Planning control4 in the UK.....or savant?

[d6moff]

Hello, I have just finished building a house and was origianlly planning to install a Savant/ lutron home automation system....due to my installers recomemndation 

The house is wired for 4 zones of TV / 6 zones of audio / Dedicated 7.4.1 cinema room / CCTV / 16 circuits of lighting an heating control

My supplier/installer has just went and recommend control4 instead,  reasons being control4 have just increased warrantees to 2 years from 1year increasing its reliabilty and now its completely redone its app interface 

Other reasons he gave is I will get more value on the C4 lighting compared to the lutron and overall comparing the systems I would save £2k. He also says he now runs a C4 system in his own home recently (changes it every few years, perks of the job) and has been very impressed with it and the OS3 App.

I just wanted to gauge what you guys impressions are of C4 and how happy you all are with your system, I have to say have read alot of negative review on C4 on the trust pilot review site....I originally had the heart on savant but now looking into C4 and the new OS3 interface and the £2k saving I think I will go with C4...

Cheers

[Gary Leeds UK]

I live in the UK (Leeds) 

we use control4 and have no / little issues. 

Control4 is Ok, however is going thought a change with it just been bought out by Snap AV. 

if you wish to chat a please give me a call - Will drop you our number via PM if required.

 

 

[bdo21]

We are in the U.K. and have also just finished a newbuild house. We used Lutron lighting and shades which has been good and we are about to do a Control4 installation for other aspects of the house (general automation, AV, etc), although Control4 installation will be gradual.

I understand Control4 and Lutron work well together.

From our perspective, having a solid lighting system in first was important and then we could add the home automation system later.

Did you use Lutron or CAT6 cabling throughout? I get the impression Lutron cabling is just expensively priced cable with less cores than CAT6 but that is what our Lutron dealer specified.

[Thepritch88]

There are big differences between cat6 and lutron cable, do not use cat 6 for keypad loops or you could run in to all sorts of problems down the road. Neither lutron or control4 will support a system that uses cat6 for keypad loops 

[bdo21]

Definitely don’t listen to me on anything technical but the prompt for my comment was if the original poster was planning Lutron lighting, presumably they have had Lutron cables installed? While it may be easy to swap from Savant to Control4, I don’t know if the same is true for lighting?

[Crustyloafer]

DO NOT use CAT5/6 cable for Control4 or Lutron keypads. It will work, but it's not support by either manufacturer.

We use this for all our Control4 lighting jobs: https://www.fscables.com/sites/admin/plugins/elfinder/files/fscables/Datasheets/1822ECCH-E00.pdf

You need the 18 gauge pair for the power bus as there is 48V going down it and depending on the number of keypads on the loop it could be up to 75W of power in total. This is not recommended for transmission down CAT5/6 cable.

Control4's own guidelines on using CAT6 for keypad wiring is only for retrofit situations where there is no other cable in place and they advise on tripling up the conductors for the power bus and then the remaining pair is used for data data comms bus. Having to twist together three solid core conductors to try and fit them into a single phoenix connector terminal is a pain in the ass at the best of times, why anyone would chose to inflict such misery on themselves or their installer when they can just buy the right cable for the job is beyond me.