Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 3Jul 05, 2023 8:59 am ![]() 5. Also prewiring for solar ? What should I ask from the builder ? If you have selected someone to do your solar, see if they will come and do a pre-wire. We've done this on a couple of builds and it means that the wiring is all in the walls rather than running conduit up the outside of the house. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 4Jul 05, 2023 9:18 am ![]() ![]() 5. Also prewiring for solar ? What should I ask from the builder ? If you have selected someone to do your solar, see if they will come and do a pre-wire. We've done this on a couple of builds and it means that the wiring is all in the walls rather than running conduit up the outside of the house. there's two challenges here. first being that many builders simply wont allow other trades on site at all. The wiring in the walls can be done without prewiring. They do it all the time without pre consults. However with this in mind, it is worth while considering having some conduit in the roof cavity that exits near the electricity meter where the inverter will go. The start of it doesn't have to be anywhere specific and can just be near the top plate, close to where it will be exiting. The second is design of the system. The location of the inverter and various wiring and/or conduit will be reliant on the overall design of the system and orientation of the house.. Some inverters are in garages, or on outside walls depending orientation of the house. Ie if your electricity meter is on a northern wall, your inverter will likley not be installed next to the meter. So you're not just goint to be able to get a "pre wire", you will need to engage an installer to consult on the lot if you want to pre wire. So expect to be locked in if your builder will even allow it in th efirst place. Separately you may find many wont consult on a job that is 12-18 months out. Like i said, you're over complicating the lot. You're welcome to go down this route of course, its your house, just dont expect things to go as smooth as you are thinking that by doing this all pre handover will somehow reduce the stuff around. Quite the opposite in the majority of cases. From an ease perspective, having it done when you need it done is a far simpler proposition. Getting it done earlier Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 6Jul 05, 2023 10:46 am ![]() At the very least, make sure your electrical switchboard is large enough to handle the future solar system. I'd also run a conduit as suggested. yep. if you have lots of electrical running you will likely be told you need a sub board. Don't fight it, its great. You get the subboard in the garage and the main board on the outside. Its great not having to go out to te mainboard in your underwear when you trip something and also leaves ample space in both boards for future work Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 7Jul 05, 2023 11:29 am I'm approaching the same point of my build. As previously posted, you will most likely find your builder wont allow external trades in to perform this type of work. My builder is somewhat flexible surrounding solar and home theater prewire, but are not for the rest of the electrical plan which includes data cabling. Running cables but not having them terminated by the builder's sparky can cause support issues down the track - is it the cable or the termination that's faulty? For this reason I would avoid the hassle and let the builder do the complete job. I'll be running my CCTV via POE cabling back to a POE capable switch. There's pros and cons for both wired and wireless solutions for CCTV. I've got 2 awning windows that are in an elevated position. I will be retro fitting battery operated remote openers after handover. I looked at low voltage cabling but opted for the battery solution. Hope this helps you. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 8Jul 05, 2023 5:50 pm most builders i've met are generally ok with solar rough in done by the external subcontractor. but it's something that should be sorted out at contract preparation stage, not when you're already at the framing stage. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 9Jul 07, 2023 10:53 pm I’d pay for the data points too, run all cable to a central wall mounted rack cabinet with patch panel. Run a cable to each extra camera, don’t terminate it until you install the camera, it plugs straight in. Pre wire is more important if you have some of the following: 1. slab on ground 2. no roof cavity like a skillion roof 3. wall insulation in your internal walls 4. congested wifi locally ie unit blocks next door 5. multi-storey house 6. switchboard backing onto bathroom tile wall it is hard to cover everything so run some conduit to the switchboard as a minimum. New car chargers have current transformers to measure net electric current in the switchboard to turn chargers on and off. Looks better to run some of this internally. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 10Jul 09, 2023 2:43 pm For a modest sized house, what do you need data points for other than gaming? Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 11Jul 10, 2023 12:41 pm ![]() For a modest sized house, what do you need data points for other than gaming? it's best to do a data point anywhere where you may have a network device that isn't going to move. like TVs, desktop PCs (or any PCs in the office), wifi repeaters, NAS devices etc. leave wifi to things that cannot connect in any other way. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 12Jul 10, 2023 12:51 pm ![]() ![]() For a modest sized house, what do you need data points for other than gaming? it's best to do a data point anywhere where you may have a network device that isn't going to move. like TVs, desktop PCs (or any PCs in the office), wifi repeaters, NAS devices etc. leave wifi to things that cannot connect in any other way. Do TV's and computers really need a data cable if your house isn't huge and wifi coverage okay? Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 13Jul 10, 2023 2:21 pm ![]() ![]() it's best to do a data point anywhere where you may have a network device that isn't going to move. like TVs, desktop PCs (or any PCs in the office), wifi repeaters, NAS devices etc. leave wifi to things that cannot connect in any other way. Do TV's and computers really need a data cable if your house isn't huge and wifi coverage okay? i don't know what's 'huge' and 'okay wifi coverage' but in my experience they benefit from a fixed connection, and it also means you have less wifi contention with other devices. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 14Jul 11, 2023 12:24 pm i live in a 40SQ double storey home, wifi coverage is not an issue anywhere in the household. Buy a good gaming router with a dual compatibility of 2.4gh/5ghz and you wont have an issue. Split up your devices are needed for 2.4ghz and 5ghz and you wont have a problem. i have several (sh*t load of wireless devices). Never had an issue with interference whatsoever. Smart devices will find the best route to get data across to where its needed. this is coming from someone that made provisions for network terminations throughout the house. never ever needed to use cables. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 15Jul 11, 2023 12:48 pm I would say even more, with Wi-Fi 6 you get speeds up to 9.6 Gbits/s, it is almost 10 times faster than the best LAN (which gets you 1 Gbit at best, while most of the home networking devices still work over 100 times! slower 100 Mbit LAN). In this context, your main bottleneck will be always your NBN connection. PS. And Wi-Fi 7 with speeds up to 40 Gbit/s is already on its way. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 16Jul 11, 2023 4:04 pm When it comes to data points, it makes sense to have every single stationary device connected. That being said, with the money builders charging for something that simple (could be up to $200 per point) you obviously want something to suit your budget. Where to put data points in the order of priority: 1. WAP points in ceilings. Even if you want to rely on Wi-Fi for everything else, you still need to position access points correctly to avoid interference. 2. Data points for CCTVs. There is absolutely no need to keep them on Wi-Fi if you can have them running via Ethernet. Plus they are powered via PoE. 3. Data points for office, media, etc. 4. Data point for a doorbell, solar inverter and power meter Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 17Jul 11, 2023 4:58 pm ![]() 2. Data points for CCTVs. There is absolutely no need to keep them on Wi-Fi if you can have them running via Ethernet. Plus they are powered via PoE. except that wiring up such a system can easily add a grand to a wireless set up (if you're expecting your builder to do it). Its not like the wireless cameras are eating up bandwidth or batteries anyway. They activate on motion and barely use either resource enough to worry about it. The only conversation that remains is that of cost and how much of a headache one is over the other. Another point for wireless is that you also have the benefit of testing the positioning before you comit to the installation position. Wireless is winning teh race on most things. just embrace it. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 18Jul 11, 2023 5:11 pm ![]() ![]() 2. Data points for CCTVs. There is absolutely no need to keep them on Wi-Fi if you can have them running via Ethernet. Plus they are powered via PoE. Its not like the wireless cameras are eating up bandwidth or batteries anyway. It depends on the use case. If you hook up your cameras to NVR, then yes, they will always consume bandwidth. I am not sure if you even can do that with wireless cameras to be honest. I would not go that far and say that wireless is winning. It depends on a person and their tolerance to potential issues. Ethernet is definitely better but if it is worth the cost depends on personal preferences. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 19Jul 11, 2023 6:45 pm ![]() I would say even more, with Wi-Fi 6 you get speeds up to 9.6 Gbits/s, it is almost 10 times faster than the best LAN (which gets you 1 Gbit at best, while most of the home networking devices still work over 100 times! slower 100 Mbit LAN). In this context, your main bottleneck will be always your NBN connection. PS. And Wi-Fi 7 with speeds up to 40 Gbit/s is already on its way. that's not true. NBN may not even be in play when you transfer large volumes of data between a PC and a NAS for example. or have multiple people trying to stream different things from NAS. modern PCs/routers come with 2.5Gb LAN ports nowadays. i think it's only TVs that are lagging behind on 100Mbit, but until you get into 8k streaming you're probably ok with 100. also those WiFi speeds of 9.6Gbit/s number you're quoting would be total combined bandwidth across all channels. which is shared by all devices. also in ideal conditions at a particular distance from the router. totally different ball game when you're at the other end of the house from the router. of course one could get into mesh networks to fix those problems, but mesh repeaters would also benefit from a fixed cable connection if you don't want to have lots of them. Re: Prewiring a House for Data, CCTV, and Future-Proofing 20Jul 11, 2023 7:39 pm Well, if TV just needs 100 Mbit, then 9.5 Gbit/s can easily handle a dozen of TVs simultaneously. How many do you need for your NAS? Netflix streams 4K/UltraHD at only 15 Mbps, by the way. And yes, mesh network is an absolute must for big house. It worked for me in getting all non notified rain days removed from the builders claim, although the LDs was only $50/day 7 7217 Brass fly wire, you will need to cut it, shape it and jam it into brick slots 1 9221 ![]() Thanks all for your help I had an inspector who looked at over wall fall and full bathroom waterproofing, he said this will not be an issue as there is drain outside of… 4 3109 |