Electrician wiring my house shortly

Hi all,
Electrician will be wiring my new house shortly.Just basically looking for any tips or pitfalls to avoid when specifying to him what I want.
I want to have 2 flat screen tv's hung on wall in sitting room + in main bedroom.After that I am fairly flexible as regards lighting etc.
I suppose any pitfall re: number and location of sockets or anything else.
I also want to have an electric gates in the entrance to my house,i persume i have to get him to run a wire from house to where gates will be?
Also I would like some external lights,i have seen some house,which have nice spot light in the ground,lighting up front of house?
Just like to have some ideas and some of the lingo before i talk to him about what i want to do?

Thanks for any feedback.
T.

firstly you need to get your sepcification for the works you want done written down and give him a copy, so that there is no confusion...... then both parties understand that if theres changes there may be extras...

I would advise wiring TV to every room at this point even if you never use it saves you doing it again.

YA syd thats exactly what im trying to do at the moment,jsut looking for any tips and pitfall of things to do or not to do

When specifing the location of the wall mounted TV's you might want to consider will the plugs and TV wiring fit behind the TV when its in place.
I had this difficulty. Needed to buy different hanging brackets which means the TV is not as close to the wall now as I would have liked. EacH TV will be different, so look at the TV's first hold them to the wall then mark where is the best location for the sockets.

thespecialon said:

Hi all,
I also want to have an electric gates in the entrance to my house,i persume i have to get him to run a wire from house to where gates will be?
Also I would like some external lights,i have seen some house,which have nice spot light in the ground,lighting up front of house?
T.

Click to expand...

Hi thespecialon,

Ensure that you have the proper sized wire to carry the load all the way to the gate. Have you the Electrics and 'phone wires connected to the houese yet? If not get your digger-man to dig a trench for a conduit to carry the electric gate wire(s), or get him to do it when he's digging your drains. Think about running conduits to the garage also, even if you haven't yet built one it's a lot better having the conduit under the drive way for possible future use than the effort in ripping up your drive or having some ugly wires running from the wallplate of your house to garage.

ALERT.

You might want to consider having lights at bathroom mirrors switched from the wall outside the bathroom door. That would you won't be restricted to a limited range of pull-chord lights.

hotlips said:

You might want to consider having lights at bathroom mirrors switched from the wall outside the bathroom door. That would you won't be restricted to a limited range of pull-chord lights.

Click to expand...

Good idea, but there seems to be a greater selection of those "pull chord" types and hence they seem to be cheaper.

Rewired ourselves recently.....To future proof - when running coax cable (eg RG 6) to the TV's would also get him to run ethernet cable (eg Cat5e) to the same points. Cable cheap - Cat 5e is €30/40 for 100 meters. We ran 2 RG6 and 2 Cat5e to each room for TV/phone/internet and brought back to one location.

Also, plan out exactly where you want the socket points and dont leave it to him. eg double socket each side of bed, where fridge will go (place point above or fridge will have to shift out), not directly behind dishwasher etc. Maybe a separate run to a room at the back of house which could be extended outside later for future shed/jacuzzi etc. Maybe spare to attic.

For our central heating have 3 zones. Downstairs, upstairs and the boiler. Can have downstairs heating on in evening and upstairs off etc. If wanted somethnig like this would need electrician to run 3 circuits to stats (say downstairs living room, upstairs bedroom and boiler) and back to where boiler is located.

Also, would recommend a hard wired alarm system. Bringing alarm cable to each zone, eg back of house downstairs, front door, sensor upstairs, external alarm box, keypad etc. and back to where you want your panel. If need a telephone link phone cable should enter alarm panel before first phone point.

Hope goes well

you might not want rg6 going to the tv. if you're using a sky box it's a scart cable you want going to it, Hdmi for a dvd player, maybe vga for a possible games console. if you do want coax going to it use ct100 instead of rg6, it's better quality cable

Recam said:

Good idea, but there seems to be a greater selection of those "pull chord" types and hence they seem to be cheaper.

Click to expand...

Well you have a choice of both pull-chord and all others if you put the switch outside. You just leave the chord in the "on" position and tape it out of the way if you don't want it to be visible. Some mirrors with built-in lights have the chord hanging from the bottom behind the mirror so you can tape it up completely out of sight.

skippy above is spot on with the cat 5e to every room, but also at your flatcreen tv you should if possible bring a scart lead to it, from where you will be leaving your dvd player etc, you can now buy 10 m scart leads from elec wholesalers

hotlips said:

Well you have a choice of both pull-chord and all others if you put the switch outside.

Click to expand...

Not quite, there are regulations relating to the type of electrical fittings and where they may be placed in bathrooms.

There are more safety issues here than the placement of the switch. As this BBC article states: "Don't ever be tempted to use a conventional light fitting that's not intended for bathroom use."
Leo

woddle said:

skippy above is spot on with the cat 5e to every room, but also at your flatcreen tv you should if possible bring a scart lead to it, from where you will be leaving your dvd player etc, you can now buy 10 m scart leads from elec wholesalers

Click to expand...

if it's a nice new flatscreen there are much better connections than scart, hdmi or dvi will give a much better picture

Leo said:

Not quite, there are regulations relating to the type of electrical fittings and where they may be placed in bathrooms.

There are more safety issues here than the placement of the switch. As this BBC article states: "Don't ever be tempted to use a conventional light fitting that's not intended for bathroom use."
Leo

Click to expand...

Yes, of course there are. I wasn't suggesting using an inappropriate light fitting. There are lots of lights with bathroom appropriate IP ratings and appropriately insulated which you might want to place over or around a mirror but can't just because they don't have a pull-chord.
Also, even if you have a light with a pull-chord, if you want a minimalist bathroom design, you might want the option of taping the chord out of sight.

If future proofing, would you not use cat6 instead of cat5e? More expensive I know but worth it for future proofing perhaps

Just mentioned to Mrs. Recam how handy having 5amp sockets in our sitting room. We can turn on our lamps from a switch at the door. Defo recommend looking at this feature

woddle said:

skippy above is spot on with the cat 5e to every room

Click to expand...

Excuse my ignorance on such matters, but these Cat 5e cables, are these for internet connection points? If so I have wireless internet set up in current house so what would be the advantage of having these cables as i find wireless works well,with my laptop anyway?

say you wanted to do something like put a distributed music system in every room, Or if you ever got a htpc, or a desktop computer. You can also set up home automation with cat5e to every room.

thespecialon said:

Hi all,
Electrician will be wiring my new house shortly.Just basically looking for any tips or pitfalls to avoid when specifying to him what I want.
I want to have 2 flat screen tv's hung on wall in sitting room + in main bedroom.After that I am fairly flexible as regards lighting etc.
I suppose any pitfall re: number and location of sockets or anything else.
I also want to have an electric gates in the entrance to my house,i persume i have to get him to run a wire from house to where gates will be?
Also I would like some external lights,i have seen some house,which have nice spot light in the ground,lighting up front of house?
Just like to have some ideas and some of the lingo before i talk to him about what i want to do?

Thanks for any feedback.
T.

Click to expand...

make sure you get plenty of sockets installed it saves running trailing leads every where