The new house is FINALLY started......

[Ski-me]

I have this lift going into our family room. We dug out a pit and will have a false "blanket cabinet" on top. So the TV will fit into the pit and then raise up when needed.

Tried to make the family room less of an "Obvious TV room".....

http://www.tvlift.com/high-rise-swivel-tv-lift.html

[jkski]

It may be short-sighted but with everything going wireless and no sign of it going backwards, I am not running cable TV or phone service back to the house and have no plans to wire the house for it. My TV will be Dish Network or Direct TV, so obviouslu I will wire accordingly for that and my internet service will be a wireless piggybacked off of my sister-in-laws house. The cost to run cable back to my house was roughly $4k and since my sister-in-law already has it and a friend already has the equipment needed to get a strong signal at my home site, well...we are going to piggyback it. As for phone, I never use nor do I ever answer my home phone, to me it is a complete waste as my cellphone is always with me, so we are going to be a cellphone only house!

[Double D]

Originally Posted by jkski

It may be short-sighted but with everything going wireless and no sign of it going backwards, I am not running cable TV or phone service back to the house and have no plans to wire the house for it. My TV will be Dish Network or Direct TV, so obviouslu I will wire accordingly for that and my internet service will be a wireless piggybacked off of my sister-in-laws house. The cost to run cable back to my house was roughly $4k and since my sister-in-law already has it and a friend already has the equipment needed to get a strong signal at my home site, well...we are going to piggyback it. As for phone, I never use nor do I ever answer my home phone, to me it is a complete waste as my cellphone is always with me, so we are going to be a cellphone only house!

Sounds like you got it all figured. My only concern would be re-sale, god forbid. May hurt the value to not have the stuff just roughed in... Just Sayin...

[JimN]

Since it has a basement, I would install flexible conduit, called 'Smurf Tube' because the original small-diameter stuff is blue. Low voltage flex conduit is orange but Home Depot doesn't carry the larger diameters. Both are made by Carlon and the 2" is great for TV and large bundles of separate wires that can't be installed in a straight line. The number of 90 degree bends should be kept to a minimum- some standards organizations recommend a max of 2. The 2" comes with a pulling cord, so it can be installed and attaching the cabling at a later time.

If you do this, take photos and video with some kind of measuring tape or yard stick in the photo, so you know where to open the walls or ceilings. installing just the conduit isn't terribly expensive and allows for cabling standards to change after the house is built. Installing the cable and not using it doesn't make sense but this makes life much easier if you decide to wire everything later.

It's also a good idea to install some kind of large conduit from a basement to the attic- that way, if you need an antenna or Wireless Access Point, you don't have to search for a path. Some municipalities require a closed junction box at each end, so it's a good idea to do that immediately. The gray plastic is OK, as long as it isn't in a return air space. PVC isn't allowed there. In the event of a fire, it's not the fire or heat that usually kills, it's the fumes and smoke.

[JimN]

Originally Posted by jkski

It may be short-sighted but with everything going wireless and no sign of it going backwards, I am not running cable TV or phone service back to the house and have no plans to wire the house for it. My TV will be Dish Network or Direct TV, so obviouslu I will wire accordingly for that and my internet service will be a wireless piggybacked off of my sister-in-laws house. The cost to run cable back to my house was roughly $4k and since my sister-in-law already has it and a friend already has the equipment needed to get a strong signal at my home site, well...we are going to piggyback it. As for phone, I never use nor do I ever answer my home phone, to me it is a complete waste as my cellphone is always with me, so we are going to be a cellphone only house!

Wireless is great but when EVERYTHING is wireless, conflicts arise and personally, I feel that being immersed in a constant barrage of RF isn't a good thing. I would use wireless phones, though. Much more convenient than wired.

Re: your piggy-backed IP- it's still best to use hard-wired as much as possible. WiFi works great until it doesn't and if you don't allow for any hard-wiring, you can run into all kinds of unexpected problems. Hard-wired is faster and more fault-tolerant. This is a good example of using the Smurf Tube- put it in and if you have range or speed issues, you can hard-wire it. Media streaming has a big effect on speed and distance is even worse. Combine them and what should be 5Mb/sec-20Mb/sec can be dragged down to less than 1Mb/sec- not going to work for media, especially if more than one TV is using it at the same time.

Make sure all satellite feeds are grounded per NEC- IIRC, it's Article 25 and it matters. Also, copper-clad coax is NOT going to work, so make sure whatever goes in is solid copper center conductor. If it will be suspended across any great distances, make sure to use coax with a solid wire for support or install a separate support wire. You don't need quad shield unless the cable will be in a location where RF interference is a problem. Likewise, expensive speaker cable isn't necessary, especially in areas that aren't intended for main listening. In fact, when many speakers are installed in a large job, they're not even stereo- it's not needed and having one speaker playing one channel in one place with another playing the other channel a good distance away is really annoying. For this reason, either dual voice coil or mono speakers are used. Still not a bad idea to run 4 conductor cable, though. That way, if someone damages a wire during drywall installation, you still have three to use for the two channels and that does work most of the time since stereo amplifiers use chassis ground (common) for the speaker negatives unless it's dual mono in separate chassis or a stereo tube amp.

[bobx1]

1 - Fantastic thread - enjoy watching the progress.
2 - Awesome looking building site and structure.
3 - but.....what is all that white stuff on the ground and mounded around your property?

[zsqure]

Originally Posted by bobx1

3 - but.....what is all that white stuff on the ground and mounded around your property?

Sta-Puff Marshmallow man was through here. He even turned down the heat.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by jkski

Yes, the greatroom is 2 story with a loft area on the rear-center portion of the house which has 2 bedrooms, 1 bath and a general "loft" area overlooking the greatroom. When all is said and done I will build a deck all the way around the house 6' wide from the front door over to the door located to the right of the greatroom where it will open up to a larger, 24'x24' deck that also comes off of the master bedroom. (This will be my summer project amongst a lot of other things!)

Built a very similar plan 12 years ago. Make sure you have a good quality ceiling fan in the great room as all the heat gets lost to the ceiling.

Wood burning fireplace??? Go EPA rated with a high btu rating....I can throw an arm load of wood in mine and raise the temp on the main floor +10deg and burn it for 6 hours...don't clean it out but once or twice a year. Very clean burning...I am very happy with it. Look for ones with a non-catalyst overfire as they are less maintenance.

[93Prostar190]

Wow what a great project, I keep loving the periodic updates ... Looks like Josh is a heck of a foreman! Keep it it rolling!

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by jkski

No plans to wire for speaker system as we just don't see a need for it. I do plan to run conduit to each room from the basement so that I have an easy run for watever may som about in the future and simply put a blank on it.

Great idea on the conduit as others have said. I did that too. Spend the few $$ to pre-wire for in-wall and in-ceiling speakers. Best thing I did in the last house...put the speakers and distribution in a couple years later and used them constantly. When I built the current one, wasn't even a consideration to not do it. DIY cost is reasonable. If you are interested, PM me and I can give you the take off list of speakers, volume controls, distribution boxes, etc I used.

Run extra coax and data everywhere too.

Also, if you're a christmas light guy, outlets under the soffits homerunning to a switch in your entry closet is a good thing to do