New Build: Advice for Power and Data Cabling

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Twincamr2

90 posts

Master Geek

#319460 27-Apr-2025 16:08

Hi All,

We're into the developed design stage for our new build and I was hoping to get some advice from you fine people here. The architect has included a basic layout of high voltage stuff, and very basic layout of data low voltage. Apart from a few power points (and thinking about AV gear locations in downstairs lounge), the main things that are missing from HV are EV charging (we have 2 EV's) and any provision for solar.

My annotations are in red - do you think this is reasonable? anything I've missed? I was thinking about putting the solar inverter and (possible) battery on the interior wall of the garage. The roof is north facing with ample space for 10 kW of panels. What kind of provision whould we make for bringing the cabling fom the roof to the garage? Conduit in the stairway wall? Network gear - ONT, router, switch, server will be in the upstairs utility room. I'll add my data annotations in the another post. Any general thoughts on layout etc? (although this is somewhat solidified now).

Downstairs:

Upstairs:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

90 posts

Master Geek

#3368000 27-Apr-2025 16:15

Data

Cat 6 throughout.

Downstairs:

b/room will function as office. WAP in ceiling in dining room. Cameras outside back door and front door.

Lounge AV details:

Simple 5.1 HT setup.

Upstairs:

TV in upstairs lounge. Network gear in upstairs utility room. I've missed the ceiling-mounted WAP in the upstairs lounge.

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

acsylaa

25 posts

Geek

#3368006 27-Apr-2025 17:18

Looking at those plans i would def run some ducts up the Stairwell void just incase,

In the Bedrooms i would also run data to the side of the bed if not both sides, as being 2 story its way easier to do it now!

And if you are running 1 cable to 1 camera or AP run 2 cables, as the cat6 is cheap!

Another idea would be in wall AP's instead of Ce-ling mounted ones, then they wouldn't be so noticable.

I would also look at adding some more data in the farthermost corners in the Downstairs lounge as well and same in the garage, you never know.

Twincamr2

90 posts

Master Geek

#3368009 27-Apr-2025 17:32

Awesome, exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for!

The only thing I'd say is that I already have a Grandstream ceiling AP, so was going to stick with that and add another of the same. I had heard that wall APs aren't quite as good...

acsylaa

25 posts

Geek

#3368066 27-Apr-2025 18:07

I have been using a unifi U6 inwall for some time now and haven't had any issues with them at all i get good speed test results via cable and wifi6, Myne is installed behind the TV that is mounted on the wall in a corner fairly central in the house, The built in Switch also feeds the TV and Chrome-cast as well.

But if you have the AP's then that makes sense.

In this corner where i mentioned to run the data, you can leave it coiled up in the flush box behind the wall for future use, but when you do run it through the Banana plug flush box and then down to the Coax or the PP below, then if you decide to install a camera in that corner on the outside and if the Sparky is any good they should be able to make the hole on the outside wall meet up with the banana socked and use the pre installed cable.

Thats my 2c, as i have done this in the past and its been a really good Get out of jail free card! Especially when the cables are spare!

Also add more lights where you think you would want some, the architect is not a Sparky or should ever consult on things like that in my books, My house when i brought it 5 years ago had only 2 R80 down-lights in the garage, i have since added 6 more as there was no light at all in there, and converted them all to LED, I also replaced all the Exterior wall lights and installed down lights in the Soffits, as it looks way better and the crappy power coating of the old lights was deteriorating and you could see the stuff run down the wall, and that only half ow whats been done! From memory there was only about 25 or so lights in the house, i have since doubles that and made it more Suitable.

I would also look at adding more lights above the Benches in the middle of the bench, such as in the Scullery and the main Island bench as you can never have too much light in the kitchen, also you want the light in front of you not behind you.

Same with the Bathrooms as you can see there is one light thats not directly above the sink, it needs to be centre of the sink, so when you looking in the mirror you can see what you are doing.

Also Extractors in the shower, my suggestion is to use a Mixed Flow fan as its got plenty of suck, and if you use the manrose grille that has a 12v LED light in it bang smack in the center you should have no issues with steam ever as its should all get sucked up straight from the Shower box and there should be plenty of light.

Link for the Grilles with LIghts in them https://simx.co.nz/product-groups/extraction/inline-extraction-fan-kits/inline-extraction-fan-kits-with-leds-page

Im a bit rusty on the Regs but im pretty sure you cant have a 240v light or down light in the shower as the Architects plan.

Rodders1nz

37 posts

Geek

ID Verified

#3368067 27-Apr-2025 18:07

Would do more than 2 network jacks by TV. We did 1 high behind TV and 3 low behind entertainment unit, Saves adding a switch there later. Also do ducting in TV walls and also do a ducting into your utility room

tweake

2273 posts

Uber Geek

#3368087 27-Apr-2025 19:21

Twincamr2:

the main things that are missing from HV are EV charging (we have 2 EV's) and any provision for solar.

also nothing on their for powering the heat pump and hot water. outdoor hot water is that gas or heat pump?

whats your HVAC plan? i only see one spot for a heat pump indoor unit listed and its in a weird spot. ducted? ventilation? need power outlets for that as well.

Scott3

3915 posts

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#3368117 27-Apr-2025 22:07

Power:

Some of my thoughts from a few years back:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=141&topicid=289020&page_no=1#2756635

A couple of correction to that. Per a latter comment, I think vector offers 32A, 60A, 100A connections in both single and three phase.

Also I perhaps oversell the need for a high capacity power connection. Pole fuses are some kind of super slow blow version, so you need to be drawing a heap of power for a long time to blow one.

And thirdly, EV chargers which measure your current power demand and auto shed their load if needed exist

Incoming:

Fairly big decision on this one.

60A vs 100A
Single phase vs 3 phase. (2 phase also offered by some lines companies)

Look into what your local lines company offers, and if the higher capacity options result in a massive upfront for monthly charge.

If viable I would be choosing between 100A single phase and 60A or 100A 3 phase, and personally would lean to the latter for a two EV, all electric home.

3 phase power has some big advantages - able to charge EV's at 12kW, rather than 7kW, supports 3 phase equipment, generally a larger amount of solar injection is allowed... But can be a bit of a chore when it comes to solar and battery backup setups, as load does not allays balance generation.

Circuit board:

Ensure it has a decent number of free slots in it
It is located somewhere you can get future wires in / out (if not have a few bits of conduit put in.
Consider having a whole house surge protector added - not super common in NZ, but I had one added when my circuit board was replaced in my house
Standard in NZ is to have a RCD for every 3 circuits, If you want to reduce the odds and impact of nuisance tripping (and save some space on the board), you could specify and RCBO for every circuit, but this will cost ~$1000 extra, so I didn't end up with that in the end.
Could consider a dedicated circuit for your fridge / freezer, or anything else critical (data rack?), to reduce the odds of being tripped by another load.
Check the location is somewhere aesthetically acceptable.

Cooking:

Go induction cooktop, really worth the extra cost over ceramic - note the electrical draw can be as high as 48A (can be shared around 3 phase if you have that). - Note induction cooktops have minimum ventilation clearances, might want to check the kitchen builder follows these or you will have a short appliance life
Get a good range hood that is ducted outside. Ideally one size up from the cooktop (i.e. 120cm range hood over a 90cm cooktop.
My dream kitchen would have dual ovens (ideally one of which is a steam oven) - but would need a big kitchen for this to make sense.
I was going to recommend a lot of outlets in this area, but looks like you are already on top of this.
Consider if you want under cabinet lighting, or lighting in the pantry.

Entertainment

You are obviously aware of the trend to have wall mounted TV's with all the wires coming out behind them.
Note many items that would have traditionally been in a entertainment cabinet are now being designed to be hidden behind the TV. Sky pod, Nvida Shield etc. Ideally you would avoid swtiches & multiboxes and have 4x power + 4x Ethernet, + UHF behind the TV. Potentially you could do away with the cabinet all together and simply have a large soundbar feed the rear satellite speakers. If you do want a cabinet, then that should have power + Data + UHF also. Plus a conduit or similar to get HDMI and opitical cables from your cabinet to your TV in a hidden way.
Give some thought to speaker height, suggest your wires for your fount sides may be a little to low and your rears too high. If you want a super clean install, with a floating center speaker, the height of that wiring will need to be carefully selected also.
Consider if you will want TV's in other locations? Bedroom? office? somewhere you can see from the kitchen? - if so having power, data and UHF behind the possible location is ideal (but potentially ugly if it is just future proofing)

Lighting:

Not sure what is up with the lighting in the bathrooms. You want a mirror with integrated lighting, a strip light above the mirror, or a pair of spots in the ceiling in front of the mirror. Proposal appears asymmetric?
That pair of lights above the garage door is going to be blocked by the garage door when it is open, but will give great lighting when it is down, don't know if there is a fix for this, just so you are aware.
Outdoor lighting seems a little lean. Nice to have some spots that you can turn on that cover the outdoor dining (are there area's in both the top left and bottom right) & driveway area.

Heating, Cooling, Ventilation

If you intent to use the outdoor seating area's a lot, consider installing (or future proofing with wiring for those IR outdoor heaters.
Our house preforms poorly thermally, so I have just had a heat pump put in each bedroom and the office. In general the heat pump in the middle with the hope it cools / heats nearby rooms works poorly, but of course it is a lot cheaper solution.
Unclear if a mechanical ventilation system is proposed. Something to give some thought to at the build stage. avoid those such air out of the roof space ones

Bathroom's

Bathroom extractors - ones with inline fans are way quieter and mean the intake can be right above the shower.
If you have tiles, underfloor heating is really nice
Consider towel rails. We have a bathroom that is tight on wall space, but managed to fit in a pair of those vertical poles ones. Consider if you want a timer installed from the start (or just want to run them 24/7 to keep the bathroom a little warm and reduce mold risk.
If you are having cupbords (mirror cupboards are a trend at the moment), consider if you want to have power outlets inside (charge electric toothbrushes etc), or outside, or both.

EV Chargers

Give some thought to location - frustratingly EV makers have not unified on a single charge port location, so it is hard to future proof the location. Ideally the wall charger location would be such that it can work with any EV, and you have a charge port storage dock somewhere near your current EV's charge port location
Have each on a dedicated circuit.
- Size of which will depend on what power incomer you have. If only single phase then you want this sized for 32A single phase each (40A breaker is recommended, but mine is 32A and works fine). If you have 3 phase, Personally I would run 32A 3 phase to each, meaning you can charge EV's like single phase only kona at 7kW, and 3 phase EV's like the ioniq 5 at 11 kW (and rare 22 kW 3 phase EV's like the recently released Cadillac Lyriq at 22 kW.
- Much of the above is about future proofing. Our 2014 EV has a 24 kWh battery, Something like a mach-e awd (was selling for $55k for a bit last year) has a 100 kWh battery. Quite possible 200 kWh+ EV's will be common in 2035, for which faster charging than today EV's is highly desiable.
Many EVSE's now have DC leakage protection, making the extra protection from a type B RCD moot, given they are $350 and Bulky, I didn't bother with my EVSE install.
If you already have two EV's, I would skip the 16A plugs and go straight to having EVSE's installed. Tesla's gen 3 wall connector are well regarded. They are $850 each, can handle up to 22kW, and are capable of load sharing between mutiple EV's (but lack some more advanced smarts).
If you have outdoor parking spots, consider future proofing them for EV charging. Either by running a wire to the location. Or having conduit installed to bridge gaps that can't be done after the walls are closed in. in a surprising number of kiwi homes the cars get bumped from the garage in favor of other uses.

General

Outdoor power outlets - much more handy than running a cord out a window if you do things like vacuum your car, run an electric leaf blower outside.
Spa pool - If you might get one of these in the future, consider having a wire run (or at least conduit to bridge any gaps that will be hard to bridge with the walls closed in

Hot water

Hot water heat pump is shown. These are good but fairly expensive, and arn't as durable as a boring resistance hot water cylinder.
If you are going solar, you may be better off with a large (300 or 400L) duel element cylinder. Bottom element run by a solar diverter, or a simple timer which turns it on at solar times (and perhaps off peak power price times). Top element on 24/7 power. One of the elements can be ripple controlled if you are in an area which still does that. Will likely work out cheaper upfront, and while 3x less efficient than a hot water heat pump, can soak up much of your solar output that would otherwise be sold back to the grid for peanuts.
For luxury, consider those loop systems where you don't need to wait for hot water to come from the tank. Costs a bit of energy, but saves water.

Solar / Battery

I understand that residential solar is quite cost effective, if you can swing the capex at the same time as your house build I would have it installed while the roofing scaffold is still up, and go as big as your roof (or your lines company will allow).
If not provision a means to get the wires run later.
Battery is typically not cost effective yet, but some make the case for its value in providing backup power in times of a grid outage.

Data:

Hub / rack etc:

You need a central place for data distribution.
- UHF
- Satellite (if any)
- Data
- Camera's (can be part of the data system or separably)
- Security System (if any)
These don't need to be at the same place, and better access for future cable runs is more important than being physically centrally.
I when with one of those white recessed panels, but For a new build I would be keen on a rack. Consider how on rack mount hardware (like your ONT would be mounted).\
Provision power.
Note that to get 10GBe over cat 6 runs need to be less than 55m
Somewhere that noise / heat is not a big deal (if you might run servers / NAS at some point).

Ethernet Drops

Put in heaps, so you can avoid local switches.
Camera locations
If you want to be really hardcore, you could future proof for 60 GHz wifi which will require an AP in every room as it sucks at penetrating walls.
Consider if you want home smarts. Access control, smart blinds etc.

Other:

Master walk in wardrobe:

Unless all the racks /cabinets are going to have doors on them, a window in the walk in wardrobe is a risky idea. Can lead to exposed portion's of garment becoming faded over a few years. Consider eliminating this, having a opaque pane installed, or some kind of black out blinds / shutters

Goosey

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#3368128 28-Apr-2025 06:36

There’s some great replies above!

Regarding the following…

lights - is that enough for outside? (Front door, and driveway/above garage door), back door and back deck?

Is that ventilation duct in the back patio area sucking or blowing? (Might be an issue when ya smoking the bbq or sitting there getting a waft of bad air from the bathroom).

power, is there enough in the hall ways and other areas to pull the vacuum cleaner along?
have you got an outdoor power outlet for the back patio? Also is there an outlet inside near the front of the garage (driveway end).

for the kitchen area, it wouldn’t be silly to have a light of sorts on or near the splash back… that way you can switch this on and off without having all the lights on if you are just needing tad a of light to duck into the kitchen or just generally see at night without having to have a stadium lit up.

tweake

2273 posts

Uber Geek

#3368226 28-Apr-2025 11:40

some other thoughts,

get lines power upgrade if you can, that might be a big IF. however single phase might be easier with solar systems exporting.

surge protection at the fuse board is good. lightning diverter at the meter board is better.

don't go having a ventilation inlet above the outdoor area as you will make the whole house smell like bbq etc. also consider how are you going to run the ducts. trying to get duct work inbetween the ceiling and floor is going to be difficult. especially if you have drainage plumbing nearby which takes priority. also where is the equipment going to be. very common problem is designers don't design for the duct work etc and you end up with a hack job system that doesn't work properly.

+1 on the oversized range hood.

inline fans are great but you need access to them.

be careful with putting in chases for future wiring etc. they become ducts for air flow. they need to be sealed (spray foam the ends) and thats commonly overlooked.

internal garage. remember the garage is outside the house. use a sealed internal door. make sure the bedroom floor and internal walls are well sealed and insulated.

wellygary

8199 posts

Uber Geek

#3368240 28-Apr-2025 12:06

Not data/power related, but

The first thing that jumps out at me is you have a bedroom right behind the kitchen (bench, hobs- and presumably extractor)

I am assuming you are sound rating/insulating this wall?

-Otherwise running the extractor fam and banging pots could be annoying to anyone asleep in the rear bedroom?

toejam316

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#3368245 28-Apr-2025 12:21

I haven't really looked in depth, but my advice for these days - anywhere you're running data, run single mode fibre in parallel. Copper, you'll push 10Gbit at most, and it's a pain to get that in place.

SMF you'll push 100Gbit pretty easily, so if you ever find yourself lacking in bandwidth you have options. There's also a lot more applications for x-over-fibre than x-over-Ethernet.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

Twincamr2

90 posts

Master Geek

#3368249 28-Apr-2025 12:44

acsylaa:

Also Extractors in the shower, my suggestion is to use a Mixed Flow fan as its got plenty of suck, and if you use the manrose grille that has a 12v LED light in it bang smack in the center you should have no issues with steam ever as its should all get sucked up straight from the Shower box and there should be plenty of light.

Excellent points about the lighting and the extra data drops. Will review and add more / shuffle things around. Interesting point about the 240V lights - the plan hasn't gone through a sparky yet, so I'm sure they'll pick that up if it's a problem.

I should have mentioned that this will be a passive (or close to) house, so there will be no penetrations like this allowed. The MVHR will take care of all air exchange between inside and out.

Twincamr2

90 posts

Master Geek

#3368252 28-Apr-2025 12:50

Thanks for the insightful thoughts folks - they've been really useful in getting my mind going! I'll attempt to respond to as many as possible.

Dave

trig42

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#3368254 28-Apr-2025 13:10

EV(s) - don't run 16A, run 32A. Allows you to at least put a 7kW charger in. EV batteries aren't getting any smaller and charging a big EV battery on 16A will be painful.

Any chance you can get 3-phase power in?

Twincamr2

90 posts

Master Geek

#3368264 28-Apr-2025 13:17

Rodders1nz:

Would do more than 2 network jacks by TV. We did 1 high behind TV and 3 low behind entertainment unit, Saves adding a switch there later. Also do ducting in TV walls and also do a ducting into your utility room

Yep, agreed - It's not easy to make out, but I've added 2 behind TV and 4 in the cabinet below. Even that mightn't be enough with the number of devices we have now!

For ducting - is there any specific product you'd recommend? I've used 32 and 40 mm PVC waste pipe before as it's cheap...

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