Smart Home Wiring Design
Smart Home Wiring Design – Building a new home or remodeling? One of the most common questions to consider is how to cable a home for automation. Since the popular smart home devices send your commands over standard electrical wiring, adding various additional cable runs isn’t necessary, but automated lighting and appliances aren’t the only convenience to keep in mind when planning your cabling. There are a number of different theories on how automation wiring should be done and what type of cables should be used. The following is probably the most widely accepted and most practical method based on the SmartHome team’s experience and industry knowledge.
Monarc Technology is the Dallas and North Texas area expert in Smart Home Wiring Design and we can help you design the perfect home system. Call us today at 214-507-3415 for more information. Smart Home Wiring Design
Neutral Wire at Each Wall Switch
Ask your builder/electrician to run the neutral wire to each wall switch location (the neutral cable is optional in many light switch wiring schemes and unless you specify it explicitly, it may get omitted). Insteon switches, dimmers, and keypads and most enhanced X10 wall switches require a 3-wire (hot, neutral and load) connection.
Use Deep Junction Boxes
Smart switches and keypads feature a slim design, making installation easy even in small junction boxes, but if you’re not yet decided on an automation protocol, it’s a good idea to specify the installation of deep junction boxes to accommodate any switch size. Plus the deep boxes allow for all the wire needed in conjunction with the deeper smart switch. The deep models have extra working space and make the installation a little easier. Deep boxes only cost a few cents more than normal depth models. Look for single-gang boxes that are 22cu (cubic inches) or higher and double-gang boxes that are 36cu or higher. Smart Home Wiring Design
Whole-House Surge Protection
Install a Whole-House Surge Suppressor to protect your electrical appliances and home entertainment products. If you are going to be using a significant number of powerline automation components in your home, adding just one whole-house surge protector will give you a good insurance policy against costly damage to SmartHome Product system as well as other delicate electrical equipment in your house.
Home Surge protection consists of 1 surge protector installed at the electrical panel and commercial grade surge suppressors installed at critical equipment. Well, a good whole-house surge protection device does essentially the same thing. It allows in only the electricity your home needs and not the unruly over-voltages from the utility—then it protects your devices from any trouble that can occur from surges inside the house.
Isolate Non-Automation Loads
Work with your electrician to isolate non-automation loads. Having the kitchen and laundry appliances plus the heating systems on one phase of your electrical system will help keep potential noise off the SmartHome products. Smart Home Wiring Design
Wiring for Data
Data cabling will include more than the cat. 5 or cat. 5e you’ll use to use for your Ethernet network. This section provides the information you’ll need to install your A/V, telephone, and security systems. The first stage in planning is to select the location of a central wiring hub location or structured media panel. Structured Media enclosure provide a convenient termination location for wiring home runs from wall outlets, creating a distribution point for voice, data, audio, and video applications. Available in compact, 14″, 21″, 28″, 30″, and 42″ sizes to address a broad range of capacities for single family homes, and light commercial applications,
Structured Media enclosures support new and retrofit installations. Structured Media Enclosure This is where all the cables from all the different rooms come in and where all the external cabling (cable TV, phone, antenna, satellite, etc.) feeds into the house. Ideally this should be located next to your audio/video equipment since the speaker cable and video cable will feed to the other rooms from here.
Home Theatre and Audio
When adding a home theater system, creating dedicated home theater space, the possibilities are endless. Seating will have a huge influence on the overall comfort and Appeal of your home theater system.
The Equipment Rack will usually house not only your home theater equipment but all the amplifiers, DVD players and DSS receivers for the entire house. Before you could just stack all equipment on top of each other. That was fine, unit the equipments started having more energy processors and other components generate lots of heat. If the equipments are stack nowadays, it may burn out components. You will need space for the equipment and cooling strategy for the your gears. Smart Home Wiring Design
Picking the right configuration for the home theater system:
Cooling Fan
Don’t buy an equipment rack without a cooling system. Some offer the ability to daisy-chain fans in one system so it can be automatically turned on and off based on temperature.
Power
Your racking system should have a way to connect to multiple output power bars so that all your power cables can be managed nicely. The best power bars have slide-on stabilizing clips that make sure your power plugs don’t come out of the power bar. Smart Home Wiring Design
Monarc Technology is the Dallas and North Texas area expert in Smart Home Wiring Design and we can help you design the perfect home system. Call us today at 214-507-3415 for more information. Smart Home Wiring Design