Best way to wire a new house.

Hello,

What would be the best way to wire a new house? I am talking mostly about electrical wiring (not about AV or home networking).

For example: How is best to wire the switches. The "traditional" way, or what is called "home run" (or something entirely different)?

My main concern is future proofing the house. While certain ways might be better than the traditional way of wiring, I fear that if in the future home automation becomes mainstream, the new systems will utilize the traditional wiring as this will be what most people will have. So this makes me a bit skeptical about wiring my house in a non-traditional way.

Thanks

future proofing.... one of those questions of time... I am planning on a standard (as you called it "typical") wiring scheme. I also agree for HA to be more mainstream they cant price themselves out of the retrofit market.

What I would, which does cost the most money (wire/panel/breaker wise) is to home run each room's fan and lights. Especially the lights - that way if you trip the circuit in a room it won't take out the lights and also if there is any line noise from a dimmer or fan controller it won't affect anything plugged into the room circuit receptacles. If you can't fit all the extra breakers in the panel then use a j-box next to it and combine multiple rooms into a single circuit to connect at the panel.

The biggest advantage to home-run wiring of your loads is the reduction of 'wall clutter', or 'wall acne' - the banks of switches are replaced with keypads.

If that is your prime goal, and you are willing to pay for 1 of the lighting control systems that work with home-run loads, then go for it. You would install the control system at the time of construction, and then you'd be done with lighting control options forever - there would be no reason to change any hardware.

The 2 largest companies that offer these systems aren't very DIY friendly, so you'll need to arrange for DIY 'takeover' of the system before you buy it, that is, before it's installed. They're more expensive than other lighting control systems as well.

So, first question - how badly do you want to remove 'wall clutter'?

We're still in a point in the market where many buyers could be afraid of non-traditional wiring; if there's a problem or a manufacturer discontinues a line, it could get harder to get parts or service in the future. Standard wiring/switches can be handled by any electrician.

As mustangcoupe said - the manufacturers are going to focus on the retrofit market - it's much larger than the new construction with automation market; so if you use standard wiring and UPB or Z-Wave there will be plenty of options for you now and in the future.

video321 - man your idea seems absolutely crazy! a 15-amp breaker for every light in every room? I've never seen that done in practice. You'll rarely even see one room per breaker - it's usually 2-3 bedrooms per breaker. And I've never seen anyone home-run the wiring to a central j-box like you listed - common practice is to daisy chain. If you have to troubleshoot, go back to the last working outlet or light in the run; but really - how often do you need to troubleshoot electrical? It should be able to exist peacefully in your home for 30 years just fine.

This has nothing to do 'directly' with this topic, but I believe new electrical codes exist that require each bedroom to be on their own 'arc-flash' breaker. Perhaps an electrician or someone more familiar with codes can clarify this.

Work2Play said:

video321 - man your idea seems absolutely crazy! a 15-amp breaker for every light in every room? I've never seen that done in practice. You'll rarely even see one room per breaker - it's usually 2-3 bedrooms per breaker. And I've never seen anyone home-run the wiring to a central j-box like you listed - common practice is to daisy chain. If you have to troubleshoot, go back to the last working outlet or light in the run; but really - how often do you need to troubleshoot electrical? It should be able to exist peacefully in your home for 30 years just fine.

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I was saying a breaker for every room, not individual light (ex: all recessed lights). And, yes, that is crazy which is why I said they could be grouped (2-3 rooms depending on loads) with a j-box for each group next to the panel and then a single circuit in the panel. The idea being that you have "traditional" wiring in place (complete with standard wall switches), but you also have home runs if you ever wanted to install a high-end control system (maybe not now, but in 10yrs. it could be extremely affordable.) If it's a 2-story house run the wires in the basement/crawl or attic accordingly so you can easily bypass the high voltage switch when needed. Yes, it is off the wall, but the most future proof way I could think of. If you daisy-chain then you have no option of every running a control system without a re-wire.

Sometimes these crazy ideas just pop-up in my head :nutz:

The codes change often - it's hard to keep up; but at least in my house, the MBR has one AFCI, and the other bedrooms share another. A quick look at this site says apparently they're now required in just about every room - that's gonna be expensive! I'm screwed if they ever force me to upgrade to that model since it kills the use of double-breakers.

If I was wiring from scratch, I'd put AFCI in.

So, first question - how badly do you want to remove 'wall clutter'?

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I don't like wall clutter and I would prefer not to have it. I don't think wall clutter would be an issue for most rooms, but it will be for the large open space we will have downstairs from where I will also need to control the lights for the garden! Is a home-run wiring solution the only way to reduce wall clutter?

We're still in a point in the market where many buyers could be afraid of non-traditional wiring; if there's a problem or a manufacturer discontinues a line, it could get harder to get parts or service in the future. Standard wiring/switches can be handled by any electrician.

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Yes, this is another thing that worries me!

The idea being that you have "traditional" wiring in place (complete with standard wall switches), but you also have home runs if you ever wanted to install a high-end control system.

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Sounds like a good idea. Let me make sure I understand what you are saying here. What you mean is that while there are Home Automation solutions that work with the traditional wiring, those solutions are not high end. To have a high-end control I will need the wiring for each load to be home-run. So I home-run each load, but I still pass it from the traditional switches so it can be used in the traditional way. Did I get you right?

In order to be "high-end ready" wouldn't I also need cat5 (or similar) running from each switch back to a central location?

Zoo said:

In order to be "high-end ready" wouldn't I also need cat5 (or similar) running from each switch back to a central location?

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You have to be careful with this, you usually can't have low voltage and high voltage in the same box. Different systems have their ways of bending this rule.

Zoo said:

Sounds like a good idea. Let me make sure I understand what you are saying here. What you mean is that while there are Home Automation solutions that work with the traditional wiring, those solutions are not high end. To have a high-end control I will need the wiring for each load to be home-run. So I home-run each load, but I still pass it from the traditional switches so it can be used in the traditional way. Did I get you right?

In order to be "high-end ready" wouldn't I also need cat5 (or similar) running from each switch back to a central location?

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Yes, but while I'm no expert in lighting systems I wouldn't say only switches with a master controller is high-end.
For the Catx issue run it unterminated behind the keypad location so it's there if you need it. Keep it out of the j-box as that would be a code violation. When the electrician wires the wall switches have him staple the wires just enough to hold them in place, but allow you to pull them out. Also have extra length on the load side of the switch so it can be terminated in a j-box in the basement/crawl - not much would be required in the attic. As long as you don't finish your basement ceiling or attic floor everything should be up to code since you're allowed to have splices in j-boxes as long as they are not buried in the wall/ceiling. Drop ceilings should be o.k. Definitely talk to your electrician though to make sure this would pass an inspection. Really, at the time of construction, all you're doing in home-running each room and then daisy-chaining at the panel. It's basically the same thing the electrician would do except this is using much more wire by daisy-chaining at the panel instead of an area of the home.

Work2Play said:

We're still in a point in the market where many buyers could be afraid of non-traditional wiring; if there's a problem or a manufacturer discontinues a line, it could get harder to get parts or service in the future. Standard wiring/switches can be handled by any electrician.

As mustangcoupe said - the manufacturers are going to focus on the retrofit market - it's much larger than the new construction with automation market; so if you use standard wiring and UPB or Z-Wave there will be plenty of options for you now and in the future.

video321 - man your idea seems absolutely crazy! a 15-amp breaker for every light in every room? I've never seen that done in practice. You'll rarely even see one room per breaker - it's usually 2-3 bedrooms per breaker. And I've never seen anyone home-run the wiring to a central j-box like you listed - common practice is to daisy chain. If you have to troubleshoot, go back to the last working outlet or light in the run; but really - how often do you need to troubleshoot electrical? It should be able to exist peacefully in your home for 30 years just fine.

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Big Ditto.

I've seen video's of a house built with the home run wiring scheme. It was on "Home Time" with Dean Johhson and "JOJO". Anyway, the panel that controlled that thing looked like something that should be powering a wall mart. It was nuts I tell ya. There was probably 10 miles of wires in that house.

As I see it, home running is backwards technology. This is 1950's relay mindset. Wire your house like 99.99999% of all other houses in america and you will be far better off. If you have that .0000001% house, you may find yourself with a lot of wires and no one to support the system. Then you get to splice them all together and hope they ran enough wires to put regular switches in.

Personally, I suspect that as wifi technology gets cheaper, we will see something like z-wave or Insteon rf switches, but run off of wifi. No special wiring needed at all. And if you decide to get rid of a bunch of your j-boxes when that happens, nothing that one day with a drywall guy that can't be fixed.

I suggest conventional wiring of your lighting, with a neutral in every box. You're looking for trouble home-running without a lighting control system in place.

If you really want to reduce wall clutter in a few key locations, you could consider a limited Lutron HomeWorks QS install during construction, with a future plan of replacing other zones with cheaper automated switches in the future.

Lutron GrafikEye units could be a solution to your wall clutter problem, if you don't mind the look of the units. Each GE can replace a bank of switches.

I look at this "Wall Clutter" as one of those issues where resale and functionality for guests matters most. Sure, it may not look great having a bank of 8-switches, but honestly, that's what every guest or prospective buyer who enters your house will expect to find and know how to control. Nobody will walk away from a house because it has too many light switches; they will walk away though if they have fears about a system they don't understand or don't know how to support. And your guests should be able to operate your house without training as well.

In my house I did a big retrofit installation using UPB - so to reduce some clutter, I used the extra switches to replace with Scene controllers; but left standard switches in place as well. For instance, every room was wired with a switched outlet - I didn't need that, so I replaced that with a scene controller and wired the outlet to always on. For other places, I stole the hall closet light switch or Patio light switch and changed them to scene controllers - because nobody should be screwing with those lights anyways and I let automation run them in the backend (closets have a contact sensor on them that turns the lights on/off automatically). All in all, it's a nice mix of advanced functionality for me, the homeowner, without confusing guests much. And when I sell the house, I'll offer to take the switches or leave them - without affecting the price. In the end it can all be removed if needed without leaving a trace.