Browse Forums Home Theatre & Automation Re: Cbus real costs 2Nov 23, 2010 5:14 am Hilly Hi Guys, I have a question regarding cbus what do you think the cost in % over normal electrical install on a new house been built would be. if the cost for electrical was $21,000 with 80 down lights . Hilly . As I said to you on the c-bus forums you are looking at around 20-30 TIMES (not percent) the cost of traditional wiring methods. I should note this is not counting the cost of the light fittings, just the switching hardware. I hope your $21k is a fully inclusive price? Now to do some more maths for your specific example you consider this. With your 80 down lights, the smallest number of channels you require is 27. That is 3 lights per 1A channel using 50 watt globes. You COULD go to 4, but that's cutting it a bit fine. To do 27 channels you need 4x 8 channel dimmers, so straight away your looking at 4k for the model with a power supply. Your also going to be looking at at least 27 switches, give or take my guess is give. A C2000 model will cost around $100 or $250 for the fancier Saturn. So either $2700 or $6750 for the Saturns. Your also going to need an extra power supply or two because the power supply versions of the dimmers don't have enough grunt to drive that many switches or sensors. So $900 for two power supplies. Now add a PC interface $500. I gather you also want some motion sensors, so lets add 10 or so of them, valued at around $200 each, so that's $2000, you may now need an extra power supply too thinking about it, so add another $450. What's the total so far? $14600 for a very basic system. Now lets add some more. How about a touch screen? B&W your looking at $1400 or $3500 for the colour job. If you don't want a touch screen then you might need a PAC to do some fancy scenes for about $700. I mean to say without any of these units all you have is a system that can turn lights on and off, which can clearly be done a lot better without C-bus. Now you need to add the costs of an extra couple of switch boards to house all this equipment and some extra circuit breakers and overvoltage protection, so add another $1500. A few boxes of the special pink data cable, boot lace crimps another $500+ So our costs are now probably over $20,000, I have lost count AND this is before you have payed for the installation. I hear the going rate for labour is AT LEAST double the cost of the hardware, so we are up around $40,000. Now maybe I should mention that this $40k is in ADDITION to the $21k for your basic system. After all you will still need most of those components, all your going to save is maybe $1000 in standard switches and some minor cable savings, but really that is chicken feed. So about $60k all up. So what do we have? For your basic system it is going to cost you about $262 per light on average. For C-bus it is about $750. So guess not too bad only 3 times as much. As I said in the C-bus forums you install C-bus because you want it, not because it is a fiscally viable system. Re: Cbus real costs 3Dec 06, 2010 4:01 pm What I would do is look into Control 4 and save yourself the pain in the *** and the BIG $$$ on installation. This system is only kinda new in AUS but there are some good dealers around to chat to about it. I'm just about to start a reno in Brisbane using this full system for automation, A/V with digital radio, security and air-con. The thing I love with control4 is I don’t have to spend big $$$ on a full house rewire just to use it. The only con at this point is I think the switch mech's are a little out dated and the fan control need a little work to get it right. My 2cents I am not sure whether Perth has its own way of doing things in regards to this. Most of Perth has class A (sandy soil), except for some areas near rivers or hills. 2 13100 Looking to tile the facade pillars rather than rendering. Builder is quoting 2500$ laying cost for upto 10msq. The 2 pillars come to be 16msq. So laying costs are 5000$… 0 7550 10 15751 |