SmartHomeUSA.com Home Automation

[alexh]

Hi,

I have purchased nearly all the parts/tools for my existing home and I'm preparing for the hard part. Just looking for some practical tips -

1. I bought a Series 140 panel. I was going to surface mount it but since it will be in a bedroom closet I'd like to flush mount it. I assume you can do this in such a manner that you won't have to repair existing drywall because the cover will hide your cuts?

2. Phone lines - I'll wire for 2 phone lines in each room. Even though I know wire is relatively cheap it still seems like a waste to pull 2 cat6 wires for 2 phone lines (on seperate RJ11 plugs). Is there anything wrong with pulling one Cat6 and using it for 2 lines?

3. Pulling wires - I bought 500' rolls of Cat6 and RG6 but since I'm probably going to pull 2 RG6, 2 or 3 Cat6 per run should I pull some of the wire off of these rolls and put it on spare reels so I can pull 2 RG6 + 2 or 3 CAT6 at the same time and avoid a lot of up and down trips through the attic? Perhaps I should just buy another roll of each but I hate to end up with lots of extra. I'm pulling wire to 3 bedrooms and 4 additional runs for downstairs rooms. All wire has to come from attic since house is slab (2 story house).

4. More pulling wires - All of my walls have insulation so I bought Greenlee fiberglass sticks. After a placing the low voltage box, I figure I can run the sticks down to the box and have a helper tie a string to the stick so I can pull the wires. Is the general procedure?

Of course transistion between upstairs and down stairs is much harder and in my case I will probably go down through a wall which has the garage on one side. This way I can remove some drywall next to the ceiling(in the garage) and drill several holes through the floor plates with a right angle drill.

4. Labelling wires - is the best way to label wires to print out names on laser printer, cut out and scotch tape to wire?

Thanks