My house remodel

[aczlan]

While you have the walls open, I would run your low voltage wires up or down in 3/4" conduit. Then you can change it out later if you want to.

I would also run a couple of 3 or 4 inch conduits from the basement to the attic for future expansion.

Aaron Z

 

[OKnewguy]

If I was building a house with foam walls, every spray foamed wall would have at least one "smurf tube" per 8' or so. This stuff is the flexible conduit that is either orange or blue, you terminate it to a wall box, and take it down to the basement (first floor) or up to the attic (2nd floor). This will not cost much and will really ease things as technology changes.
I would run a cat 6 and rg6 quad to each wall in each room. It might seem excessive, but it really does not cost that much if you buy the big pull boxes from electrical supply or electronic supply houses, or maybe even amazon. Also both of these are easily terminated yourself if you invest in the right tools. Both the network and rg6quad, should then run to a distribution center. I would put a large panel in a central closet or utility room. All of these feeds to not need to be active, but you can patch them in as needed.
BTW, now you can use cat5/6 to distribute a/v, usb, vga, etc, etc.
Good luck, Dave

 

[Eyeshade]

Cat 6 wiring is the probably what you need for Internet and phone. Personally, I'd go with a wireless phone and skip the phone wiring. You will need coax for the tv. Make sure you run 2 coax to the tv so you can use DVR and watch tv at the same time (direct tv requires this). I think you need 2 coax for picture in picture too. I ran a conduit from behind the tv mounted to the wall to the baseboard so speaker wire, hdmi, coax could be fished up the wall. Make sure you wire for 5.1/6.1 speakers ( speakers behind the couch). When I put in conduit I left in some string so I could attach a wire to it later and pull the wire ( and replacement string) through after the wall is sealed up. Since the walls are open put in electrical for the wall hanging tv. My wife hates to see the wires running up the wall.

 

[Eyeshade]

As to speeds, I think cat 5 wire supports T100 transfers. This is getting slow by today's standards so they are moving to cat 6 . I think this supports T1000 transfers. Go with a main distribution box. Bring in the tv coax to the main and then distribute it to the rooms. A lot of companies make the in wall distribution boxes. Allow room for a 120v plug in the dist. box so you can plug in a signal booster if the tv signal gets weak.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Thanks guys, this will give me some ideas for planning the layout.

 

[buck12]

I have not read the entire thread. I recently visited a friends new house. One neat thing he did was run conduit in the walls from each of the locations he thought he may have a wall hung TV to the location he thought he may have a DVD, video game system, etc. so all cables will be hidden.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Well now that winter is here and work is slowing down I have been able to work more on my house. The one living room is almost completely stripped of lath and plaster on the ceilings and walls. After that I have three more ceilings to drop down then I can start installing the radiant pex tubing. I did buy the new boiler and boilermate hot water tank.

The boiler is the ECR International 97GB which is a 100k btu unit and 97% efficient. ECR 97gb It is a very slick unit and can be hung on the wall if you want. To me it looks basically like a instant hot water heater but about twice the size. It weighs just over 100 pounds and even with my bad back I was able to unload it from my truck and bring it in the basement by myself. Its amazing how small these things are getting but this one has a cover that when removed opens up most of the boiler parts making it easy to access and maintain/repair in the future.

The hot water tank will run off a seperate zone from the boiler. It is a BoilerMate WH41 by Amtrol Amtrol - BOILERMATE . I had this unit in my house I had in town and it was very nice. No need for two seperate units, just one unit (the boiler) to worry about maintaining.

I need to check but I know the boiler will qualify for the tax rebate and I think the hot water tank will qualify as well. The boiler was just over $4k and the boiler mate was around $900. So they will max out the tax rebate which is good as that helps pay for the radiant system.

I will add pics once I get the system set where I want it. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I was wondering what you guys would suggest for a simple 4 camera security system. I have all the first floor gutted and am working on wiring before I run my radiant heat lines and started thinking about what else I should put in the walls before the foam insulation is applied and thought about cameras. I want to put two in back, one pointing towards the barn and the other towards the basement/back entrance. The other two cameras would be on the front porch and side porch gunned towards the entry so I can see who is coming or if someone has been up messing around. I plan to have them all wired to a first floor office which is set close to center of the four locations and would like to have them tie into the computer there to record to a hard drive and allow remote monitoring. I am not so much worried about the house as I am the barn as my dog is a great watch dog and she alerts everyone if someone is near but I would still like to have some method of catching people snooping or stealing or just plain being stupid around my house. Last year the neighbor who I let use my side driveway to the barn had a party and the people with the tent and chairs showed up and instead of turning around in the large flat area of all driveway in front of my barn (which is designed to be able to pull trucks, tractors and what ever else with trailers attached around easily) they decided it would be better to turn around in my back yard in early spring when it was saturated and spongy. They didn't just back up on it, they drove completely on it and just looped around leaving large ruts for me to fix. Called the company and they refused to do anything about it and I had no proof so I just used the tamper and fixed it myself before it dried out and made it that much harder to fix It would have been great to have a video of their truck/trailer with name plastered on the side making ruts in my back yard (which would have been visible from the camera aimed at the back entrance).

 

[Fixemall]

I am going on my fourth year with the lorex wireless system, has infrared for night vision and two way audio/ motion detection. I also went with extra monitors next to my bed so I don't have to get out of bed at night to have a look around. Events are stored on an SD card and it is essentially plug and play.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Well its been a long wait as I have been waiting to have enough time and money to work on my house properly. I don't want to do something and not be happy with it so I am lucky in that I have no time table to be done by and can work slowly.

What I am doing now is trying to layout the kitchen. I am trying to attach a floor plan showing the kitchen and dining room areas. The long 20' 10" wall is the back wall of the house overlooking the orchard and barn. I want to have a little nook area at the left of that wall where Ava can do homework or just have a little spot to eat breakfast or what ever. The reason I am showing this to you guys is that I need ideas. I am going to have a dishwasher under the counter as well as a double basin deep sink. I have installed basic kitchens on jobsites and such but never been involved in designing them. The stove is just a basic stove/oven unit I bought at the local appliance store as well as the fridge. So can any of you guys (or gals) help me figure out a good way to lay this out? Anything I should consider or stay away from as far as islands or cabinets or ???

I am not sure the type wood I am going to go with for the cabinets yet but I don't think that matters. The floor will be a tile of some sort but again, I have not got to that stage to really need to worry about it yet. I am just trying to get this figured out so I can do the electrical and plumbing rough in and be ready for the foam installers to do the walls.

I really am at a loss as to designing kitchens and bathrooms. I appreciate any help you guys can give me and hopefully I will be ready to start hanging drywall this spring.