Our subdivision is wired for AT&T U-Verse. Basically, that means that all our media (TV, internet and phone) will come over fiber optic lines into the house. This is one of the first subdivisions in my area to get this. I’m so stoked to be able to get fiber optic speeds at my house. So, I wanted to make sure that I wired the house right and by doing it myself, I also saved a little bit of money. Every room in the house gets a phone, data and TV wire with some rooms, like the living areas and the master bedroom, getting multiple runs. This “future proofs” the house because there are extra cables run in the main living areas and you can take advantage of this when new technology is released. In short, I’m a technology nerd and I wanted to make sure my house was equally as “techy”. On top of that, there is going to be a media room in the basement (you knew this if you’ve read the previous posts) and I wanted to make sure I had this room wired for 7.1 surround sound and a projector.

I’ve spent the last few weekends wiring the house for all this stuff and I’m pretty proud of the way it has turned out. I started out with 2000ft of quad shield coaxial cable for all the TV runs and 2000ft of cat5e cable for the phone and data runs. I also used some if the cat5e cable to run an in house intercom system that we are going to get. This will not only be an intercom system but also act a whole house sound system. Lastly, I ran some 16/2 speaker wire in the media room for the 7.1 surround and some speaker wire outside so that we could have music on the patio if we ever choose.

On top of me doing all that, we had the electricians, plumbers, and HVAC guys running all their stuff. The electricians did all their stuff in about 2 days. The only thing that we had to decide about that was lighting and we got a lot of can lights. We added them in each room as well as in the bathrooms rather than having the typical Vegas lights in the bathroom. Also, we had them wire a generator plug by the breaker box in case we ever have another ice storm like the one we had a few years ago. If that happens, we simply shut off the main power, and plug in a generator and can power a few rooms in the house on top of all the appliances. That will be great if we ever have to use that.

The plumbers were pretty straight forward as well. The only thing we did additional to the plumbing is asked for a sink to be put in the garage. I think that will be really handy to have one of those large deep sinks in there to wash up after working outside.

For the HVAC system, we had a much harder decision. The standard HVAC system that many builders put in the houses equivalent to ours these days are 80% efficient gas furnaces and 13 seer 3 ton air conditioners. Basically, that means that for every $1 in gas you use for heating, 80 cents of that goes directly to heating and then 20 cents is lost to waste. For the air conditioner, the seer rating is the efficiency rating and the tonnage is the capacity. As of next year, 13 seer is lowest efficiency rating that will be allowed. We were faced with using the standard system, which will do a decent job of heating and cooling the house, or getting some upgrades which would be costly, but might pay off in the long run. For this decision, it is simply all about pay off period. If you spend $1000 more dollars on your HVAC system up front, but it saves you $20 a month on your heating and cooling bills (over the standard system), that is a payoff period of a little over 4 years. That would be a good investment. With that said, $1000 in upgrades for the HVAC system is just the starting point. Seriously, we had people quote us stuff that was $6000 over the base system. That stuff had a high payback period of around 15-20 years. Now, if you plan to live in your house a long time, that might not sound too bad, but if you think that the average life of an HVAC system is 10-15 years, that doesn’t make much sense. We decided to upgrade to a 90% efficient 100,000 BTU gas furnace and a 14 seer 4 ton heat pump. Now without going into a large explanation of what a heat pump is, it is basically an air conditioner with the ability to switch over to a heater in the winter. It only uses electricity rather than gas so it is a lot cheaper. The only caveat to that is it really only works when it is above freezing in the winter. So there will be a few months that you might have to use the gas furnace, but the other months the heat pump will save you a lot of money. So with all that said, we got a few upgrades to the HVAC system and I think it will be a really good investment to lower our monthly heating and cooling costs.

Ok, so that is what we have been doing for the last few weeks. And without further delay, here are the latest pictures.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

So that is all for now. In the next few weeks, we will be getting the rough in inspection done and after that is approved we will start insulation, drywall and bricking. When that starts happening, this thing will be done in no time. Check back soon!

p.s. Here is a picture of me so stoked that we are finally done with wiring the house.