New basement finish suggestions needed

[David Arnold]

I'm going to agree with Chuck's approach. I built a house about a  
year ago and did the following: Conduit from all switches to the  
attic space or crawlspace, neutral wires at all switches, specify  
that all switch gang boxes are extra deep to accommodate the HA  
switches are the major items I did for powerline control.  
Unfortunately my X4X system is down at the moment as my beige G3 died  
and  I have some noise issues to work out with my Trane air handlers  
(which James knows all about). Just haven't had time to get to them.

For the low voltage stuff I again ran conduit in the attic and  
crawlspace so I could upgrade wiring as I saw fit. Just about every  
wall in every room has an low voltage gang box. I used the Leviton  
six-port quickport configuration face plate with a mix of connections  
that differs at each location. Cat6 for ethernet, Cat5e for phone,  
RG6 for satellite distribution, shielded four-wire for IR  
distribution and intercom wire for the intercoms.

Network:
Cat5e is sufficient for Gigabit, but I went with the Cat6 to increase  
the amount of time before an upgrade would be necessary. 2-24 port  
linksys gigabit switches and 1 - 8 port switch round out the network.  
Just about every room has two to three drops in it just so it's not  
difficult to plug something in.

Phone:
I used a phone distribution panel instead of running the phone wires  
serially like the installers usually do. One set of wires into the  
panel to 24 drops in the house.

Video:
No cable available here, only satellite. To avoid the expense of a  
receiver in every room I put three receivers in the wiring closet  
behind the entertainment center. The HD unit is hooked directly to  
the HDTV, the other two receivers are connect to a CE Labs 4-channel  
stereo modulator to distribute the video throughout the house. My  
receiver is set on channel 60 and my wife's on 65. 70 is being used  
to distribute the video from a Mac mini that serves up VideoTS files.

IR:
To control the receivers I needed remote IR, so I installed a Zantec  
IR system. Each room has at least two locations with a stereo  
minijack in the low voltage outlets. Zantec makes an IR receiver that  
plugs directly into this - makes it easy to move the IR reception  
where the TV is.


Most of this of course is for a whole house setup, not just a  
basement refinish - but maybe some might be of use.

David