So here we go... 24+ A/V Zones w/10 Sources

BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord






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BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
Anyway, a lot of work so far and I still have a bunch of speakers to cut in. I have to add the remote locks, fireplace, lighting, motorized shades. The short term will include the last three displays (at the moment) just hooked up with audio and video and getting some tunage pumping throughout the house.
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
I see the pics - I have been having issues with the 'img' BB code which now seems to be working fine. Weird.
 
fuzz092888

fuzz092888

Audioholic Warlord
I see the pics - I have been having issues with the 'img' BB code which now seems to be working fine. Weird.
I was having trouble with that as well, but I think they fixed it this past week since it's been working for me and apparently you lately. :)
 
TheWarrior

TheWarrior

Audioholic Ninja
Beautiful work. The fact that you have I-beams shows that this is a recently built house. Any chance you were able to get alot of this work done before drywall? (unless I missed it)


Note to self: Do not have children. Music and movies can be heard from any room, all from the convenience of ONE dedicated system!
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
Update: None!

Since I run my company part time on top of my day job, I have not been able to touch my own home due to a busy couple of months (yay!). I actually added some Insteon lighting which I am currently working on integrating into the system and I installed a bunch of recessed lighting in my home. Since it doesn't involve A/V, I haven't posted any photos. New carpet for the floors going in soon and new paint on the walls already... But, other than picking up an AppleTV (Airplay!) I haven't done anything, and even the AppleTV isn't properly integrated yet.

My home is a 3 story colonial with an unfinished basement. So, all my wiring was post construction. I put a dozen or so holes in walls to get my pathways in place and I have a pretty good basement to attic run that I can use. I had some friends from work (A/V guys) help me pull the original wire runs before we moved into the house. That was a huge thing because we were able to get most of the drywall patched, and several rooms painted before we actually moved into the house. Still, all new wiring that goes in place isn't a bad shot since I can come up from the basement or I can go down from the attic. The toughest things to get to are the ceilings on the main floor (no access).

Wired the heck out of the house when I had the chance, and a lot of cat-5 cabling in place which should work nicely for HDMI extenders should I need them in the future. I may pull a number of pieces of CAT-6 STP for that purpose shortly.

When I finish the basement (in a few years) my system will pretty much be 'locked', so I need to get everything right before that happens, but I have a lot of time to think about it. I will probably put 1.25" conduit between the TV and the new rack location and the TV and the head end and the new rack to the head end. The basement to attic route is likely to still be available even after the basement is finished.
 
Bryceo

Bryceo

Banned
hey trix hows is going mate? have you done anymore or still waiting for time
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
I did a bit more with getting my 12-button keypads installed and put up one of the TVs in one of the bedrooms. This went in conjunction with some new carpet and other work on the house so it's been pretty slow in the past few months. Cleaned up some wiring, added in another location for the paging system and got the remote lock working. Nothing to crazy with that.

The biggest upgrade was that I had my family room equipment located in a rack on the side of the couch. The rack was a bit big and didn't work well with the new couch we got, so I decided to rewire everything and put the rack into the side of our entryway closet which is adjacent to the family room.

Here are the photos of the final product, and the big ole' hole I cut into my wall. I had to frame it up to 19" and then did the rest of the associated work. Rewiring, etc.






 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
Oh, I'm not sure I have any stuff up of the projector lift I built from scratch or the 160" front projection setup I put together in my VERY unfinished basement. Because the kids play down there I wanted both the projector and screen up out of the way. Usually I go down and just listen on headphones when I want to watch something, and I still need to add a LVC-III and 120v wiring to the projector screen and projector instead of extension cords, but it is working reasonably well for what it is. (fun)

Still only in the house now for about 16 months and money is pretty tight, so the next work will be just cleaning up wiring, getting power in place (we added a sub-panel this summer), and installing speakers and new recessed lighting into some of the bedrooms upstairs. I'm still holding out for a 80" or 90" Sharp in the family room... but that's more wishful thinking that much else.

I'll be back with more photos as I get through some more upgrades.

This is just my feet with the screen down and an episode of Chuck playing from my media player...

 
ImcLoud

ImcLoud

Audioholic Ninja
I love that picture of the basement raining cables from everywhere, I have a customer that had us run a smooth interior 14x5 duct from his basement to his attic for wiring, when I was done I looked through it and thought, "who could ever fill this up wire?" its 14x5and he has a 3" conduit a few bays over for line voltage stuff... Well now its been year later and that duct has plumbing in it, he said there is almost 100 low voltage cables now and the 3" lv conduit is full... His house has a lot of wires, from home a/v, security, hvac, and he runs a business out of his 3rd floor office so I'm sure that adds a lot of traffic too, but I would say trix is rite there with him..
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
The raining wire photo is more of an optical illusion. It's actually just the one run of ten or twelve wires that I made to the built-in rack in the family room. Half a dozen cat-5 wires and some RGB wiring. All the wires touch the ground and loop back up so I have slack to pull from across my basement, but they are all tight to the ceiling now and nothing is dangling like that in the middle of the space. So, only 10 wires making all that 'mess' for the photo.

This year I think more of the focus will be on high voltage and getting the things done which weren't done originally and starting to plan out the finishing of the basement. Once I know how I will finish the basement I will start to pull wiring for electric down there and installing recessed lights and outlets. Maybe build a few walls and get them wired in. But, my upstairs rooms need electrical, and I need to add some circuits outside my house. I may wire in for a hot tub as well. Just stuff to cover my bases for the future.

About 150 wires I think come into my rack at the moment. I've gotta figure out if I'm going to relocate the security and cable/network panels in some way, or just run conduit between them and the rack location. I swear, our home-builder was an idiot. Ah well, it's a good house and I'll get there over the years.
 
ImcLoud

ImcLoud

Audioholic Ninja
Contractors can't think of everything, I used to build houses {when the economy used to warrant it} and you have the bank saying "we need to close in 130 days" the home owner asking stuff like "can you do an asphalt driveway for the same price as gravel", the subs saying "monday when they mean Friday night}, the inspectors interpreting code like a 3rd grader would, and by the end of the build if you didn't strangle someone you may make a months pay for 4 months of work....

What I did do and it took a while to learn was made a list of stuff for the new home owner to look over and consider, that other owners had as after thoughts, a lot of it was electrical and wiring like full house audio, sill plugs {for window lights, I hated not including them when we built colonial style homes, but some people wouldn't want them, they would pay extra for the inner window frames, but not get the lights}, a generator outlet, 3 wire to the ceiling lights {for fan control}, central vac, ect, there was a lot of plumbing stuff to, like adding radiant tubing to the garages and basement floors that looked like someone would want to finish, its cheap at .28 before the cement is poured, but after its impossible... Some people would think ahead and others would think bottom line...

My point is it may not have been the builder, it may have been the original home owner. I do hvac all the time and tell people, look its an extra $900 to run the metal down the side wall of the basement and you will save all the headroom, and you would get sick at the amount of people that dont care, nope, run it as cheap as possible, the next owner can worry about headroom, or the customers that spend all this money on an inground pool and don't at least run the gas line and electric for the heater while the ground is torn up, its $200 in materials to do it now, or impossible to do it later, you choose?

OK my rant is over, sorry...
Trix, I see what you are saying about the wires, still a cool picture...
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
No, I've worked residential A/V long enough to recognize the difference between an intelligent and well thought out home design and a poor design with poor craftsmanship. We have attic access in (quite visibly) the wrong location upstairs. That is, they have framed attic access, but then the HVAC guy put the duct into the attic access location, so they cut the location in a different spot. Not framed out, visibly wrong, never corrected. They short cut a joist in the basement, sot they built a support out of 2x4s to hold up the joist right next to an I-beam.

It was clear that there was very little pride in work put into what was already a 'weak' design. And yes, it didn't help that the homeowners didn't go for any of the upgrades, but I'm okay with most of it cause it allowed me to afford it at all. Wish they had opted for the 3-car garage though. That WILL be an expensive piece to correct.
 
ImcLoud

ImcLoud

Audioholic Ninja
Yah that does sound shoddy, You would think its easier to move duct work than cut and frame a new attic door.. I know how you feel about the garage, its like you wish you could have known the future and said "look I'm going to own this house in 5 years here's the money to build it now with a 3 car garage", you would think the inspections would have picked up the structural issue in the basement and help the CO until it was remedied. I once built a house with engineered beams {the house was large, 6K sq- long heavy spans.} and the correct lamboo {glulam} nailers were replaced with another unit, worked perfect, checked with the manufacturer and made sure it was OK, ect, and the BI would not sign off until we got a printed letter from both companies stating it was "OK" to use each product with each other, but the other option was taking the house apart, lol... Using 2x4's to support any significant load should not be overlooked, 2x4's even in beam configuration {stacked and sandwiched with cdx or sandwiched with steel and carriage bolts} are not very strong at all... Are you sure there is not a I beam inside the 2x4s I have seen that in older construction a company out of ny used to sell ibeams that a 2x4 would fit in each side of, they would cut the 2xs a little longer than the beam, set the weight on it and then bolt it all together, But I think the 2xs were more so they could nail to the rig vs for strength...
 

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