That is a good read for anyone who is doing some work on their home.
I would like to add a few things that I have run into over the last year of having my non-custom home built. That is, it is built by a major area builder, similar to what a lot of people may run into when building a home new.
The builder will be clueless. The odds of talking to a builder who has any concept of decent distributed audio, or even basic 5.1 single room setups is very low. You must bring the discussion of wiring up with any home builder you are talking to because there are some that not only won't let you come in and do the work yourself, but won't even do the work for you if you pay them.
If you make it clear that wiring your home properly for A/V is a make-or-break deal issue then they may work (begrudgingly) with you. You can almost definitely bet that YOU will not be allowed to run the wiring yourself as the builder is responsible for any code violations that occur during the build due to errors in running wires. So, they aren't willing to bet on you doing (or highering someone else to do) a perfect job.
If you don't run into a issue with them running whatever wires you want to whatever locations you want, then you really need to sit down with the floor plans and determine exactly where every single wire you want to run is going to be located. Covered well in the article is speaker wire gauge expectations and running some control wire. That's great, but what are the odds that the builder has read those specs? Ask them what size & brand (if you care) of cable they are using and then you may wish to provide your own wiring. The builder I went with uses Brinks, which is a security company that has branched into some additional low-voltage fields. When I spoke with my builder (Ryan Homes) they were clueless... Brinks had a sales rep sit down and talk to me about where I wanted my 'standard' 4 phone lines and 4 cable jacks to be located. Her eyes glazed over when I started talking about the additional 40+ wires that I needed to have run. Finally, she picked up the phone and called the installation manager - a field guy. He let me know that they would have no problem pulling whatever wire I wanted, wherever I wanted and that I should just be charged a flat price per wire.
So, here's an interesting concept: Even though you may have the skills to pull the wire yourself, you may still be forced to pay someone else to pull the wire for you. So, maximize your dollar value! At $60.00 per cable pull, if I wanted coax + cat-5 pulled to a single location it would be $120.00 and they would supply the cable. But, for under $100.00 I bought bundled RG6/Cat-5 cable in a 500 foot roll. Now, for $60.00 I could get the same two wires I wanted. In two locations I had already saved the price I had paid for the bundled wire.
When you do sit down with someone to determine the locations of all the wires and how many wire runs are being made, be prepared with a fully laid out plan and wire list. If it is just a few speakers in a few rooms, then you really won't have many issues. But, if you are pulling a lot of wires, be ready to spend several HOURS with the sales rep. going over each room in detail. The average person sits down with a rep for 30 minutes figuring things out. If you are spending over $2,000.00 for them to do a lot of extra work then they will likely need at least 2 hours to go through your entire home with you marking where every single wire is going and figuring out pricing.
If you are doing some unusual things - like IR repeater systems, plasma cable locations, security cameras, or a lot of speakers that you have specific requirements for, then make sure you are there the day of the install. If you are providing wiring for them to use (like 14/4 wire for all speaker runs instead of their stock 16/4 wire) then you will definitely have to be there the day of low-voltage wiring to provide the wire. But, if you are there all day you can answer questions they may have about where certain wires are going.
Figure out where you want the head end to be. In the old days, all your A/V equipment went right below your 27" TV. This limitation was set in stone unless you wanted video cables run across your floor. With a new home though you can put your DVD player at the end of your couch with the plasma up on a far wall with your receiver in the basement controlled by IR repeaters, or a RF control system. On the distributed audio side, you may have amplifiers, source equipment, storage, some switching or pre-amps, and other gear that not only produces heat, but may be a little noisy. Why not dedicate an area (storage?) in your basement that you can put all this gear where it can still be accessed, but generally can live site unseen? You will want that area to allow both front AND rear access to your gear without moving a large rack if possible. Moving equipment racks is a good way to have wires come disconnected and to get irritated. Someone has to hook all that equipment up from behind and a nice opening allows for it. Don't forget that your equipment needs good air flow as well.
One of my favorite installations was a customer who went to Sam's Club and bought a wire shelf rack that was about 4 feet wide and 18 inches deep with 5 shelves and was about 6 feet tall. This rack was placed in the storage area of his basement - an open 10x20 room and was sideways against a wall so you would walk into storage and see the front of the equipment, but could walk behind the rack to access all the wiring. Not very pretty, but the gear was always kept cool, it was very functional, and the sub $100.00 price point was far under the $1,000 or more that would have been spent on a nice Middle-Atlantic rack -with possibly more functionality.
Create a wire numbering list! It's great that you are pulling 20 pieces of cat-5 to a bunch of different rooms. But, when you go down to your equpment room, how can you tell one wire from another? Well, if you have a list that shows a specific location, wire type, and wire number (Master Bedroom - Door Keypad - Cat-5 - 113) then you won't have any problems sorting your cables out when you go to hook everything up.
My case: About 50 wires were being pulled and I spent a full day on site with the installer, who was excellent at his job. I provided wire numbers and verified the location of every single wire that was being pulled. This included about 6 different types of wire for motorized blinds, security cameras, Crestron gear, speakers, network, HVAC control, video, etc. I had rooms that had specific left/right orientations that I wanted to make sure were accurately wired for speaker positioning. I didn't get in the installers way, but simply made his day run perfectly smooth and answered any questions he had. "Yes, we will have a TV on the wall in the bedroom so that video outlet needs to be 6 feet up the wall, not 18" above the floor."
Final three words: CONDUIT, CONDUIT, CONDUIT
Drywall isn't fun to cut, patch, and repaint, so why not run some conduit. If you have a nice unfinished area in your basement/equipment closet, then conduit runs to the attic are mandatory (IMHO). I also ran conduit down some outside walls near the bottom edge of the attic/roof junction that are almost impossible to get into after the insulation is in place. A future TV in the bathroom? No problem since conduit is in place. A antenna on the roof or extra runs of COAX to all the bedrooms from the equipment closet? Yep, easy! No holes need to be cut either! I would recommend at least one 2" piece of conduit from basement to attic. 3/4" conduit in the wall can carry several local video cables as needed though.
Finally, if you are putting the speakers in yourself, you will need to know exact measurements (within a couple inches) of where the wire is in your ceilings/walls. Why? Because after the drywall is up, you won't be able to see the wire! It is much easier to measure 7 feet off the far wall and 3 feet off the front wall and know you will find your cable in the ceiling when you cut your speaker hole there.
Oh, and take some photos of all the work as you go along. If you do need to do something in the future you will know where high voltage wires are, where your low-voltage wire are, where HVAC has been run, and where plumbing is.
NOTE: As I was on a budget, I ran only wires that I considered mandatory. Then, I snuck in on the day before drywall and ran another 50 wires with help from friends. This was against 'rules' but 50 wires would have cost 3 grand to run... !!! I didn't have to have those 50 wires in place, but now they are there and the house is inspected and drywall is up so they aren't taking the wires back out. I don't recommend this... but it may be worth keeping in the back of your head.
Long post - hope that provides some additional useful info.
