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New Home - Framing


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So,

Building a new home - have C4 now.  This is what I am thinking and the overall size:

House is a large Rambler (9,500 sq ft) - a big piece is the theater room under the garage (36'x34') and my son's room over the garage (roughly 1,300 sq ft - room and play area).  Also have a large detached garage about 80' from the attached garage (45'x60').  Have pool and 1/2 sports court planned.

Right now the plan has 23 TV's (5 in my son's room - 1 is a normal distributed TV and the other 4 will be in the play area for XBOX/PS4). 

Equipment and "smart home stuff":

Nest - thermostat, smoke, doorbell, door lock and security.

C4 (my installer is throwing Savant as an option, but I have loved c4 since 2006).

16 cameras.

4k switch for tv's.

Distributed audio, but using soundbars this time in bedrooms instead of in ceiling speakers.

Trying to figure out wifi - need something to cover a lot of ground - Eero, Pakeged, ???

Leak Detection - Dam-it?

Chamberlain garage door openers to open remotely.

Rachio for irrigation.

Qmotion for shades.

Jelly fish or ever brights for permanent led Christmas lights.

Pool - using Pentair and their app for control.

Heating the garages via natural gas.

Putting up natural gas ceiling heaters on both decks.

Water softner in grage - so I don't have to carry the heavy bags of salt downstairs.

Whole home central vacumm with retracting cor

What am I missing? or would you do something different when talking specific brands?

 

Thanks - I know there are tons of posts like this, but building is exciting and I don't want to forget anything when we are pulling wires/pipes/etc.

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53 minutes ago, panamagixxer said:

So,

Right now the plan has 23 TV's (5 in my son's room - 1 is a normal distributed TV and the other 4 will be in the play area for XBOX/PS4). 

Equipment and "smart home stuff":

Nest - thermostat, smoke, doorbell, door lock and security. - Look for another doorbell and door lock if you want to integrate into c4. Doorbird or Native C4 door door station for door bell, Also native c4 door locks

16 cameras. - Luma

4k switch for tv's. 

Distributed audio, but using soundbars this time in bedrooms instead of in ceiling speakers. - Audio Matrix with Triad Amps

Trying to figure out wifi - need something to cover a lot of ground - Eero, Pakeged, ??? - Recommend  Ubiquiti

Leak Detection - Dam-it? Good - Ify our wireing the house I would run a wire to it instead of relying on zigbee

Chamberlain garage door openers to open remotely. - Run wires from wall keypad and side of rail to equipment. Once will be for control of the opener and the other for rail/door sensor for open/closed status. No driver needed

Rachio for irrigation. - Good

Qmotion for shades. - Good - Ensure your zigbee is really good

Jelly fish or ever brights for permanent led Christmas lights. - Cool

Putting up natural gas ceiling heaters on both decks. - Run wires to control board to ensure you can send low voltage to regulate temperature

Thanks - I know there are tons of posts like this, but building is exciting and I don't want to forget anything when we are pulling wires/pipes/etc.

 

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Sounds like you’ve covered the most important stuff. I am building a similar size house (beach house - although it will actually be slightly larger than our normal home) so have been thinking about a lot of the same stuff as you are. Some random thoughts:

1. I’d definitely stick with C4 - I don’t think anything can beat it.

2. I would recommend the C4 DS2 door station.  While it has had issues (these seem to be ironed out now) and the app allowing it to be answered anywhere is not out of Beta yet, I am sure that it will be by the time you move in.

3. The 4K switch will be a tough choice.  While I was leaning toward C4 Leaf, the fact that it cannot do 4:4:4 colour and Dolby Vision is an issue when building for the future.

4. Pull lots of extra wires everywhere.  We are pulling multiple fiber lines everywhere even though we may not use these at first.

5. For irrigation, I have stuck with the native C4 driver and I/O extenders (I think these have been replaced by a newer unit now) at home and will do the same at the beach house. I have found that this gives flawless integration.

6. Everyone I have spoken to has recommended Somfy Blinds.

7. You don’t say anything about lights? I am doing a mix between panelised and C4 keypad dimmers to minimize wall acne but still give a good Zigbee mesh.

8. Pentair is definitely the way to go for the pool and their new intellicenter should be available by the time you are installing (I am hoping that it will be available for me and I am filling the pool in 3 or 4 months time...).

9. Geyser control?

10. Integration of any saunas or steam rooms? We are battling with this one.

11. We have a few funnies that we are integrating (including ultra sonic monkey deterrents that I want to turn on whenever a window or door is open).

12. Any aircon integration?

13. I would have recommended DSC or Paradox for the best security integration.

14. Central vacuum system is a great thing to have but shouldnt need any integration.

15. If voice control is on your list, it is worth giving it proper thought at planning stage.

16. With 23 TVs, you need to plan your AV and rack quite carefully. I thought that I was over the top with 9 video end points (TVs and projectors) but 23...

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Nice project and good input above.  A few additional thoughts:

- Conduit: instead of running lots of extra wires, I ran lots of 2” conduit from my server closet to each location I thought I might want to access at some point in the future.  Truth is most I will never access again, but for a few thousand dollars, I have piece of mind know i can always add or upgrade my wiring to any location in my house.

- Central Vac: not sure what brand of central vac you are going with, but we have hide-a-hose and love it.  Just don’t skimp on the hose locations.  We have garage, laundry room, master bath, and numerous thoughout house for easy access.

- Server Closet Cooling:  think about putting your server closet in an isolated area so you don’t hear it and adding it as a zone on your HVAC system.

- HVAC: I just installed Carrier 5-speed heatpumps.  They also have fully variable speed now, but my contractor talked me out of the variable speed.  I love these units.  Very quiet.  Excellent temperature and humidity control.  Very efficient.  Most of time they run on stage 1 or 2.  Rarely on stage 5.  We have three units 7 zones.  If I was doing over, I would put each bedroom and the master bath on their own zones.

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Lighting, my AV guy is doing panel lighting in the house.

We are doing solar power too - much more complicated than I thought, multiple people working on bids.

Didn't plan on conduit everywhere, just some main areas, large family room, theater room, etc.  everywhere - could be the way to go.  (have 8 bedrooms, so maybe not those TV's?)

Central Vac - doing the hide-a-hose, builder says its the only way to go.  I will plan out the locations - thanks for the heads-up (really one chance to do right).

We have a larger server area in the utility room (will be walled off - was planning on HVAC for that room too).

HVAC - we have 5 units, with as many zones.  

Just searched Ubiquiti for wifi - looks impressive, will ask my AV guy.

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I'll throw in some input.

7 hours ago, panamagixxer said:

So,

Building a new home - have C4 now.  This is what I am thinking and the overall size:

House is a large Rambler (9,500 sq ft) - a big piece is the theater room under the garage (36'x34') and my son's room over the garage (roughly 1,300 sq ft - room and play area).  Also have a large detached garage about 80' from the attached garage (45'x60').  Have pool and 1/2 sports court planned.

Right now the plan has 23 TV's (5 in my son's room - 1 is a normal distributed TV and the other 4 will be in the play area for XBOX/PS4). 

Equipment and "smart home stuff":

Nest - thermostat, smoke, doorbell, door lock and security. - I would do ecobee thermostats, smokes tied into my alarm (and alarm tied into c4/alarm.com with a Concord4 panel), door lock go with Kwikset/Yale/Baldwin depending on your needs, and either Ring elite or Control4 DS2. Since you have the luxury of being able to get a wire and the impending release of the intercom app previously announced the DS2 is a nice choice.

C4 (my installer is throwing Savant as an option, but I have loved c4 since 2006). I have had training on Savant programming and would choose Control4 even if I got Savant for free, personally. Control4 is significantly more third party interoperable despite a "less sexy" interface.

16 cameras. 4MP resolution is nice now. With this size of job you'll probably want them on their own vlan.  I have the Luma 4MP domes outside and they get too dirty all the time so use either a bullet or turret style.

 4k switch for tv's. - based on the size your options are A) Just Add Power, a very flexible system or B ) doing 2 AV Pro Edge 8x8 systems. The AV Pro Edge line supports all current HDMI features and bandwidth.

Distributed audio, but using soundbars this time in bedrooms instead of in ceiling speakers. Heos? Sonos? Sony? Other?

Trying to figure out wifi - need something to cover a lot of ground - Eero, Pakeged, ??? Neither of these, Rucks R510 or higher and a Zone director. UBNT is also a good choice for the price.

Leak Detection - Dam-it? Sure.

Chamberlain garage door openers to open remotely. MyQ is sketchy. Third party driver which doesnt use an official API. I'd go "old school" and wire up a Z2IO to a garage opener button. Maybe one day Control4 will have a native driver for this.

Rachio for irrigation. Nice.

Qmotion for shades. Wouldnt do it. Zigbee issues and since you have panelized lighting your zigbee mesh needs/design are different. Seriously consider Lutron. Super quiet.

Jelly fish or ever brights for permanent led Christmas lights. Neato

Pool - using Pentair and their app for control. OK

Heating the garages via natural gas. cool

Putting up natural gas ceiling heaters on both decks. can I come over?

Water softner in grage - so I don't have to carry the heavy bags of salt downstairs. Work smarter not harder.

Whole home central vacumm with retracting cor be sure to get that cool sweep spot thing so you dont have to use a dustpan

What am I missing? or would you do something different when talking specific brands?

 

Thanks - I know there are tons of posts like this, but building is exciting and I don't want to forget anything when we are pulling wires/pipes/etc.

Conduit conduit conduit. Technology changes. HDMI 2.1 is coming, going from 18gb to 48gb and 8k support.

 

 

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8 hours ago, panamagixxer said:

Trying to figure out wifi - need something to cover a lot of ground - Eero, Pakeged, ???

Ruckus. You seem to be at that tier. I'd consider it the top level choice and it just works. You may have a more complex network at the end of the day so I would maybe stay off Ubiquiti. Don't get me wrong, I use it and love it and a lot of other people here do as well, but its on the "not supported" Control4 list. If you aren't price sensitive to the Ruckus then its probably going to be the best for wifi long term.

 

8 hours ago, panamagixxer said:

Distributed audio, but using soundbars this time in bedrooms instead of in ceiling speakers.

Curious about this choice. Sounds like  you have ceiling speakers, but don't like them now. If you aren't going to install them now, you may want to consider installing the wires anyway. If you change your mind later the install would be easy. I like Noble Fidelity speakers for the ceiling.

 

Mind your soundproofing during design. Decouple your ceilings, floors and walls where you intend to make the most noise. 

 

I see you probably have a structural concrete floor in your garage. Is it poured or precast planks? I'd make sure you are completely decoupled  from the slab structure for your ceiling. Add some combustible gas sensors to your alarm system. Using a waterproof liner under the concrete is a good idea. It will have cracks one day. If you heat your garage you will have water under  your cars.

Consider fresh air intake/exchange like an HRV or ERV depending on what is recommended for your location. New houses are often so tight you want to introduce fresh air. This is especially true your first year with outgassing of all the new stuff. If its dry in the winter (I think you are 9000ft) you might consider whole house humidifier.

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17 minutes ago, Pounce said:

Consider fresh air intake/exchange like an HRV or ERV depending on what is recommended for your location. New houses are often so tight you want to introduce fresh air. This is especially true your first year with outgassing of all the new stuff. If its dry in the winter (I think you are 9000ft) you might consider whole house humidifier.

This is good advice too. Indoor Air Quality is important to health. I've been watching some good building science videos on YouTube from Matt Risinger recently. 

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Nice project!  You'll need space for 3 x 37U Racks by the sounds of things - make sure the plant room will have aircon!  Also, don't use ubiquity for Wifi, use one of the top tier brands - Ruckus / Meraki - I haven't used it, but assume Package would be ok too.

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13 hours ago, RobbieF said:

Nice project!  You'll need space for 3 x 37U Racks by the sounds of things - make sure the plant room will have aircon!  Also, don't use ubiquity for Wifi, use one of the top tier brands - Ruckus / Meraki - I haven't used it, but assume Package would be ok too.

Go 42 or 44-45. No reason to not go full size. Also would be good to go with one that is 27-32" deep, can never have too much room inside for vertical lacing strips to separate signal types neatly

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1 hour ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Definitely... why not?

Agreed.  Came with her house we purchased but we love it.  As we renovate we will add a few more inlets and those dust type ones in the kitchen for sure 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I use luxul for network and its been pretty rock solid.  The only thing I wish I could do is reboot an ap from the central interface.  Instead it has me login to the individual AP and reboot it.  Not a big deal but when my apple devices can't connect I sometimes have to reboot them.  Not sure if it is the apple device or the ap but thats the worst I've had to deal with.  They have multi band 802.11ac.  

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On 7/27/2018 at 10:51 PM, heffneil said:

I use luxul for network and its been pretty rock solid.  

Those two words do not belong in the same sentence.  You should not have to reboot your wifi to get a device to connect.

You should start looking elsewhere for networking products.  The internet is littered with sites/forums where CI's constantly complain about Luxul networking issues.

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1 hour ago, lippavisual said:

Those two words do not belong in the same sentence.  You should not have to reboot your wifi to get a device to connect.

You should start looking elsewhere for networking products.  The internet is littered with sites/forums where CI's constantly complain about Luxul networking issues.

I must say that most people here don’t like Luxul. My dealer moved me to a Luxul router 6 months ago and my network has genuinely been rock solid ever since...

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