New House Wiring

peterc14

I have very little knowledge on this so bear with me.

I have a question in relation to TV points and CAT 5.

We are 1/2 way thorugh self build and are beginning first fix. The incoming aerial for the TV will probably be in the attic with the phone/internet incoming point under the stairs.

I would like to have TV/Sky/Cable in the one room downstairs with the possibility of watching the same Sky/Cable channel in the 3/4 rooms... what should I do in relation to wiring to make this work as smooth as possible.

Also I plan to install Sonos system in a number of rooms but want to hard wire them so was thinking of running CAT 5 from the incoming phone/internet point under the stairs to the various rooms. What should I be wary of? Also do you need phone points for Sky/Cable at each TV point or does CA5 do the same job?

Apologies if the questions are stupid but would appreciate any response.

Randyleprechaun

peterc14 wrote: »

I have very little knowledge on this so bear with me.

I have a question in relation to TV points and CAT 5.

We are 1/2 way thorugh self build and are beginning first fix. The incoming aerial for the TV will probably be in the attic with the phone/internet incoming point under the stairs.

I would like to have TV/Sky/Cable in the one room downstairs with the possibility of watching the same Sky/Cable channel in the 3/4 rooms... what should I do in relation to wiring to make this work as smooth as possible.

Also I plan to install Sonos system in a number of rooms but want to hard wire them so was thinking of running CAT 5 from the incoming phone/internet point under the stairs to the various rooms. What should I be wary of? Also do you need phone points for Sky/Cable at each TV point or does CA5 do the same job?

Apologies if the questions are stupid but would appreciate any response.

On the Tv part of it, i would advise that you run 4 or even 5 good quality co-ax cables, from a central point, say in the attic, to the TV where you think you will have sky/cable.

From the same central point in the attic, run 2no to each other TV location. This will allow you to view the sky in the other rooms as well as any terrestrial pictures you may want to receive via an aerial. The second cable at each location will allow you to also put in Free to air or Freesat receivers in those rooms to watch free to air channels independently, or to add another sky receiver(multiroom). It is possible to do this with only one cable at each location but far better if you have the 2 cables.

It might not be a bad idea to run 4no co-ax to a sat-dish position,(again from the central location) these point SE. Also a single run to a chimney where an aerial may be located. This should cover all your options...I think.

As for phone outlets, I'd have one at every TV location where you intend that you may have a sky box. The phone line is needed for multi room installations. Cable the phone points in CAT 5 minimum.

That's my tuppence worth anyway..!!!

peterc14

Randyleprechaun wrote: »

On the Tv part of it, i would advise that you run 4 or even 5 good quality co-ax cables, from a central point, say in the attic, to the TV where you think you will have sky/cable.

Why would you need 4/5 co-ax??

Randyleprechaun wrote: »

It might not be a bad idea to run 4no co-ax to a sat-dish position,(again from the central location) these point SE. Also a single run to a chimney where an aerial may be located. This should cover all your options...I think.

Can you explain what you mean by SE

Randyleprechaun wrote: »

As for phone outlets, I'd have one at every TV location where you intend that you may have a sky box. The phone line is needed for multi room installations. Cable the phone points in CAT 5 minimum.

Would running CAT 5 Cable from the incoming phone line to each TV point cover me for phone inputs?

Thanks very much for the reply... much appreciated but as I am a bit of a novice I need a bit more explaining!

Would the Sky box be at the TV or the central location (attic). Can you explain the process how Sky could be watched in the other room... I assume it would be the same channel...is there a way you can control it from other rooms.

Tenshot

There are plenty of knowledgeable folks here to advise on the Sky/Coax side of things, so I'll leave it to the experts.

On the CAT5 side, ideally you want to run at least two CAT5 cables (or better again, CAT6) to everywhere you intend to have a network point. Only slightly more work, and gives you a lot more flexibility, especially if a cable gets damaged down the road. Two wall sockets take up the same amount of space as a single socket in terms of wall space. As you guessed, you can use one of the CAT5 sockets as a phone point if needed. Also, if you start piping HDMI video around the house, a lot of the better quality HDMI-over-CAT5/CAT6 encoders need two cables for a full feed of audio + video. I'd definitely go with four rather than two network points beside wherever your main TV point will be.

For the Sonos system, you can in principle use wireless but I would highly recommend putting in a dedicated CAT5 connection point for everywhere you expect to have a Sonos amplifier -- much more reliable and hassle free than wireless, especially since you'll probably have a normal Wifi network operating as well that will compete with the Sonos for bandwidth. I installed a Sonos setup about six months ago and ran it on wireless for the first couple of months; it worked pretty well, but streaming an audio source from one room to another was flakey using uncompressed audio (constant interruptions). Using compressed audio, which is lower bandwidth, was glitch-free but introduced a 1-second delay on the sound, which was a pain when feeding TV from one room to another.

You need to think carefully about how you will position Sonos amplifiers. There are two approaches (or you can use a mixture). One is to have the amplifiers in the same room as the speakers. You then need a CAT5 to each room, and speaker points beside it feeding to ceiling speakers (or wall mounted speakers, depending what type you are going for). Use decent quality cable for the speakers (at least 16 or 14 gauge). Benefit here is that you can feed a local source input (e.g. TV, CD player, or whatever) into the Sonos in that room and pipe it around the house; you also have a convenient box to adjust the volume on if you don't have one of the wireless controllers to hand.

(For the bigger living room spaces, you may want to add a sub-woofer somewhere as well; if you're using ceiling speakers, run an extra co-ax cable from the Sonos location to wherever a sub could be hidden, to keep your options open.)

Alternatively, run all the speaker cables from each room back to a central point (e.g. under the stairs, but make sure there is some ventilation there), and locate all the Sonos amplifiers there. Simplifies the CAT5 cabling a bit, since you can daisychain all the Sonos units together, and is less clutter in each room, but you're more reliant on the wireless controllers.

We ended up putting individual amplifiers in the living room, kitchen and master bedroom, and putting all the others together in the attic, i.e. best of both worlds. Kitchen is particularly useful for when we have baby sitters etc. since they can easily turn on/off the music using the front panel on the amp without needing to have a lesson in how the controller works. Living room Sonos and bedroom amps are useful for feeding TV into adjacent rooms.

If you want to play it safe, I would run speaker cable from ALL rooms back to one central point, even if you do a second (independent) run of speaker cable from the same speakers back to a wall location where you might want to put an in-room amplifier. Then you have the flexibility of going with either approach.

(I didn't do this, and ended up having to rewire about four bedrooms after all our main building work was finished, in order to get the setup I wanted -- would have been far, far easier to do it at the time.)

Probably more information than you really wanted... :-)

Randyleprechaun

peterc14 wrote: »

Why would you need 4/5 co-ax??


Can you explain what you mean by SE


Would running CAT 5 Cable from the incoming phone line to each TV point cover me for phone inputs?


Thanks very much for the reply... much appreciated but as I am a bit of a novice I need a bit more explaining!

Would the Sky box be at the TV or the central location (attic). Can you explain the process how Sky could be watched in the other room... I assume it would be the same channel...is there a way you can control it from other rooms.

2no for satellite with record facility.
1no for terrestrial down
1no to send the terrestrial & sky box channel out to the other rooms

SE = South East

Sky box at TV and yes it can be controlled from other rooms

peterc14

Thanks for the replies... starting to make sense now.

If the aerial was in the attic, would you recommend putting the incoming phone and internet point here also or does it matter?

Randyleprechaun

Yes that's probably a good idea, as it's always wise to have these things located where you can easily get at them again if you need to change something or even run a new cable etc

peterc14

I have hollowcore slabs... what is the best way to rout the cables to the attic?

Am I best routing all wires on ground floor up the block walls, then across the ceiling (within the dropped mf ceiling) then up a single opening in the hollowcore to the upstairs and on up to the attic. The first floor route up the wall and across the attic space?

Any recommendations/advice?

Randyleprechaun

Let your spark worry about that. I'm not being smart but you just tell him how many and what type cable you need from A to B or A to C etc etc.

indie armada

you could save yourself a bit of hassle and use twin rg6 coax on you runs for sat and tv. you could run one twin cable to each room and two to the room with the sky box. you should end up with less waste and save a bit of time by only having to run once. also makes for a neater/easier job where they all converge. also anywhere you intend to fit coax and data points use deeper boxes then normal, they need a bit of room behind the points if you have multiple cables and the rj/45 plates are quite deep compared to a light switch or a 13 amp socket.

peterc14

Has anyone used the cable that has Coax (x2) and Cat5 (x2) within the one cable?? Is this recommended?? Where can you buy?? How much??

Or is it better to tun seperate twin Coax and seperate twin Cat5?

maxamillius

yep we used it a lot when wiring some very high spec houses i south dublin,very handy cable as saves time on running the cables and is neater as its all confined to the one cable,cant quite remember how much it used to cost,but it wont be cheap,saves time on labour etc though!

peterc14

Randyleprechaun wrote: »

On the Tv part of it, i would advise that you run 4 or even 5 good quality co-ax cables, from a central point, say in the attic, to the TV where you think you will have sky/cable.

From the same central point in the attic, run 2no to each other TV location. This will allow you to view the sky in the other rooms as well as any terrestrial pictures you may want to receive via an aerial. The second cable at each location will allow you to also put in Free to air or Freesat receivers in those rooms to watch free to air channels independently, or to add another sky receiver(multiroom). It is possible to do this with only one cable at each location but far better if you have the 2 cables.

I am now thinking of running the incoming Sky cable to a cupboard on the ground floor along with the incoming phone/internet. From here then everything can be branched out.
But if my Sky Box is at the main TV would I have to run the incoming Sky to that main TV (ie bypass cupboard) or would it run to this cupboard first and then on to the main tv?

Also in relation to CAT5... I know everyone says add plenty of cables but I total over 20 CAT5... will this be expensive or cause problems when run back to the cupboard... ie assume spliiter would be needed.

Also I have a lot of coax with 4 at main point, 2nr at 3 other points and then possibly 2nr at another 3 points ie bedrooms etc that may need TV down the line... is this over kill... is there a limit to the nr?

One last point... if i choose to go Freesat and not sky, I assume the same principles apply?

DublinDilbert

Don't worry about the price of CAT5 cable, it's about €65 for a 300m roll. What will cost a little bit is terminating it. You could just put blank plates over the points till you need them.

paddy147

Tenshot wrote: »

if you start piping HDMI video around the house, a lot of the better quality HDMI-over-CAT5/CAT6 encoders need two cables for a full feed of audio + video..

So you can use 2 cat5 or cat6 cables for a HDMI feed from a set top box to a TV location,instead of an actual HDMI Lead??

Is that correct?


thanks.:)

maxamillius

you can run hdmi over cat 5 using baluns

http://www.gptv.ie/prod_desc_18496AV.html?sno=298