stw has all the answers, and is known as the oracle for good reasons..

anyone know how to go about planning a space (walls are defined but thats about it) for electrical sockets and possibility of cat5 sockets?

How have you gone about it when doing up your places? any tips?

looking forward to seeing what you’ve done, as some of the pics i’ve seen posted up of your places look v nice..

Whatever you think you need, you’re wrong – you need more 😉

if your thinking about cat5 cables, how do you intend to upgrade them? just something to consider when laying cables. This is linked to where are the cables when you start drilling holes to hang pictures…

How do you intend to use the space, use that as a guide as to where the sockets need to be.

Lots of sockets good, more even better.

What ever you plan now will be wrong later.

print off loads of A3 plans and get scribbling.

These are how mine ended up, and remarkably my sparky mate was able to understand them. He made some further recommendations and apart from the lack of one double socket that I think we should have added and a second switching circuit in the kitchen lighting I think we did OK.

My neighbour wired his build with Cat 5. Designed everything around a Node 0 and a 40 port switch. Personally I use Homeplug over the mains at £40 a pop if I need to network anything now, and WiFi covers the whole barn.

[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-gUWKJfJrN-8/T1UQiM-XM8I/AAAAAAAABFk/6Q_qPKHjO5M/s800/2010%252002%252023%2520Bakehouse%2520Barn%2520Electrical%2520Plans.pdf%2520-%2520Foxit%2520Reader%2520-%2520%255B2010%252002%252023%2520Bakehouse%2520Barn%2520Electrical%2520Plans.pdf%255D%252005032012%2520191205.jpg[/img]

ok thanks already for those replies!

of course if we have ‘x’ sockets we will need x+y in the end, but its just the starting the thing thats tricky..

good point re: the upgrading of the cat5.. i’m not sure if i even want them really but we’re just tryingto avoid the current set-up of having cat5 cables trailing round the lounge from the router etc..

i’ll get printing..!

We’re in the same boat, and as regards cat 5 something that is making me consider not bothering (apart from the cost and the hot plug situation) is the future (gigabit, huge range) of wifi… basically I’m not sure cables will be necessary for home networks in a couple of years. Thoughts obvs taking advantage would involve new devices. Swings and roundabouts.

And as an afterthought, if cost didn’t matter, I’d be cat 6ing my house for sure!

Mostly it’s up to you to decide where you want sockets and lights and my only advice would be put in plenty.

Think very hard about what lights you want (indoors and out), how many switches you want and where you want the switches.

Plan the kitchen now if you can. Do you want to include lights under wall units and in plinths? Where will the fridge/dishwasher/extractor and other appliances be, where can you put their power points that will be hidden but accessible (e.g. behind the neighbouring unit). The hob and oven, if electric, need a special heavier powerpoint.

Think about any home automation you may want. I have electric gates, lights in the driveway and an electric garage door that all needed cables routed.

Re the network points. I put a couple in and they are handy as they provide a pretty much foolproof connection for my TV/AV stuff in one room and any media device I want in another. Homeplugs and wifi are fine but can’t beat a bit of cable when it is so easy to include at the start.

If you put Cat5e in or Cat6 run two cables to each outlet, means you can split them as required i.e. phone over one pair and ethernet over the other 4 on a single cable. Theory is you only get 10m but i get 100m on mine all the time. Or run phone on one cable and ehthernet on the other. Having an extra cable there at least vaguely helps with futureproofing. Run them back to a central point – cupboard or something with power in it, then you can switch them from there. I have 12 cables all running back to my server cupboard which also has the Sky dish input and splitter etc plus phone patching. Everything is patched from there and makes life much easier. Our WiFi is sporadic due to the amount of concrete and metal in the house.Also think about TV outputs, HDMI cables can be put in quite easily too and worth doing. I have a monster one that goes from one room to another.

and look at Stoner’s diagrams above. They give all the important info by the look of it. For example I can see all the groups of downlighters that come on together and where the switch or switches are to be located that turn them on and off.

I planned my new attic recently. plugs placed where I knew they’d be behind furniture or in convenient locations for the visible ones eg for hoovering.

I thought about network cabling it but decided against. wifi is already good and only getting better. If I really need cabled network points, I’ll use powerline plugs.

try and imagine how you will use your house, the space and where furniture and appliances will be placed. Think of the sequence you will turn lights on and off as you enter and exit rooms and weather you need more than one switch. Locate light switches on the open side of the door so there not behind the door when you enter the room.

all very good points, thanks all!

gives us lots of food for thought..

Don’t forget you’ll need at least 8 doubles behind the telly these days for all the man/kid gadgets 😉

Don’t forget you’ll need at least 8 doubles behind the telly these days for all the man/kid gadgets

Nah, only 4 doubles behind mine – and 5 speaker input plates, an aerial and telephone socket 😯

Research ‘KNX’ and you’ll see it serves all of your needs…

It’s not cheap but you wire your house in single cable, everything KNX works with everything else and some of the most up to date and fancy stuff is on KNW, like Jung accessories….

Homeplug is crap from streaming HD telly – 720p or above will stutter during high detail scenes even with a 500mbit homeplug. Been there, done that, regretted not putting the CAT5 in.

Stoner, what app did you use for that plan? I need to do some layout planning and need something quick, intuitive and cheap.

Ta,

well we are planning the lounge to not have the tv in… so that might be a break from the norm.

we will be making the basement a ‘room’, and may put in a cat5 plug for there but im undecided – the whole thing of not being able to change them easily at a later date is playing on my mind..

Rusty, I used sketchup for the base raster and then powerpoint to overlay the detail. I find powerpoint easier and faster to use TBH so did most of my plans with it.

Cheers Stoner.

Do you have an architect for the build as they will usually put an electrical layout together for you. If you have plans in cad and the dwelling is not too big then I would draw the electrical scheme up for you free gratis. As for CAT 5 if you want hard wired data cabling/points around the house then install Cat 6 instead it’s not much more expensive and will cope with the gigabit transfers if we get there.
If you really want to be anal you could do the whole house in sketch up and add in all the wiring accessories then you can get a real feel for the layout that doesn’t come out on 2d plans.

donks, thanks for the offer..but i think it’ll be ok. i’ve done the plans for each level..its just to decide do we put in data points or not (in switzerland they are quite costly) and if so (prob yes) how many!

It also throws up another question…as the floors are armoured concrete the wifi router wont go everywhere..so where to put the router and the nas… and do we use homeplugs..

all sorts of questions!

Wire it, our house has heaps of confrete and steel and thank **** it is wired as the WiFi doesn’t really work that well.
Good point on Cat6 although this does you require you to have a GigE capable switch for it all – I have a cisco2950 running all my stuff with 10G interfaces !
I did try a minor experiment running HDMI over twisted pair but gave up as the termination boxes were quite expensive at the moment.