We've finally taken the plunge and bought a section at Karaka. Moving down from a nice villa from central Auckland to a new monster. Here's hoping it'll be warmer, straight and lack of continuous maintenance! Its been fun doing it up the last couple of years but with a little kid in tow, thought we'd need something bigger and in a nicer kid friendly neighbourhood. I've been trawling through all post in this section to get ideas and feedback and has been great!   Things that I'm planning on putting in:  

CAT 5E Network cabling: 4x Points at each TV location Last count so far is sitting at 36x runs.

I am not sure whether I should terminate it into a cabinet in the garage or under stairs/storage area.  

Co-Ax/SKY Cabling Co-ax RG6 & Sky runs to all tv points with a distribution point in the garage. Not decided yet if I want a connection in each room. Might be an overkill and don’t want kids locked up in their bedrooms in the future!  


CCTV Intend on purchasing some new POE Cams with a POE switch. Currently running non POE FOSCAM units. A pain running power to them! cabling termination will be in the cabinet. Video distribution - might use the web services feature on BI, but would nice to have it running on the telly as well. Not sure what to use for this?  

Home theatre room. The usual 5.1 speaker cabling runs I'll continue to use my current quality speaker cables for the fronts and centre channel. Normal 16 gauge cables for the rears, 1x HDMI connection and power in the ceiling for a future projector.
Question - how far back does this usually get mounted?  


Media CTR/Apple TV I have a windows MCE and Apple TV. It would be nice to have this in the rack cabinet. However unsure how to get video, sound & IR around the house. CAT Baloons? Easiest would be to have the MCE in the media room & apple TV in the lounge?  

Heating/Cooling & Ventilation I've made my mind up with going with a ducted heat pump solution. However I've been hearing mixed feedback on the installation of this in a double story home. Some say its ok to run a duct between the floors and some says it can only cover the first floor! If that the case, it look I might have to put a couple of units on the ground floor.   Speaking to Smartvent at the home show, they mentioned that they can retrofit their system into the existing ducts. Sounds like a good solution and probably running the ventilation system 24/7 might be cheaper than running the ducted system?
Question - has anybody done a similar setup and can recommend a good installer etc.?

Lightning Thinking of recessed LED lights with the option of dimmers, esp. for the Home Theatre room

Automation it's on the wish list and like the Fibaro system!! seems easy enough to retrofit in the future and doesn’t seem to cost the earth!  

Cheers