Building new house, questions.....

[cpa4u]

I am getting ready to start construction on a new home. I currently have a 522 running the TV in the living room and 1 in the bedroom. New house will have 4 rooms that need service. One will be a media room (bonus) over the garage, 1 in the living room & 2 bedrooms. I want to keep the 522 that I have now and maybe add 1 more 522 to the system for the other 2 rooms. Also, might want HD programming down the road. So, my questions are:

1. Will I need any special wiring for HD programming down the road?
2. What is everyone's suggestions for what wiring, switches, etc that I should have installed?
3. Any other tips would be greatly appreciated.

I am planning on having high-speed internet service through the local cable company as well. So, I will have a separate wire run for that in both the media room and 1 bedroom. With the high-speed internet, we get basic local service for free. I would like to try to get that in the rooms as well due to certain "local" channels that are not carried on my DISH locals package.

Thanks for any advice!!

Rick

 

[webbydude]

Everything sounds in order. But the ONLY snag i can foresee is the extra 522. Unless you're willing to shell out the cash, you can NOT lease two 522's in the same home.

All your rooms can be handled quite well with a combination of DPP LNB's, separators and diplexers.

 

[cpa4u]

Would you recommend having a DISH installer come in during the framing of the house about the same time the electrician is running the cable/telephone wires and installing all the separators/diplexers, etc? Or are those things that can be easily installed after the drywall, roof, etc is completed?

 

[shadowwalker]

I have done many pre-wires on new construction homes and one of the biggest over looked things is cabling. Home buyers care more about the hardwood floors (which they end up covering up with area rugs anyway) than cabling then get disappointed when you have to drill more hole in there house to install different media devices. Check this site out lots of great ideas. http://www.9thtee.com/homewiring.htm Use bundle cable, wall plates with inserts so you can expand and set aside a space in your house for a wiring closet. Run at least 4 lines coax and cat5 to the power side of your home to bring the signal into the closet. Also check this site out works great for having a pre-mounted dish location. Installed 20 or so of these mounts during prewire works great. http://www.rstcenterprises.com/dishmountingsystem.htm Just my 2cent

 

[webbydude]

As long as everything is centrally located, i.e. in a untility room or near the circuit breaker box, it shouldn't be too much of an issue when the install is done. If you're going to have a finished ceiling in the basement, I do recommend having your install done before the ceiling is finished. If for no other reason, just to hide the lines from the dish and possibly across the ceiling. Without actually knowing your line-of-sight, I can't say for sure HOW the main feed is going to be rain

 

[TYORK]

sound like you need to run 3 coax cable to each room and make them all come back to a central location than you should have no problem. Just make sure it is all RG 6 cable.

t

 

[Liquidforce88]

Run atleast 3 RG-6 coax lines to every location + 2 CAT5. This will give you plenty for the future. With that being said just make sure you main points are going to have that. Second rooms only need 1 RG-6 coax and a phone line, but you never know what you may want in the future so go big.

A dish installer can not prewire your house for you. You could pay one on the side to do it for you, but Dish will not let them do it for free. Another words Dish is not going to wire your house for free before you buy (I.E. they are not going to wire it then have you say I changed my mind I am going with cable). After you order the Basic install is free (notice the word basic it's not all free).

 

[cpa4u]

Thanks for all the great advice. I will get my electrician to run a minimum of 3 coax runs + 2 cat5 to each room that a TV might be present.

 

[wobbie]

If the house has a basement have him run all the cables and cat-5 to the utililiy room that way you have a central access for everything. I have seen electricians pull everything to the power or circuit box and them the basement gets finished and the everything is covered by the drywall. I myself would recommend a home theatre company to do the wiring instead of the electrician. They could pull, the wire for yopur surround sound and security system too. What are are you located in??

 

[cpa4u]

The house will not have a basement and doesn't really have a separate "utility room". I will have a nice "closet" underneath the steps going up to the bonus room over the garage though. Think that would work for the media panel? Also, we don't have any specialized home theater companies around here. I am in southern Ky. Would probably have to get someone out of Nashville as that is the closest big city. The cost would probably be pretty steep to get them to come up here though.

 

[mdellis33]

In planning for the future, I would run 2 lines of Cat 6 gigabit cable rather than Cat 5. Also, don't forgot to run an additional phone line behind all your possible receiver locations.

 

[Cyclone]

Don't forget the OTA antenna and possible rotator cable.

Run a few RG-6 cables up into the attic, so if you get a OTA antenna for your HDTV needs in the future, that you don't have cables running down the side of your house. With that run a antenna rotator cable (cheap wires) so if you get a rotator you again won't have to run the cable.

Finally if your Dish is going to go up on the roof, run at least 3 or 4 RG-6 cables from the attic down to your distribution point. That way you can put your Switch either in the attic or down at the distribution point.

I'll also contrary a little bit with this thought about the high speed internet. I suspect that the WiFi products will make Cat-5 (or Cat-6) for data obsolete soon. If it doesn't cost too much run it around the house, but I wouldn't go too far by putting extra Cat-5 in unlikely locations.

 

[garee]

I'd recommend looking at other houses in your area which are nearing the drywall stage if possible. This way you can see what their electical contractor normally does. Most builders are now running at least Cat5e to a central breakout location and this would be a good spot to run your RG6 as well.

Cat5e cables are all you need for gigabit connections. If they uses at least 4 pair cable (which is normally the minimum) you can get 2 phone (even DSL) + a network connection in each cable, as normal networks only need 2 pairs.

Think about where your furniture will go before deciding where to put the cables. For instance, the master bedroom normally has a phone jack by the bed and the cable outlet on the opposite wall. If you're going to have a STB at the cable outlet you might want a phone connection there as well and I'd recommend LAN capability anywhere you're going to have a video appliance, as they'll all use LAN connections in the near future.

A lot of people will say, "don't run wires, just use wireless", but given the chance I'd run the wires. The long-term cost and headaches are lower for hardwire and the performance is higher.

If you're going to setup a LAN your cable modem will go near the Cat5 breakout area with a broadband router/switch to connect all the remote taps. Have the builder put a power outlet and maybe even a nice little equipment shelf in that area as well. You'll need a LAN patch panel in additional to the normal telephone panel. These are all cheap on the net.

A 100BT router/switch can be had for <$20 and I even see Gig units for <$50.

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

The key is central wire closet.

My house is about 10 years old, If I would have only thought ahead, now with finished basement, it's a real pain in the butt to add stuff.

 

[Dish Dude]

If it is an electrician wiring your stuff make sure the RG6 is swept test to 3g for all possible needs in the future. I would also recommend at least to your media room, at least 6 cables back to your central junction and a minimum of 4 cat 5e. This will cover all of your video needs, telephone and network capabilities, and possible audio feeds to different portions of your house.

 

[cdru]

Thanks for all the great advice. I will get my electrician to run a minimum of 3 coax runs + 2 cat5 to each room that a TV might be present.

Please note that we recommended the cable bundle per location, not per room. Bedrooms probably would be able to have a single outlet, but living rooms and family rooms never have enough.

Take a look at your layout and imagine what it would look like with a cable running along the wall. I know in my house the inside wall is isolated from an outside wall, so there isn't an easy way to run a cable if I wanted to put my TV along the inside wall. Also consider room size. Do you want to run a cable 30 feet around a room or would it look better with having it inside the wall and having jacks at opposite ends of the room?

Don't forget about speaker wires too BTW.

 

[cpa4u]

This is some great information. I am going to print this discussion out and take it with me when I meet with the electricians. I just met with the architect again yesterday. He is going to try to find a small area for a central distribution "closet".

 

[techdood]

Here is a tip. There is a FTTH provider here which brings in the triple play of services, being telephone television and internet. To my suprise the television isn't preferred to be hooked up using coaxial cabling; Instead, they use Cat 5 telephone/lan cables. You might want to have at least 4 Cat5 cabling between your smart panel, where all your homeruns are, and the telecommunications demarcation point (usually near or following the side where power is fed.) I say 4 because I had to think of some creative ways to get my services going with this provider and I only had 2 runs of Cat 5.

 

[jbcheshire]

I second and third the recommendation for running the speaker wire especially if you plan to have surround sound for the ceiling and it is the first floor of a 2-story house.

A friend of mine actually ran PVC pipe in his walls up from his basement to the ceiling so that he could have clear access through without having to work to feed the wiring later...

 

[Dish Dude]

yes you can run a cable system over cat5e or better , it involves a special balun and head end unit. If I remember right, and this is a couple of years ago, we put one in a school and it could only support up to 50 channels