in a 2 way splitter half way to shorten the run for the main TV in the lounge?? any reason why not??



For the speaker wiring i will run 16 AWG (or should i run 12???) to the walls in the media room / HT for 7.1 and into the ceiling for ceiling mounted speakers in the lounge and alfresco.



I assume foxtel will use satelite (new estate with all underground wiring) so i will run RG6 from the same point as the antenna at the back of the house to main lounge TV and then not sure what to run from there to the other rooms so we can watch fox in other rooms. i know that we will only be able to watch whats on in the lounge room but i would like to be able to put on a movie and go to bed or even watch movies on fox in the HT with the kids while the wife watches home and away in the lounge.

Any hints, tips or changes would be greatly appreciated as i only have one more weekend to change anything before the plasterers close it all up.

Thanks

Foxtel: You are not in Telstra velocity estate, aren't you ?

Antenna: no need for two splitters.

Telephone: if you are going to have monitoring security alarm one day you need to run phone cable to alarm first then to study/modem

No idea. Not that i know of and i doubt it, its a small "prestige" estate.

How would i find out? and what difference would that make?

Foxtel would come through fibre optic underground cable then.

Just double check with Foxtel that you are satellite area.

Thanks, i'll give them a call tomorrow.

Can you recommend a method to distribute fox through to multiple points? The longest run will be about 20m long.

Thanks



Is it ok to do it that way though because i can get splitters for nothing. i figured it would cut down the length of cable that runs to the main TV. Will the extra splitter have any negative affect on the signal ?




Ok, better get sparks back to re run that then. Might put it in the WIR in that case.

foxtel only comes via fibre in FTTH estates.. other wise it is satelile or Co-ax...

not to mention there are ways of intergrating foxtel and any other sat feeds into the "normal" RG6 feed with a few extra boxes.

wake me if you wouldliek to find out how pm me your email addy and I'll send you a quick guide on how to do all that

just run all of them in one central location. More splitters - less signal.




I would run phone line from Telstra box to WIR=alarm, then one cable to study and one cable to the next phone socket, so that central ADSL filter could be easily installed in WIR later on if required.

I am thinking of a very similar setup. I have been looking into some home networking packages and came across the Delta 8 network (clipsal). The Delta 8 sounds like it is going to be cheaper than Lexcom or StarServe as you only need to run one cable to each outlet and then have a 3 way splitter.
Bad news is that i spoke to a Clipsal rep yesterday who hadnt even heard of Delta 8. It appears on the Clipsal website, but is due for release this year some time. I wouldnt expect to see it soon if the rep hasnt even heard of it.
Anyway, i think for your purposes it will be suitable, but i cant see anything coming out of clipsal before your plaster goes up.

Has anyone has heard of Delta 8 and knows when it will be released?

My Cat5 cabling also doubles as phone cabling.

After doing my Cat5 cabling, I wish I had doubled up on each point for expansion purposes. In the future you will have more than one device with a network connection and unless you plan on having a switch in those rooms (multiple power adapters etc) then it is wiser to have a at least a double Cat 5 point.

Also consider your wireless access point location which is usually also your router. Ours is in our computer room out of the way, but if you want it in a more central location (while the switch and servers are in a back area out of the way), then have two Cat5s to that point, one for the phone line and one for the return line to the switch.

My house pretty much works like this:



I have a power point in that closet area as well for the switch. If you use a low powered one then you shouldn't have to worry about heat, but I have provisions for cooling if it comes to that.

We did doubles+ to all points that we wanted in cat 5e. These can also be additional phone line points for the phone. We also have voip which we mostly use exclusively with additional wireless handset sets . When I next upgrade my modem router it will do fall back to mains phone line from voip but currently my wireless modem/router doesn't do this and I have a separate ata.

we've cabled as listed below.
4 to games ( main computer area)
2 to main bed
2 to lounge
2 to activity room
Everything goes back to office and finishes as a set of wall jacks here. . I can add additional points directly into the patch panel in the office or straight into the modem if I need more points for use in the office itself. Our phone point is split into 2 completely terminated jack points one I use for the mains phone line and modem and the other is used to redirect to any of the network points throughout the house as an extension line. ( this week I haven't got it plugged as an extension and have the modem running off it but I've tested it the other way previously and will put it back that way when I have a better extension phone as our 'spare" phone is not that great. I was also curious to see if it made any difference to the adsl performance )

I use a mixture of wired and wireless for the computer network.

I do wish I had cabled a second area in the main bedroom near the tv but it’s no biggie.
Given this is a family home I didn’t want points in minor bedrooms and was happier having points in a kids/future teens activity area



We had the builder install conduit during the build. ( there is a 2nd spare conduit in the games area that is currently unused but could later be further network points or a tv point)

I then got a cabler to install the cabling after handover.

Thanks for the info Pugs. The switch and then splitter system you detailed pretty much looks like what i need but i was hoping i would find something a bit less expensive. If i'm going to be investing in hardware to do all this, i think i would rather run with HDMI.

So after a bit of research today, i found that i can run a HDMI switch to bring all the components together and then a splitter to distribute to each area and run HDMI over cat6 for the long runs. Then use an IR repeater so i can control everything from wherever i am. Challenge now is to find all this gear that is compatible with Foxtel and work out if its going to be cost effective. In the end it might just be cheaper to run with fox multi point and buy a dvd player for each room.

Hey Kex and Joey, thanks for your input. Kex, you mentioned that you are running pairs of cable to each room and Joey, you mentioned that you wish you had of. It seems a lot of people recommend to run multiple points to each room but i am yet to get a reason why? other than future proofing and phone?

I dont intend to have phones in the minor bedrooms and i dont see any need for equipment, other than a computer running internet, that would require data in the bedrooms. In any case i will simply run a draw wire beside the cat6 cable into the roof space so that it is easy to drag another cable if we stay there long enough for the demand for a second point to evolve.

I will also run a few conduits at the study and behind the 2 main TV's for stuff i haven't thought about, easy enough to do it now.

Also kex, what do you intend to use the 4 points in your games room for?

Joey. if we do decide to get a wireless router / modem it will go in the study which is central enough i think.

Cheers

C'mon everyone there must be something i haven't thought about, i dont want someone to post something next week when its too late.

Rodda, Matt or anyone else who knows, is 16 awg speaker cable enough?????? The amp i have my eye on for the HT runs 100w per channel. The blokes at the local specialist Hi Fi store think it should be and have a roll i can take with me that counts the metres as you roll it off and you just pay for what you use @ $2 / metre. It was double insulated (not sure if thats what you call it in speaker cable talk )

I guess that's it more than anything. Furture proofing + to prevent the need to have extra switches in the rooms just for one extra device. What I didn't show in my diagram is the extra switches in the HT and the study. If I had multiple lines, I would have avoided that. 4 points in the games room avoid having an extra switch (with associated power draw) in there.



I reckon it's extra power points. I wish I had put a few more in while the electrician was here. How about TV and Cat5 to the outside areas? Garage area? Just being devil's advocate, maybe it will jog your brain for other things. Internet to fridge area? Even if you don't have one, it may improve sale value of the house if you sell it?

Thanks again, joey, Its certainly food for thought, i will see how much of the roll is left over once i've run an extra point to the HT room, Its so easy to do now and the cable will just sit around in the garage if it doesn't get used now. So 1 more run of cat6 to fridge and 1 more run of rg6 to the garage and alfresco. (Hopefully i can find a 8 way splitter for the rg6)

I've got a truckload of power points, so should be right there.

I just thought of something I wished for...

Have you made provisions for security devices and cameras around the house? Even if you don't wire them in, power and Cat5 to external and maybe internal corners in the house will also add resale value.

Ok Currently all 4 points in the games have computers connected to them. (one for each of us) my intention was to have 3 computers plugged in and one on wireless and use the spare point as an additional phone point but where I wanted to place the 4th computer I have a problem with the wireless signal. I could have used a switching hub and 2 points but it wasn't much more expensive to get all 4 in and it's a much neater solution. Originally my thought was that the computers in the games area would be a short term thing of only a couple of years but Dh likes the idea of keeping them there for longer so having 4 points instead of the switching hub and 2 points made sense. The
"office" is more a library/ music room/ storage room atm but I will also be using it for my work laptop and setup desk space for this.

Running 2 points not one is industry standard. It is also a fallback in case one gets damaged. There isn't a lot of difference in price having one or 2 runs of cable done. It also means I can plug a phone line either mains line or voip in and still have a point for computer/media player etc.