Wires…Wires….Wires…
We are going to be renovating a Brownstone in the spring and will be hiring an architect, etc. We want the house wired for phone, internet, cable, alarm, etc. My understanding is that this all part of the electrical contractors job. My concern is that will an electrician be able to provide us with the…
We are going to be renovating a Brownstone in the spring and will be hiring an architect, etc. We want the house wired for phone, internet, cable, alarm, etc. My understanding is that this all part of the electrical contractors job. My concern is that will an electrician be able to provide us with the best ideas regarding audio/visual wiring throughout the house, should the architect know this, or is there some sort of consultant we should talk to? (Sounds expensive)
(We are not sound quality nuts. We would need several rooms with small flat screen TVs, some with TiVo, and internet connections, and one room with a large TV, and a home theater system. PS: My wife is crazy about not seeing any wires anywhere)
Thanks….
I would be happy to assist you. I”ve worked in the telecomm industry for over a decade. I have a NYS burglar Alarm lic and I’m HTI+ certified. I do this type a work on the side locally.
contact: urbandata@fastmail.fm
thanks
I was going to post but I see that OE above said exactly what I was going to say. So ditto from me.
Buy structured wire on-line. design a
“star” configuration (wires to x locations
originating from a common location). explain
to GC what you want. You can then have him
or a freelance wiring person to strip wires and
install jacks. You don’t need to be licenced to
this since it’s considered low-voltage.
One book I like is “smart homes for dummies”
here is a example of the wire I’m talking about:
http://www.futurehomesystems.com/wgbundle.shtml
Anon11:04 – I got in touch with Legacy; they
gave me a quote for $300/room for basic cable &
Ethernet & $500 for double runs of cable
& Ethernet & speaker wire. Does that sound like
the quote you got?
I used Legacy Audio/Video. They are based in NJ and seem to have competetive prices.
anon11:04 – who was your consultant?
If price is a concern, since you mentioned the word expensive i would say try to research this yourself. Its a fairly easy thing to do yourself and doesn’t require a huge amount of skill. But that assumes you have spare time and i know ALOT of people don’t. If you have the time and want to save a few bucks i would say consider tackling this project yourself. I don’t consider myself a handy person at all but i would say this is something even i would feel comfortable doing. I watched my husband wire our house for ethernet, cable and phone and it was very easy and quick 🙂 Hope that helps good luck.
You will want separate consultants for a security system and audio/video. I would suggest a wireless system for security anyway since it gives you the most flexibility. For audio/video, there are some cool multi-zone systems you might consider that let you put the whole set up in a closet and feed sound and video anywhere in the house that you wire for it. The whole thing is pricy, though. Have the audio/video people run the wires though. I had my general contractor do the wires and they botched it in a few respects.
The architect has a general knowledge of all this and that is why I would hire an independent consultant. The Architect can help locate the wiring in the drawing, but I would trust someone who deals with this issue on a day to day basis. Our Architect gave us a floor layout with all the electrical (Including cable wiring) and we hired a consultant for this