Full house refurb help

Lurchie

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Hi all,

Apologies for the long post and for not being very technical!

I recently purchased my home and have had an extension built for an open plan kitchen diner and have gutted the rest of the property - plaster stripped back to brick, ceilings and joists exposed, floors in some rooms dugout for wet underfloor and new electrics and plumbing to go in everywhere.

It’s a detached property and I have a rough idea where I intend on having my TV - in the living room on the chimney wall, chimney won’t be in use, along with some points in the dining space of kitchen diner and bedrooms if I ever choose to put TV’s in there.

I’ve got to get an electrician to come in shortly to wire the whole property and I feel like I have one shot at getting this right.

The electrician is suggesting to have all the AV and networking kit wired under the stairs with the main Virgin / Sky / BT TV and broadband feeds from outside running under the floor of the converted garage (floor currently dug up for wet underfloor) in to the space under the stairs using a conduit.

My first question is: is it wise to run the main feeds from outside under the floor using a conduit that will be concreted over? What happens if I ever need to change the feeds, will it be easy for Sky or Virgin or whoever to change the cables? I’ll look to get the driveway done in a year or two too, so anything I should think about In terms of a conduit

From under the stairs the electrician suggests running either Cat 6 cables in to all the points of the house where I might want to hook up a tv or require network connectivity, but this will run under floorboards and behind the plaster.

My concern is if this fails how would I change them and I’m also aware 8k isn’t possible over cat 6 using an extender, so what other options do I have?

He (electrician) has also suggested a full smart home system, whereas I was just thinking of using Google Nest and Philips Hue and the like over google Assistant or Alexa etc. Does anyone have any recommendations for smart home systems to look in to?

Lastly, any advice you can give on things to look out for or think about? And is there a rough the budget I should have in mind for full rewiring with a new consumer unit along with wiring of networking and AV cabling?

Appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance,

Lurchie
 
With the cabling, once you've fixed it in place, that will be it if it fails. As an alternative plan, why not add some piping for the cable to run through (which hasn't been fastened down) then you can always use the old cable like a draw string to pull the replacement cable through.

With Cat 6, it will be the balun's that will be the limiting factor as you will need short HDMI cables at either end adding more links and more components than deeded. Some of the balun's use two runs of CAT 6 Networking cable, so maybe your electrician will be going for this option.

I would say that if you use an Optical Fibre HDMI cable. This will give you the data transfer needed for today over quite long distances and so long as you use the trunking solution, you should be fine if things become much different with 8K as it should be a simple option of pulling the cable from one end with the new cable attached to the old cable at the other end. On another note, to protect the cable from the elements I'd add some insulation around the trunking

With regards to smart features in the home, If you feel you want to use Google, I would tell the person who is installing it as it is your money
 
I can't comment on the technical sides of av cabling, but as regards installing cables, running cables in conduit under screed flooring is ok. I would tend to use twin walled ducting, rather than conduit, if you have the space in the floor depth. Keep the runs straight as possible, no bends as you struggle to rewire at a later date.

My only concern with laying in your flooring, is your UFH. You don't want any cables/ducting near that.

As for rewiring, a basic 3 bed house no thrills spec, would range from £3500-£5500 dependent on where you live. Occupied and unoccupied also affects the price. Consumer Unit replacement from £550-£1000 also dependent on where you live and spec.

The Smart Homes system like Lutron etc, is probably the way to go. But it depends on your budget. I have Hue stuff and its quite good, but you are limited to their lamps etc
 
Cat6 cables to all TV points throughout the property. Make sure you double these.
Also consider adding unterminated fibre cable for future use along with the Cat6.

Main TV use fibre HDMI/Cat6/unterminated fibre

Control4/Lutron for automation

All equipment to be centralised apart from games consoles that should be kept local.

Rich@SeriouslyCinema
 

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