Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 23, 2009 10:37 pm hi there, we are in the process of prestart, doing the electrical plan etc and were wondering if it was necessary to have conduits for the switches and power points that are on internal walls? ou builder doesn't normally do them so the costs are adding up. I'm not sure why they are needed? Can someone enlightem me? thanks
oh, what's a reasonable price to pay fo installation of 1a room fan and 2)a motion sensor light? Our builder is charging us $300 for each (just te installationnot the fitting? about to build our first home! Re: to conduit or not conduit? 2Jan 23, 2009 10:59 pm Not sure where you're located, but we live in WA where most homes are double brick, except internal walls which are single brick.
We had our power points and lights installed beforehand. We wanted to get a couple of extra lights later on (feature pendants above kitchen bench) and a ceiling fan in the alfresco... but didn't want to pay huge builder markups for them to install these items. We did the same for our TV points. We got conduit run to a 'faceplate' so when we go to install these items, it's just a case of running the wires and making the connections. We won't need to saw holes in the walls to run the new wires! That would be a huge amount of patching to fix up afterward. If a wall were double brick you could get away with it because the wires can be run from the roof space down the wall cavity and you just knock the hole in the wall where the faceplate is going to go. But on internal, single brick walls then you really should try and run conduit where you can. My two cents anyway! Building the Grand Harmony Triple with Scott Park Homes Re: to conduit or not conduit? 3Jan 23, 2009 11:14 pm Hi, we are supplying all of our lights and fans and the builder is installing them. To install a fan it is costing us $105 and a motion sensor light outside $29. $300 each sounds alot? We have had some conduit in internal walls as we are double brick also. The conduit and faceplate is $52 each. Hope this helps. Re: to conduit or not conduit? 4Jan 23, 2009 11:15 pm I do not believe they need to be in conduits if the cables are inside the wall (That is for standard project home in sydney), its only to protect the cables from damage if you go underground or outside the house. Re: to conduit or not conduit? 5Jan 24, 2009 5:46 am thanks for the replies - we're in WA.
Hmm, Brad and sonya - your prices seem much more reasonable than ours for installation. Can you tell me who your building with so i can try to get our builder to match?(or am i dreaming) We thought the prices were a bit steep too, but then the prestart lady said, 'well, you could get your own electrician to come back later, but if they damage the render it's not our responsibility to fix it, but if our guy damages it, then we repair" How likely is this? Also, sorry for sounding dumb, but are the conduits and faceplates more for you to do/add things later? EG like starlet who is putting own pendants etc in? My brother said to do on ALL the switches and power points on internal walls so 1) we can easily change light fittings at a later stage or 2) add other stuff later or 3) easier to fix any problems. thanks again about to build our first home! Re: to conduit or not conduit? 6Jan 24, 2009 7:52 am $300 each, that sound outrageous - our builder has quoted I think $50 per dimmer and $100 per outdoor sensor, installed. But I'm not 100% sure, I'll have to check again next week. I'll let you know. Who are you building with, and where???
Annie A thankful person is a happy person. [/color]My hobby design blog: http://aviewondesign.blogspot.com/ Re: to conduit or not conduit? 7Jan 24, 2009 9:00 am FYI, our electrician is charging us $180 per ceiling fan (instal only) and he is definitely not doing us any favours with his pricing so I think your quotes are quite high! Ask them to justify - good luck with the negotiations. 'We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.' - Winston Churchill Re: to conduit or not conduit? 9Jan 24, 2009 9:36 am I'd do as Starlet has done, if the builder will do it for a reasonable rate, otherwise talk to the electrician directly, they maybe a bit more accommodating price wise to install a few extras. Re: to conduit or not conduit? 10Jan 24, 2009 4:18 pm We are building with Ultimate Homes. The conduit and faceplate is for tv and phone cables that we will get put in after handover. You can only ask why their price is so much higher? Who are you building with? Re: to conduit or not conduit? 11Jan 25, 2009 4:41 pm hi there, we are building with Ross Griiffin Homes.
I'll ty and get more info re: the other prices too - just get a feel for things. At this stage we are getting them to do most of the elctrical stuff as it seems more convenient? From memory, it's about $50 to convert from batten to down, and $140 to install a downlight (fittings to be supplied by us) Can other people buidling in perth/WA give me their prices too? thanks heaps for all th ereplies so far about to build our first home! Re: to conduit or not conduit? 12Jan 25, 2009 6:50 pm Also in WA here we've paid for an additional 7 conduits with draw wires for later wiring up our home network/ additional phone cable and for a later additional tv point.
( we have external wall insulation and putting in any wiring later on these walls would be very difficult and we also didn't want to have holes dug in our plaster for internal wall points etc.) Not too happy atm as the electrician is part way through(we hope) doing his bit and has left out the draw wires., left out 2 conduits, , put a draw wire in an external wall instead of in a conduit , tried to sneak a tv cable into a conduit we've paid for for something else instead of where it should be and in the process completely reversed the positions of tv cable, conduit and power point layout in our lounge room. He's also managed to stuff up the position of 2 power points and one light switch . and that's just the things we know about. One thing he's done is put a light switch where a sliding door is going. So you've have to step through the doorway, close the slider and then feel around in the dark for the switch!!!.. what an idiot. I don't think he looked at the plan specs for our build at all just guessed for half the stuff. Am hoping the S.S. will be on top of it all on Tuesday after the long weekend. We've rung him and left a message and I've emailed a detailed errors list to the paperwork contact person with a request to pass on the info to teh S.S.. Re: to conduit or not conduit? 13Jan 26, 2009 11:09 am hi there kexkez,
sorry to sound stupid, but what's a drawwire? thanks about to build our first home! Re: to conduit or not conduit? 14Jan 26, 2009 11:19 am a draw wire sits inside the conduit so that at a later stage when you want to put cables etc down the conduit the cable can be attached to the wire at the top and then pulled from the bottom until the cable comes out the bottom of the conduit. In our case since most of the conduits are for cat5 type cable having a draw wire makes them more functional since its more flexible than tv cable.
Since it is illegal in Australia to do your own networking cable. (Unless you are a certified cabler. I'm not going into the should/ should not 's here please) I rang a local cabler and that was what he said he'd prefer. BUT we were told when we signed the contracts that conduits come with draw wires anyway. Will be interesting to see if that's actually the case. if now there will be more phone calls to the person who told us that.. the conduit would need to be undamaged regardless of what network is in play. The conduit needs to be able to have fibre run through it. NBN and Opticomm are just… 4 3139 I work with owner, he/she is my man on the ground and I instruct them when to visit the site and take photos and I have other tools in the bag. 4 16718 1000000% definitely add insulation. I have in my home and it makes a big difference minimising sound transfer. Insulation is pretty cheap and definitely worth it 2 7020 |