Pre-wiring new house?

[kmy2011]

Hopefully I am posting the the correct forum, but as I am a true beginner figured I'd start here. I know basically nothing about cabling.
We are building a new house, nothing huge, about 1900 sq feet. The builder has offered options to prewire which seem pretty pricey. The last time we built a house we just needed to tell them where we wanted the cable and phone outlets. I just want to find out if we are being sold more than we really need and paying too much for it.
I don't know if we need HDMI, cat5, rg6, etc to hook up HD tvs, a DVD or blueray and a wireless network. We are not really into home theater,etc.

option 1 - Prewire 5 rms for HDMI/ RG6/CAT5/Wi Fi . . .Smart Home Ready

option 2 - Prewire 3 rms with RG-6, HDMI with one room having HDMI from home run to TV-10 meter with 2 cat5e safety wires and 75 ohm cable splitter. This includes 2 rg-6 and 2 cat5-e from outside to homerun.

option 1 = $2950 option 2 = $1100.
I'm just asking -do we really need all this fancy cabling for a couple of HD TVs and internet? Pros/cons??
Thanks in advance.

 

[Kai]

Think about your needs, your gear, the rooms you want gear in, etc.
I wish I though about this when we built but we did not.

Your primary gear location should have a dedicated electrical line to the circuit breaker box. There should be the cable line and ethernet line as well as enough electrical outlets to bring current and signal to your primary location.
You will also want to think about other video/audio connections from here to other rooms. You probably want ethernet, speaker, probably hdmi lines from the primary location to each room you will want an audio/video connection from your primary gear to each room/area.
You may want speaker wiring in the ceiling for whole house/outdoor audio...useful for entertaining etc. when you just want decent background music rather than your HT speakers.

I'd suggest speaker wire for the fronts, surrounds, sub and in case...rear surrounds, second sub, height speakers in the primary location.

Next would be signal the other rooms that will have video/audio gear.
If you will have any wall mounted tv's you will want a current/signal box mounted on the wall where the tv will mount over it. This box should contain an electrical outlet, cable coax connector, ethernet conn and probably an HDMI connector. If you are going to use external or wall mounted speakers you will want wiring and connectors from the primary location to each room.

Many who have this opportunity use PVC conduit to hold these wiring/cable runs to allow for changes/additions in the future without having to go back into the walls.

Remember this...it is much less costly and aggravating to do this now than after the walls are up and you are living in the house and start saying "woulda, coulda, shoulda".

Draw out a diagram of the house and rooms. Pencil in the locations of your current gear and future possibilities. Detail the wiring types needed for each room and pencil them in. Add the outlet connectors for each wiring/connection. Talk to the contractor about use of conduit for the runs, at least the primary wiring runs.
If this person is experienced and good at what he/she does you will also get other suggestions/recommendations as well. Think about them carefully. An extra $500 now will be well worth it when you just connect a new device 2 years from now and all your wiring is in place just waiting.

Good luck, take lots of pictures and keep us involved. We love this sort of stuff.

 

[mtrycrafts]

As mentioned by Kal, make a best possible plan on what you want to do where in the house as to electronics/video entertainment.
I would think you may want to have Internet access in the house, wired or wireless from most any room even though you may not think you need it today. If and when you have kids and teenagers, I am sure they will have Internet access. Hard wired or wireless. Certainly wireless needs less in wall wires. But, perhaps a backup to wireless? Cat cable is not expensive.

Where do you want a home theater room setup? Certainly not in every room, bedroom. HD cable Tv can be had with coax up to 720p, I am sure. After all, the kids don't really need the best HD possible not 5.1 setup but if they want it, your central home theater room will be set up.

Master BR? For casual viewing?
Family place? Yes. Front projection TV for movies? Great if you love movies, bigger the better up to a point. Even if not today, maybe in the near future. Wire for it now, not remodeling later.

 

[JHarris]

I am also in a similar opportunity as the OP to wire up a newly renovated house.

The builder is already going to wire each room with cat6, phone, and cable. Where I am unsure is how to request stereo wiring. Ideally what I'd like to do is have 3 zones: the living room, kitchen, and the back porch. I don't feel a strong need to have audio wired to the bedrooms.

My question is do I have the wires for the kitchen and back porch run from the living room or would it make more sense to have them all run down to the basement where the patch panel will be. One thought I had was to place all of the AV equipment in the basement and control it through RF.

Never having done this before, I'm not sure which will make the most sense in the long run. I was toying with using Sonos to handle the multi-room audio and having a central server, possibly Windows Home Server, to manage music, recorded TV, and movies.

 

[MDS]

The builder is already going to wire each room with cat6, phone, and cable. Where I am unsure is how to request stereo wiring. Ideally what I'd like to do is have 3 zones: the living room, kitchen, and the back porch. I don't feel a strong need to have audio wired to the bedrooms.

My question is do I have the wires for the kitchen and back porch run from the living room or would it make more sense to have them all run down to the basement where the patch panel will be. One thought I had was to place all of the AV equipment in the basement and control it through RF.

You should run all the wires necessary for each zone to the location nearest the device(s) that will be controlling those zones. So if the idea is to have all of the AV equipment in the basement then run the wires to the basement.

The 'home run' for network, phone, and cable does not have to be in the same location as the AV equipment but you will have to get wires from that location to the location of the AV equipment.

My house was pre-wired but is relatively simple. The cat5 and coax runs all terminate in a box in the master bathroom closet with outlets in every room for at least one coax and one cat5. The stereo wiring however starts from the living room because that is where the AV equipment is located. There are a few wall plates on that wall that feed the other two zones: the bathroom and the patio. It makes sense to have the stereo wiring in the living room because that is where the AV receiver that powers those zones resides.

 

[JHarris]

Thank you for the quick reply. My thought process was that it might be nice to hide all of the AV equipment for a cleaner look in the living room. I may or may not use my receiver to control zones. Alternatively, I'm leaning toward using a couple of powered Sonus zoneplayer units to take advantage of a centralized music database.

I just wasn't sure if it is kind of odd to keep the receiver, HTPC, etc in the basement and only have the TV and speakers, and the xbox visible in the living room. Basically put plate in the living room behind the wall mounted TV that run down to the basement with 2 hdmi ports, and 2 other plates, one for the front speakers, center, and the second one for the surrounds and sub. These would also run down into the basement. Unfortunately, there aren't any closets or anything like on the first floor to store the AV equipment in.

Really I just want to see if this is a terrible idea or if it has merit, and if so, what's the best way to go about it.