Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 21Nov 23, 2014 8:05 pm Hi all, It's been a while! Lots of progress in the last month or so. Check out our latest post for more information... http://sydneyalkira.blogspot.com/2014/1 ... gress.html Cheers Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 22Nov 24, 2014 6:43 am nice update .. good luck with all the dramas ... interesting that Alkira are no longer using Home Options Gallery can't wait to see your result with the fireplace Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 24Nov 24, 2014 7:40 am Not sure who they are using now. All I'd say is make sure you take a lot of notes for any variations you make from the standard selections and then confirm those choices back in writing with both asking and the home options people. Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 25Nov 24, 2014 9:38 pm Alkira are doing internal selections in-house, but the kitchen is still at Home Options Gallery. Downside is you don't get to see many options, so it's a good idea to go see what you might like to change at the Home Options Gallery. The other problem I found is electricals are done at the same time, power points and lights are fine but we had little idea about data points and had little guidance on that front. Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 26Nov 25, 2014 4:16 pm AvaG ... what stage are you up to now? ... if you need any help regarding datapoints you can PM me Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 27Nov 26, 2014 10:00 pm Finishing the internal selections this week, still waiting on lots of pricing for electricals, kitchen etc. Thanks for the offer re: data points, may take you up on the offer if we don't get much clarification from Alkira. Neither my husband nor I are tech-savvy so hopefully we won't regret not including more points down the track. I was fascinated to see the number of data points you have in your house! One question, does Alkira have cabling terminating in a hub as standard, and do they determine the location, or do you pick where it goes? Probably a dumb question, as I said, not tech-savvy! Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 28Nov 26, 2014 10:09 pm We picked ours; although the actual networking/electrical device you call a 'hub' is something you supply (they're worth all of $50 these days, or $20). We chose the cupboard/shelf ours was going in, and that's where all the data/ethernet connections terminate & where the connections from outside also lead to (ie. Optus installed a box of tricks near the electricity meter-box & they just needed to connect to a wire which leads to the 'hub' cupboard). Various 'phone & iPad rechargers are plugged-in in that cupboard too. Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 29Nov 26, 2014 10:17 pm AvaG Finishing the internal selections this week, still waiting on lots of pricing for electricals, kitchen etc. Thanks for the offer re: data points, may take you up on the offer if we don't get much clarification from Alkira. Neither my husband nor I are tech-savvy so hopefully we won't regret not including more points down the track. I was fascinated to see the number of data points you have in your house! One question, does Alkira have cabling terminating in a hub as standard, and do they determine the location, or do you pick where it goes? Probably a dumb question, as I said, not tech-savvy! Hi AvaG you determine where the "Main Point" is located (pls check my electrical plan) as for termination my guess is that it will be extra based on how you want to terminate it (my previous place it all went to one spot and I had to do the rest myself). John R Turk is a good place to purchase such equipment but yeah I can help you if you need it the reason for having so many is that I use an IT phone system and already have 6 phones (so there goes 6 data points), TV room will have 1 for the TV, 1 for a media player, 1 for a DVD/Bluray player and 1 possibly for a xbox/Playstation. I don't particularly like using wireless for "all devices" so need wired and plus I've relocated a TV socket to the main point area so that I can plug my tv tuner so I can watch TV without turning on the TV (for one of those days where you don't want to get out of bed or want to watch something in bed ) think about how many different types of devices (TV, media player etc) you currently have and possible future possible devices and you'll roughly want some sort of access for them. last resort if you've already locked in your data points is to buy small switches to piggy back additional devices in the one room if it sounds all mumbo jumbo PM me and I'll do my best to help you out Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 30Nov 26, 2014 10:26 pm Forg We picked ours; although the actual networking/electrical device you call a 'hub' is something you supply (they're worth all of $50 these days, or $20). We chose the cupboard/shelf ours was going in, and that's where all the data/ethernet connections terminate & where the connections from outside also lead to (ie. Optus installed a box of tricks near the electricity meter-box & they just needed to connect to a wire which leads to the 'hub' cupboard). Various 'phone & iPad rechargers are plugged-in in that cupboard too. For the number of data points I've got I'm not sure if a cupboard will suffice ... would you have a photo of that Forg? My plan was to get a 6RU wall mount shelf and a 24 port krone patch panel so I can mount my 24 port switch and then some sort of shelving or similar and store all the NAS storage devices and any other IT equipment there Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 31Nov 26, 2014 10:50 pm Apart from looking a bit messy, is there a disadvantage to piggybacking additional devices with a switch, instead of having separate data points for each device? Nothing is locked in, we haven't received the electrical plans yet, but we're trying to contain the costs. (Perhaps a fruitless exercise, given we've already blown the budget). I think this has been our biggest downside to Alkira's consultant doing the electricals, we didn't know all the questions to ask and she perhaps didn't know enough to advise us. There was never any mention of where all the connections would terminate. Do they use cat 6 cabling as standard, or is that an upgrade? No discussion about this either. Sorry to hijack your thread, feel free to pm instead of replying here! Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 32Nov 27, 2014 7:53 am deluded For the number of data points I've got I'm not sure if a cupboard will suffice ... would you have a photo of that Forg? My plan was to get a 6RU wall mount shelf and a 24 port krone patch panel so I can mount my 24 port switch and then some sort of shelving or similar and store all the NAS storage devices and any other IT equipment there No sorry, no photo. It's nothing special (and because it's hidden away it's a mess of over-length cables etc ), just a quad power-point & a quad-Ethernet panel & a quad-coax panel next to each other behind/above the chest-height shelf of our hallway linen cupboard, the coax & Ethernet panels look like Clipsal 2000-series and are the same size as a single or double power-point. You're right, if you're wanting Ethernet to every room you'd probably want more, although dunno what would be available from Alkira if you want 24 ports; you might be better off if it's possible to ask for the Ethernet cables to be coming out of the wall & you terminate them yourself when you know how long they need to be? Dunno, 24 ports can't be super common for residential (but then their electrical suppliers would surely do commercial too). AvaG, if you want ULTIMATE NETWORK PERFORMANCE then you're better off having only the one switch in a central point with everything else coming back to it. However, I can't see that ever being necessary; even with fibre-to-the-home NBN, having multiple switches wouldn't be a bottleneck compared to the bottleneck of the telecommunication link. The only way you'd ever experience a real difference would be if multiple people are copying multiple large files around the home network at once, the copies would take a bit longer (and I'm talking gigabyte files here). We don't have deluded's home-office needs, we're really only using the Ethernet links to get to the internet. So I'm using the switch in the wireless access point next to the modem, and there's another one under the TV which is plugged into the media-player & a semi-NAS hard-drive & the bluray player & a PC & the X-Box. The old TV is downstairs, also connected by Ethernet, and they're our two ports. Wireless with a single access-point has been fine so far. The one thing we considered, but ditched, was Ethernet to behind the 'fridge in case smart 'fridges actually happen - but then someone told me the existing models are wireless & don't use much data. To be honest, regarding the electricals in particular ... we spent a lot of time with the electrician because the diagram the HOG guy produced wasn't particularly clear. Apparently Alkira used to consult with their electricians as part of planning it out, but they've gone with HOG to save time & hence money; however unless you only want the standard provisions, I can't see how it wouldn't be cheaper just to get the guy who's doing it to plan it in the first place, to avoid re-work. Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 33Nov 27, 2014 10:14 pm Ok, thanks Forg. That's helpful. Electricals are back with Alkira now, as of a month or two ago. I'm assuming their electrical person will do the electrical plans and hopefully mark clearly where the cables terminate. The consultant was great with colours and lighting but didn't have so much to say about data points. Did you have to specify cat 6 cables, do they use cat 6 as standard? Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 34Nov 28, 2014 9:38 am AvaG Ok, thanks Forg. That's helpful. Electricals are back with Alkira now, as of a month or two ago. I'm assuming their electrical person will do the electrical plans and hopefully mark clearly where the cables terminate. The consultant was great with colours and lighting but didn't have so much to say about data points. Did you have to specify cat 6 cables, do they use cat 6 as standard? AvaG , it should be cat 6 as standard (Alkira has a sales clause somewhere about readying the house for NBN) I had to recheck with HOG and they said it is Cat 6. in another 10years time cat6 cables will be old news and we'll all be talking about major renovations to recable the house or just go full wireless Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 37Nov 28, 2014 10:09 pm Forg With no fibre to our place, I can't see Cat6 being a bottleneck to internet access in my lifetime ... too funny ... I'm sure that's what people said 10 years ago about cat 5/5e and that it will be sufficient Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 38Dec 07, 2014 8:59 pm Hi all. Interesting few weeks. Alkira have learned about our blog and sent us a letter. Read all about it in our latest post: http://sydneyalkira.blogspot.com/2014/1 ... -from.html Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 39Dec 07, 2014 11:52 pm very very interesting ... if they did their job diligently and have nothing to hide I don't see why they need to contact you "in writing" I think in everyone's build there will always be good and bad and the "i didn't think of that" ... blogs and forum threads are there to provide an insight as we're all new to this Re: Alkira Homes Elyse 15 Sydney Northern Beaches 40Dec 08, 2014 6:30 am It's a bit crap ... one comment about defamation though, sydneyalkirabuild, I don't know if statements need to be untrue to be defamation - it's obviously not going to be cut & dried because the law is always manipulated so it's not, but I'm fairly sure that you can defame someone or a company with un-spun 100% truth. Hi, I am wondering if anyone has built with Montgomery in the last few years on the Northern Beaches? I don't see the see them around, as I would love to ask how happy… 0 3178 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74219 I would never build with Fowler homes. I built with them in 2021 and till date maintenance issues are pending. All their existing trades and businesses don't work with… 14 105129 |