electrical requirements for large whole home system (1 Viewer)

[juytere]

I'm building a whole house everything system. It is a sixteen zone system with full AV distribution, 9 security cameras, about 70 speakers, ten 9.1 surround sound amplifiers, 6 PCs, KVMs, loads of networking gear, two dss, bluray, roku, squeezebox, NVR server, NVR viewer, etc. There are air conditioners in the Liebert MCR racks. The headend contains three 42U racks. Two of the racks are for AV equipment and the third rack is for the PC equipment.

Here is a detailed list of all the equipment and their electrical needs:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/70589/MillerPlan.xls

You will see two tabs on the spreadsheet: Equipment and Cabinets. These contain very detailed information on all the devices going into the three racks. You will see that I specified 14 electrical circuits.

I have already purchased all the equipment except for the "APC UPS 280 watts" and "Furman power conditioners". If anybody experienced with residential systems with requirements like this could give me feedback on the electrical requirements and my proposed design it would be great, all feedback is welcome!

 

[Adam Gregorich]

There is a lot here. I'll look over and post some thoughts today.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

I'm about to jump on a conf call now, but I have some concerns with what you are trying to do. I'll go into more detail later.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Some quick observations in no particular order:

OK. I think doing that many 5.1, 7.1, 9.1 systems is a mistake. How many of those rooms are you doing to sit down and actually watch a surround encoded source material in vs just having background audio in? If you are going to have a surround set up then you anchor the sound to a specific area which means you need to anchor your furniture. It makes sense for some rooms but not for just about every one.

If you are more interested in background music you would be way better off with some Crestron Bipads and amps

Why the aversion to local sources? It makes sense to put your satellite receivers and tuners in with the racked gear, but I would have local inputs for a gaming system or local DVD/BD player. Its quickly going to become a pain when you have to walk to the equipment room every time you want to load a movie. If you are going to have some local sources in rooms with surround, you may as well put the receiver there too. That way you can use HDMI switching and it will be cheaper to wire as you will have shorter runs for your speaker wire, and just need to run a cat5 for IR and a cresnet for control (assuming you are using st-com).

The Wii won't work in the rack. It needs a sensor bar and that sensor bar has a 20ft (approx) cable. Will your TV be 20ft from the Wii in the rack? They make wireless ones but the range isn't that great. How are the wireless controllers going to work. They have approx 30 ft range to the Wii. Same goes for any other game console you might want to add.

With studios on the verge of using the IRT your BD player isn't going to do you a lot of good run through an analog matrix switch. Plan on running several sets of cat5 cables to each display run back to an HDMI switch.

On the rack layout I would leave a space between each amp on the racks. Middle Atlantic has a white paper about rack cooling that would be worth reading on their site.

Really think about the process flow when it comes to programming. You have 2 sat dishes for a LOT of TVs. How do you share those tuners? When you select sat TV in one room on Crestron how does it choose a tuner? You don't want two rooms to fight over the same tuner.

Think about the camera in the guest room. Cameras in the house are one thing, but I wouldn't feel comfortable staying in a room in someones house if I knew there was a camera there.

Are you programming this? If not have you run your list by the programmer you plan on using? Have you looked at a system that he has programmed to see how easy it is to use? A good programmer will make or break your system.

Are you using Crestron for HVAC and lighting too?

 

[juytere]

OK. I think doing that many 5.1, 7.1, 9.1 systems is a mistake. How many of those rooms are you doing to sit down and actually watch a surround encoded source material in vs just having background audio in? If you are going to have a surround set up then you anchor the sound to a specific area which means you need to anchor your furniture. It makes sense for some rooms but not for just about every one.


In all the big rooms we will be listening to 2 channel audio in All Channel Stereo or Dolby PIIx mode so all the speakers are being used. On the amps the "zone B" is sometimes used to also put audio in hallway, master bath, master closet, etc.



If you are more interested in background music you would be way better off with some Crestron Bipads and amps

Why the aversion to local sources? It makes sense to put your satellite receivers and tuners in with the racked gear, but I would have local inputs for a gaming system or local DVD/BD player. Its quickly going to become a pain when you have to walk to the equipment room every time you want to load a movie. If you are going to have some local sources in rooms with surround, you may as well put the receiver there too. That way you can use HDMI switching and it will be cheaper to wire as you will have shorter runs for your speaker wire, and just need to run a cat5 for IR and a cresnet for control (assuming you are using st-com).

I hardly ever watch BD. I think eventually though I may put a BD player hidden away somewhere local so I do not have to walk down to the headend.

The Wii won't work in the rack. It needs a sensor bar and that sensor bar has a 20ft (approx) cable. Will your TV be 20ft from the Wii in the rack? They make wireless ones but the range isn't that great. How are the wireless controllers going to work. They have approx 30 ft range to the Wii. Same goes for any other game console you might want to add.


I bought an extension cable for the wii sensor bar, it works fine.


With studios on the verge of using the IRT your BD player isn't going to do you a lot of good run through an analog matrix switch. Plan on running several sets of cat5 cables to each display run back to an HDMI switch.


I rarely use Bluray at all, maybe I will get a fury device if needed.Eventually this will be upgraded from component video to Crestron Digital Media HDMI distribution or whatever replaces HDMI someday.

On the rack layout I would leave a space between each amp on the racks. Middle Atlantic has a white paper about rack cooling that would be worth reading on their site.

Ok thanks for the feedback.

Really think about the process flow when it comes to programming. You have 2 sat dishes for a LOT of TVs. How do you share those tuners? When you select sat TV in one room on Crestron how does it choose a tuner? You don't want two rooms to fight over the same tuner.

Think about the camera in the guest room. Cameras in the house are one thing, but I wouldn't feel comfortable staying in a room in someones house if I knew there was a camera there.

Are you programming this? If not have you run your list by the programmer you plan on using? Have you looked at a system that he has programmed to see how easy it is to use? A good programmer will make or break your system.

yes I programmemd it already. All the equipment is set up. I am just getting ready to do the electrical so was curious if anybody had any input on the power requirements part of the spreadseet.