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Panelized Lighting Panel Location


jdvachal

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For those dealers out there I'm looking for some best practice guidance.

 

I'm working on a panelized lighting solution for a 6000 sq/ft house with 3 floors.

 

Are there any pro's or con's to locating the panels themselves on each floor to keep the wire run lengths to a minimum?

 

If I go this route I would do a 5 slot panel in the basement and the main floor and then a 2 slot panel on the second.

 

Secondly - how about locating the panel for the main floor (or all the panels if splitting them is not the best route) in the garage?  I'm in Montana so we've got bitter cold winters and rather warm summers.

 

Thanks!

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I should have clarified a bit - the home is getting a full solution and the mesh will be provided by the controllers and the touch panels.  I don't plan on using any dimmers or switches and will have to resort to extenders if I get some dead spots.

 

The panel location question was really more about convenience for the electrician as well as the line voltage rough in cost.

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So how will lights turn on and off without switches / keypads. Motion sensors work in common areas and living areas but not so much in bedrooms and the current / future users should look for keypads in most rooms if for nothing more than the expectation you walk in a room and there is a switch. I get that in gallery like space they may want to be more obscure so there are spaces this does not apply to.

Consider what a system outage looks like. For this reason I went with the wireless keypad dimmer to control one load in each room and then additional loads are on the panel. Only one decora keypad dimmer per room in my install. If C4 fails me at least that light turns on.

A panel a floor makes sense for rough in. Keeps cable costs lower, rough in time lower and troubleshooting down.

The ambient temp for each dimmer / relay etc pack is listed on the device. Check your garage stays warmer than that.

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I like your idea of one dimmer per room to help build the mesh as well as to keep a load operable in the even of some kind out outage.  I had planned on using just the wired keypads exclusively but this may change that idea a bit.

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a mixed hybrid system is a much better design, using extenders is not a best practice IMO, if 1 of the extenders goes down u will have some issues, where the otherway if planned properly your zigbee will be much better and sound.

 

again this is my opinion....and whats worked well for me

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I like your idea of one dimmer per room to help build the mesh as well as to keep a load operable in the even of some kind out outage. I had planned on using just the wired keypads exclusively but this may change that idea a bit.

If you are using the wired keypads and the bus Ethernet gateway I think that has a firmware based form of director for lighting only so acts as a fall back if the HC is offline.
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a mixed hybrid system is a much better design, using extenders is not a best practice IMO, if 1 of the extenders goes down u will have some issues, where the otherway if planned properly your zigbee will be much better and sound.

 

again this is my opinion....and whats worked well for me

 

I agree that extenders is not best case scenario.  The house I was talking about we used a different wired lighting solution so a hybrid system wasn't an option (shhh, don't tell C4).  I was basically stating that doing it that way does work and is an option that will work, even if it not the best option.

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I agree that extenders is not best case scenario.  The house I was talking about we used a different wired lighting solution so a hybrid system wasn't an option (shhh, don't tell C4).  I was basically stating that doing it that way does work and is an option that will work, even if it not the best option.

i caught that you mentioned, "it will work"....nothing against you, imsure others have had to do the same

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What I am doing in my first panelized project is to add some wireless keypads in the wired keypad bus chain. You can power the wireless keypads with 48V DC that way you do not need the extenders and you can not notice the difference between keypads 

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What I am doing in my first panelized project is to add some wireless keypads in the wired keypad bus chain. You can power the wireless keypads with 48V DC that way you do not need the extenders and you can not notice the difference between keypads 

Yes this would be the recommended method.

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