New House Build Questions

Out of interest what measurements will be for your lounge which will be your music room?

I am sorry but I do not have the answer to your query but I suspect you soon will from other members of this forum.

There's Cat7 cable for little additional expense. Use UTP Ethernet cable. Whilst you're at it, ask the builder to put in CatX cable for security camera locations, front gate video, and wireless access points high up where you can use POE APs to boost wifi around the house. Cable cost is low in comparison so don't skimp on it. Think where your TV/Sky/video/audio streamer/ games console etc will go, and then ask electrician to run individual Cat cables to them. In my Busy media rooms I have 4 or even 8 RJ45 wall socket points. And I actually use them too. If you eventually don't have enough you can buy unmanaged switches to share Ethernet line. 

Romi posted:

Out of interest what measurements will be for your lounge which will be your music room?

I am sorry but I do not have the answer to your query but I suspect you soon will from other members of this forum.

About 4.5 m by 4 m

Ideally you should design in a dedicated mains supply to your Naim gear with it's own dedicated consumer unit (and I believe with a separate earth) with 10mm mains cabling to good quality (MK?) unswitched mains sockets, enough of which you do not need to use mains blocks. I am no expert here but many forumites have heard the benefits of a dedicated mains supply and will be better placed to give you a more detailed spec.

Always try where possible to have Naim back boxes physically apart and on a different ring main to your network devices (router/server/switches) to avoid noise contamination. I am not sure if AV kit should be treated in the same way.

I would recommend a fully wired LAN throughtout the house. For every location you can think of that may need a LAN socket, double it! I painfully found out that I needed them more than initially thought.
Put power sockets next to your LAN ones - most of the gear runs better with electricity 

Good to terminate your LAN in a utilty room in a dedicated patch panel. 
Ideally the rest of your network gear will also 'live' the same room, so get a 19" rack.
The rack for your network gear should also have its own dedicated power supply, so as to polute the rest of your mains as little as possible. 
A rack-mount UPS may also come in handy.

For a network management I recommend one of the CISCO switches - mine is an 18-port unmanaged Gigabit switch.

Another advantage of a LAN network is that you can also use it to route phone lines throught it.

So essentially all your incoming cable and phone lines should terminate in that utility room.

Here is a picture of what mine looks like

Most of what I did 5 years ago is spoken about above... LAN socket(s) in every room - terminating in a side loft, hanging out of the wall and plugged into an 18 port switch (Cisco), dedicated 6 or 10mm spur(s) to the locations where you might want to site your audio kit (I installed 3 spurs, one of which is now used).  Power sockets - allow plenty of double sockets on the end of each spur (I have six and that's not enough).

What's not mentioned above is runs of speaker cable for surround sound.  I bought a reel of some Chord speaker cable and ran that to side & rear locations for a 7.1 system in both rooms. Only one room is now used and the unused cables hanging out of the wall in the other room are covered with hanging pictures.

And one other thing I did was to bury 3 inch plastic pipe accross the fireplace and the doorways. The pipe has a 45 degree angle at each end and is just visible under the skirting. This allows cables to be run accross these awkward spaces through the pipe - don't forget to have a draw-string installed !  When the carpet is down, you just see a few wires appearing through a slit in the carpet... looks neat with an ornament appropriately placed to hide it if necessary (the builder thought I was crazy).  Your floor slab will be 4" or more plus a 2" screed, so a 3inch pipe can be burried at the edge of the floor OK - but be warned, the slab will be laid before the roof goes on, so you'll initially have a few 3" x 4-6ft runs of pipe that are full of water.  I'll leave it to your imagination how to empty them - I seem to remember a vacuum coming in handy.

Roger

For surround sound speakers I actually had cables burried in the floor, and terminating in neat lockable floor-boxes.
Bedroom had speaker cables hidden in a ceiling and I use B&W outdoor speakers (AM-1 in white) with a UnitiQute2 there

Another neat touch (nothing to do with Naim) - floor boxes with LAN sockets and switchable power sockets (so a floor lamp can be plugged into it and switched on from a switch by a door).

Adam Zielinski posted:

I would recommend a fully wired LAN throughtout the house. For every location you can think of that may need a LAN socket, double it! I painfully found out that I needed them more than initially thought.
 

I'll second that.  I actually asked for double the amount of outlets I thought I'd need, and have still finished up using a couple of unmanaged switches.

One thing in addition is to (obviously) to ask your sparky to wire up your broadband connection and phone line from wherever it enters the house to your Node0 (utility room usually) so that the cabinet, as Adam illustrates, forms your mission control. Completely agree with previous comments on dedicated ring main and many RJ45 wall terminations. Make sure you ask your sparky for high amperage mains wiring such as 10mm2, otherwise they tend to put in what they think will be enough for a tranny radio only!  On the Cat6/7 cable, do some research on which type to use - shielded (STP) or unshielded twisted pair (UTP) - I used UTP. Again, ask your sparky to not run the CatX in close parallel to any mains wiring i.e.  do not bundle up. Ok to cross mains orthogonally but not parallel (unless at least 1m apart if possible). Make sure you use decent quality CatX cable too. 

For networking, I think the most important thing is to instal ducting that can take whatever cable you choose to put in it. For now, Cat5e or Cat6 UTP is probably fine, but with the right ducts, if you choose to replace these due to damage, uprating, or changing to fibre optic, the new installation becomes very simple. 

As already said, make provision for ethernet everywhere you think you might need it, even where you might not think you need it, then add a few spare cables. Invariably, one will fail or fail to pass the test... Adding extra cables after the build is a real pain.

Remember most TV's need Internet to use their full capability and you'll need cabling for wireless access points too, if you're to have full connectivity and control throughout the house.

Regarding mains wiring to the Naim kit, 10mm2 cable to dedicated unswitched, good quality sockets is ideal, wired back to their own circuit breaker, preferably their own consumer unit to avoid interference. I also have mine separately earthed.

I employed an IT tech Gear specialist based in Solihull to take care of the whole installation, as with a full IP telephone system, intercom to the entry points of the house, integrated Sky boxes, multi-room audio, distributed aerials and satellite points etc. etc. it became way beyond my capabilities.

Here's a picture of my rack room before it was finished and before the cable dressing had been done.

ChrisSU posted:

For networking, I think the most important thing is to instal ducting that can take whatever cable you choose to put in it. For now, Cat5e or Cat6 UTP is probably fine, but with the right ducts, if you choose to replace these due to damage, uprating, or changing to fibre optic, the new installation becomes very simple. 

This is the most important post.

blythe posted:

As already said, make provision for ethernet everywhere you think you might need it, even where you might not think you need it, then add a few spare cables. Invariably, one will fail or fail to pass the test... Adding extra cables after the build is a real pain.

Remember most TV's need Internet to use their full capability and you'll need cabling for wireless access points too, if you're to have full connectivity and control throughout the house.

Regarding mains wiring to the Naim kit, 10mm2 cable to dedicated unswitched, good quality sockets is ideal, wired back to their own circuit breaker, preferably their own consumer unit to avoid interference. I also have mine separately earthed.

I employed an IT tech Gear specialist based in Solihull to take care of the whole installation, as with a full IP telephone system, intercom to the entry points of the house, integrated Sky boxes, multi-room audio, distributed aerials and satellite points etc. etc. it became way beyond my capabilities.

Here's a picture of my rack room before it was finished and before the cable dressing had been done.

So this is not NASA or Google but a Home?  I have a crappy modem and a switch�� I felt antique!

Emre posted:

blythe posted:

As already said, make provision for ethernet everywhere you think you might need it, even where you might not think you need it, then add a few spare cables. Invariably, one will fail or fail to pass the test... Adding extra cables after the build is a real pain.

Remember most TV's need Internet to use their full capability and you'll need cabling for wireless access points too, if you're to have full connectivity and control throughout the house.

Regarding mains wiring to the Naim kit, 10mm2 cable to dedicated unswitched, good quality sockets is ideal, wired back to their own circuit breaker, preferably their own consumer unit to avoid interference. I also have mine separately earthed.

I employed an IT tech Gear specialist based in Solihull to take care of the whole installation, as with a full IP telephone system, intercom to the entry points of the house, integrated Sky boxes, multi-room audio, distributed aerials and satellite points etc. etc. it became way beyond my capabilities.

Here's a picture of my rack room before it was finished and before the cable dressing had been done.

So this is not NASA or Google but a Home?  I have a crappy modem and a switch�� I felt antique!

You are not alone, my 'rack room' consists of a 4-port hub in the cupboard under the stairs. 

'…4-port hub in the cupboard under the stairs.'

Luxury!

nigelb posted:

'…4-port hub in the cupboard under the stairs.'

Luxury!

The best threads are always the ones that degenerate into Python humour. (I'm sure there's a shoebox joke in there somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it.)

I was evicted from my shoebox to make way for a bloody rack room!

For mains, rather than just a dedicated ring or even dedicated breaker box would be the option of an isolating transformer. 1:1 ratio installed inline prior to a dedicated breaker box or consumer unit. They don't cost the earth but they are also something you can't easily fit unless building your own place since they need to be somewhere where you won't hear them hum.

You can actually have these installed before the electric meter (having 2 meters, one for the house, one for the hifi). Depending on the country, that may entail a fair bit of paperwork and planning permission. I think sticking one inline before a dedicated consumer unit is much easier and I think at least one member on the forum has done something similar. If I could do it over again, I would have definately done this with a 20A 100v-100v transformer out in the garage or something.

I should add the earthing requirements vary a great deal too. In some locations, as long as the potential is less than 100Ohms then the earth is considered compliant. Which is pretty shoddy. I think this is much better in the UK where well under 1 Ohm can be acheived. Either way, you may want to run this by your construction company's sparky and see if additional earth rods can/should be used to get the lowest possible value. Where I am unfortunately, getting 3 Ohms will set you back about $15K.

Bananahead posted:

ChrisSU posted:

For networking, I think the most important thing is to instal ducting that can take whatever cable you choose to put in it. For now, Cat5e or Cat6 UTP is probably fine, but with the right ducts, if you choose to replace these due to damage, uprating, or changing to fibre optic, the new installation becomes very simple. 

This is the most important post.

Agreed. Ducts and risers with enough space to cope with the inevitable changes that occur over time. You may wish to route power and network cables in separate ducts.