building a house..

[Tom Young <tyoung@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks – I could use your advice. I'm in the USA, building a new
house, and am going to have a limited budget for “low voltage” features
( telephone, security system, computer networking, TV cable, sound
system, and home automation basically) – in the neighborhood of $2.50
per square foot. I need to spec everything out for the subcontractor, at
his request. I've read a few books now on home automation, most of which
conflict with each other, so I'm hoping to tap into the collective
wisdom of this place.

My priorities are to have some phone service, a security system, and a
house-wide computer network. I'll have a satellite dish of some sort,
and a need to distribute video around the house. I also plan to have a
whole-house digital sound system eventually, and want to dabble in
automating various aspects of the house, but these seem to lie outside
my budget at this point. So what do I put in the contract for the
builder and/or sub?

What I have so far:

Wall jacks
For phone, computer, TV and maybe future CCTV use, I'm planning to spec
for 6-jack multi-function wall plate with one pair of cat5e, one pair of
quad-shield RG6, a pair of extra pull-strings, terminating in RJ-45's,
F-connectors & a couple of blank plugs for later expansion. I want to
put one on every wall over 8' in length including the garage, plus
extras on the floors or walls where I expect to put desks and work
tables. I'm asking for one in each closet and bathroom, porch, attic,
and under the eves on each side of the house. I'm thinking this is
overkill, but it is vastly cheaper to do it now than later - I can
afford to guess wrong a few times and I'll still come out ahead.

Wiring Closet
I asked for each to be home-run in plastic tubing to a well-ventilated
8' x 10' closet upstairs (basements cost more than 2nd stories in my
area). The closet backs onto the game-room entertainment center and my
home office, and has a raised floor so I don't trip on all the wires. It
will hold a rack or two with whatever routers, patch panels, home
automation servers, media archives, and any other computer too noisy to
sit in my office with me.

Sound (Video?) System
I'm not sure what to ask for – there are a lot of possibilities with
lots of price tags. I want to have a choice of synchronizing sound over
the house or having four or so multiple independent zones going at once
– especially for video, and I want to be able to use both pre-digitized
playlists and listen/watch live broadcast. I can see several ways of
going about this, though and they have differing wiring needs and
probably individual pitfalls I know nothing about: Should I stream
content over my LAN for local decoding & amplification? Central
encoding/decoding and a remote-controlled multi-channel whole-house amp
in the wiring closet? Distribute digital line-level signals over coax to
local amps? I tend to lean towards computer-centric all-digital
solutions, but then DRM or HDTV may foul up the works at some point,
while the analog solutions seem unnecessarily expensive and a bit
redundant. The mind boggles.

Home Automation
I've never been involved with this, though I find it fascinating.
Reviews on X10 based systems seem mixed, so I figure to ask for some
cat5 strung to the lights, switches, doors & windows. Given budget
constraints, I'm probably prepping the place to make DIY projects easier
rather than actually automating things. What would you folks recommend?

Thanks in advance for your advice,

Tom