Wiring a new home, Dedicated spur and CAT Cables

Posted by: MauriceD on 15 June 2014

Hi all,

I am moving into a new home which needs a lot of work, which made me think it's the perfect time to add a dedicated spur and also wire the rooms for multi-room sound.

 

With regard to the dedicated spur i have read that i should get an extra consumer unit and 2 double un-switched MK sockets.

 

Is there anything else that the community could recommend so that i can get this right, first time?

1) Wire widths?

2) will one dedicated spur do or do i need multiple spurs? maybe one for each component?

 

My System is : NDS, 282, HIpcap, XPS, Nap 200

 

Also with regard to multi-room sound:

 

Should I wire each room that i want sound in with Cat 5 cable?

if i was to add a unit quite in the kitchen, could i connect it to my main NAS drive that my main stereo uses?

Would i be able to use both systems at the same time , using the same NAS via two iphone clients

 

Would love to hear your suggestions,

 

Maurice

 

Posted on: 15 June 2014 by Simon-in-Suffolk

>Should I wire each room that i want sound in with Cat 5 cable?

 

Seems sensible, however I would use the industry standard Cat 5e cable and ideally put the cable in plastic trunking so you can replace in the future should you need.

 

Simon

 

Posted on: 15 June 2014 by True Blue

Good luck with all

 

If I was doing it from scratch then

 

Seperate consumer unit with two independant ccts both radial. Wired with 10mm wire into unswitched mk sockets.  Electrician wont want to do this as cable is tight but does fit.  One cct for sorce componants and the other for power supplies power amps etc with as many sockets as required.  Get the best shielded cable you can reasonably afford.

 

Reference network. Wire cat 6 or cat 7 if you really want to future proof Have ethernet sockets in each room close to where you want to site equipment.  Then simply connect shorter lengths of your chosen cable and switches as required.  Again as its sn install get the best cat 6 or 7 you can.

 

Make sure normal sockets seperate from the hifi ccts are sited near to where you will be running your hifi so you can connect switches, nas drives etc onto seperate ccts as they are inherently noisy.

 

Hth

 

Tb

Posted on: 15 June 2014 by garyi

My only advice would be put three runs of cat in where you think you will only need one. Its cheap and far easier to do at this stage,

Posted on: 15 June 2014 by Audioneophyte

Run hdmi to each room also.

run blue smurf lovoltage tub to your av location, tv Hifi etc so it's EASY to add a cable at a later date.

 

2 dedicated spurs, one for naim gear and one for anything else using a non linear power supply.... This way your future nas etc can be super close and capitalize the sound with shorter vodka or cinemon Ethernet cables....

 

look ok up other posts by me for taking the dedicated spur to the next level....

Posted on: 15 June 2014 by DavidDever
Originally Posted by Audioneophyte:

Run hdmi to each room also.

run blue smurf lovoltage tub to your av location, tv Hifi etc so it's EASY to add a cable at a later date.

 

2 dedicated spurs, one for naim gear and one for anything else using a non linear power supply.... This way your future nas etc can be super close and capitalize the sound with shorter vodka or cinemon Ethernet cables....

 

look ok up other posts by me for taking the dedicated spur to the next level....

Definitely +1 on the plastic sheathing ("blue smurf", so described by its distinctive color).  This will make your life significantly easier; run as many as you can point-to-point, AND make sure that the bends are gradual, certainly no less than 25 cm radius.