One week from sheetrock- need your expertise!! (1 Viewer)

[KevinFuqua]

I am having a house built and am about one week from sheetrock. I am having structured wire pulls run throughout the house from a main distribution panel in the basement not far from my HT. Since I plan to have sheetrock ceilings in all levels of the house including the basement( I know, I've been warned ) I want to do as much future proofing now before the sheetrock goes up. Though I will start with a big screen RPTV and 5.1 surround in the HT I want to make it easy to convert to a front projector or other upgrade in the future. Assume you were building a house now. What things would you incorporate behind the walls to make your house as future ready as possible, both from a home theater standpoint and throughout the house in general. Thanks in advance.
Kevin
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[Wes]

Several things to think about:
-Door bell light in the HT.
-Outlets near where you might want Powered subs, and run RCA cables.
-Surround and EX inwall wiring.
-RG6 Coax for cable and sat.
-Auto garage door opener wiring.
-Sprinkler valve wiring to where you would like the control panel to the valve boxes.
-Correct switched outlets for front room lighting. (ours ended up on outlets that do us no good.)
I paid extra to have the electrician place my main panel down stairs but I found out later he used small wire so now to run Central air and or a Hot tub I will need to run a new wire from out side. He new what my intent was so it makes me mad.
Wes

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Here is some ideas:
1) Pick a central point (your basement) and run "Smart Home" cableing to every room. This cable has dual RG6 coax for CATV/DSS, and dual Cat5 computer cable. Run it to each room and terminate it at electrical outlet box's. Cover the box's with blank plates. You can add a network hub and coaxial distribution panel later.
Have 2 runs of RG6 coax come from the roof to this central location. Have a DSS (Dish or DirectTV) installer come out and install/align a dish in-advance (or at least tell you where to run the coax to.
This will give you whole-house distribution of TV/DSS signals, and computer networking.
2) In your HT room: decide where your equipment will be and run Component video cables up inside the walls and down the middle of the room to whereever you might install a projector. Leave it there for future expandability. Make sure to run a power-outlet to the projector location. You may as well run a SVideo cable as well, but SVideo is not as good for long runs as component.
3) Run 3 runs of 12 ga wire from behind your equipment to behind your listening position for the 3 rear speakers. Also run some RG6 coax to drive a rear subwoofer.
4) Run 12 ga to the left and another to the right of your listening position for side/dipole speakers.
5) Pick a corner with the longest un-broken walls and run some RG6 coax here for an external sub. Make sure this corner has a power outlet nearby as well.
6) Make sure to install a telephone outlet near your equipment as many CATV box's and DSS receivers need a telephone hookup.
7) Run a telephone outlet to your central listening position so you can install a phone and not have to get up and run to the other room when it rings. You can always disable the ringer for un-interupted watching.
8) Make sure to completly line your HT room with the pink fiberglass insulation. This will really help with soundproofing.
9) Ask the sheatrocker installer to use twice as many screws as normal when installing the wallboards. This will help make the room "tighter" for bass response.
10) For a front-projector, you want as dark a room as possible. This means blackout shades/curtins. You can sometimes get motorized shades so make sure to run power to the ceiling near your windows to prepare for this.

 

[KevinFuqua]

Wes and Bob,
Thanks for the info. I am having structured wiring run to all rooms of the house as a way of future proofing. It has 2 RG6, 2Cat5 and fiber( to a select few rooms ). It all originates from a panel in the basement. They, my av company, have run 4 RG6 cables from the approximate location of my dish to this panel. Do these cables terminate here in the panel and then I just put recievers in whichever rooms I want?? Rather than run the wire for a FPTV they ran 2" PVC pipe. Based on what I have read on this site I went and checked what type of speaker wire they are using. It is 14 ga. Is that acceptable?? Will I be unhappy with that? The longest run of speaker wire in the HT is to the surrounds and the distance is probably 20 feet. The runs to the in cieling speakers in the rest of the house are quite lengthy but I'm not as concerned with the quality of sound coming from those as I am with the HT.

 

[John Desmond]

Wes and Bob:
Thanks very much! Starting to plan a new, dedicated HT and you gave excellent ideas to consider for wiring.

 

[MickeS]

You guys are so lucky to have basements...

Every time I read about people building their dedicated home theatres in basements, I feel like packing up my stuff and move. There are no basements here and it drives me nuts.
/Mike

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Kevin: It sounds like your AV company is doing a good job by putting in conduit. Now you can pull more cable later.
DSS: No, the 4 runs can now be patched to whichever room you have the DSS receiver. This gives you a very flexable system.
Speaker Wire Runs: Several speaker web sites recommend the following:
< 10 feet - 16 ga
10-20 feet - 14 ga
> 20 feet - 12 ga
But remember: this is for critical music listening. The issues do not always apply for the rear speakers in a HT system - the sounds are much less critical.
Your companies use of 14 ga sounds correct.
Dont be afraid to post the name of your AV company/contractor. We love personal recomendations.
Note: Dont forget about the ceiling POWER outlet for a front-projector.

 

[Grant B]

one more thing
whereever you plan a tv in a different room, rurn at least 4 lines of RG6 quad
1 Dss
then direct input from the main system to tv
(3) R , L V
(actually I ran at least 6 just in case)
I ran S video cables to all rooms
better now than later

 

[KevinFuqua]

Bob,
I'm using American Audio out of Greenville SC. They have been excellent to work with. They are running srtuctured wiring throughout my home that I'm having built as well as a whole house audio system and, of course, the HT. The information on here from folks like you has been invaluable. This has been the one part of the construction process that has been mine alone and I have found that if I have any question about anything HT you guys have the answer. Thanks. And I did ask the electrician to pull an outlet into the HT cieling for a future FPTV, something I would have missed had you not recommended it!