Advice for a new home build

Hollywoodperth · Oct 10, 2018

P_R said:

Hello hollywoodperth,
We're in our house nearly two years now and I went through some of what you are going through now.
*Forgot to add, we're also in Perth, south of the river.*

I had an idea what I wanted as our previous house had c-bus. My challenge was to get a builder who understood what I wanted and could also do it. A few quoted silly prices - one quoted 2x what we actually paid. We were lucky in the end that the builder had done c-bus a number of times with his builds so knew how to accommodate it. The electrical company he used had also done c-bus as well and finally the integrator we picked had worked with both. So from that perspective, things were good. We still use that same electrical company for additional c-bus work as well as the integrator. The builder, sadly went under 3/4 into our build (legal problems elsewhere). Right up to that point, as a customer, all went well.

We did:
All lights. We missed out only the garage ones (store room and garage). But I should have these as well. Do all the lights as you will want to control them. If nothing other than all on/all off. Half are dimmable. Our house is two storey with the garage below the house. So we can't rewire that easily even though all cabling is via conduits, hence the advise to do all the lights at the start.

All shutters. I make roller shutters, so of course did each window . In terms of which motor, I don't think it matters. The module knows the motors need an up, down and off. Most standard motors will work. You can use motors which are also remote controlled, but these need to have the ability to respond to a remote AND a switch. Not many brands do this, but it is also unlikely you will want this anyway.

IXLs, heating lights, external sensors, connected up too.

Alarm, Ness M1 connected to c-bus. Allowed us to set the alarm so that all shutters go down, lights off. Same in reverse. Wife likes that part. Also have programmed a NightShutDown scene. All lights of, shutters down. Like you I also tour the house and make sure all the doors are closed and locked before bed. Front door opens via keypad code with is connected to the alarm. This is partly failsafe - if the c-bus is not working, I can still get it. Worst case, I can still use a key as well.

Did not:
No power points are c-bus connected as I could not see a need.
No air con. I wanted to do this, but it was too hard. No a/c company wanted to know about it.
We have an electric sliding door not connected, but should have. Would have been simple had I planned for it early enough. But I have added in temp sensors (with the help of this forum). Mainly so my 9yo knows the external temp so can pick his clothes. 1st world problems eh?
Garage door not connected, but should have as I've left it open on occasions.
No audio. Like the a/c, it seemed too hard. But because the house had cat5e everywhere both for c-bus and Ethernet, all our receivers are connected up the house Ethernet switch. We then use the Yamaha Musiccast.
Theatre room - can be a one touch setup, but did not do this. I did not know enough about the options and possibilities so was cautious. There are products to automate this and connect to c-bus. Theatre room is quasi mancave, so I tinker here a little and might automate down the track.
Phone control. Can't see myself fiddling with the house from a remote location, so did not bother with including this.

Cheers,
P_R.
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P_R thanks, sounds pretty good. I'll let you know how I go with the A/C system. I think it will work well and be much better than the vendor offerings.

NickD · Oct 15, 2018

newsreader said:

Hi NickD,

I hope the OP won't mind me hijacking his thread a little to ask if you would explain more about integrating CBus with say Amazon's Alexa please ?

Any links to necessary products/software etc would also be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

It depends on how much you want to DIY.

If your time is free, then there are a number of threads here on getting Alex or Siri up an running.

If you want more of a turnkey solution, check out SmartVoice.

Nick

Matthew · Oct 15, 2018

I am another independent C-Bus technician, owner & advocate for 22 years.

Hollywoodperth said:

Just trend and visibility. I want to see each phase from the mains, combined 3ph from the mains and 1ph from the solar. That's all. No control
Click to expand...

If this is your primary motivation then I recommend Solar analytics for this function then.https://www.solaranalytics.com/au/
Far cheaper and purpose built for monitoring the generated AND consumed load of a house.

Hollywoodperth said:

Again, I'm honestly not fussed about turning lights off from my phone or the tablet. I enjoy going around making sure the house is closed/locked up before bed. I'll prob put in single button dimmers on a few circuits, cheap as hell. They don't need to go back through the cbus.
Click to expand...

As others have said, it'll be a wierd (and short sighted in my opinion) setup.
The idea is that you have a C-Bus switch in each room, you don't walk back to the touch screen in the lounge room.
My wife always appreciated being able to dim the lights up in the kids rooms at night when they were young. Now they are teenagers I flash them off and on again when it's dinner time as they don't hear anything with gadgets in their ears.
I have several outside light circuits accessible from 4 doors, they are controlled by a switch at each door and from the touch screen. see how much a 4 switch controlled light circuit will cost you in mains cabling.
It's up to you, but as anyone with experience will tell you, it's not a smart thing to do.

Nath1304 · Dec 12, 2018

daniel said:

Sure thing. Actually I did something similar last year - had a builder's sparky, my own C-Bus sparky, and myself on Toolkit. My biggest piece of advice from painful and expensive experience would be to not even mention C-Bus to the builder initially. Typically for a resi build the sparky gives the builder a standard "package" price for say 70 lights, 3 data etc, and then variations are done off of that. As soon as you mention "C-Bus" that package gets chucked out the window and they price up a new quote up from scratch for everything - hello Crazypriceville!! Not to mention, the lighting designer got extremely muddled and we had a lot of misunderstandings with the plans.

So my advice is to get the lighting plans for the house drawn up as standard 240V, make it a truly boring vanilla residence - get your baseline variation price (as firm as possible). Then put in your extras - DIN Rail cabinets (for C-Bus, shh), NBN/data cabinets, data ports, recessed speakers, whatever else you want, and get variation prices as you go. By now you'd be wincing but at least you have a chance of understanding where the money's going. ONLY THEN get the variation done to bring your C-Bus guy into the picture - remove the 240V switch wiring and run all the loads back to cabinets instead, and get firm quote #3. Because the longer 240V runs should be offset by the removal of the switch wiring, you can reasonably expect only a small variation for this last part.

My C-Bus guy came on-site at first fix to run the pink cables and at second fix to install sensors and check the builder's wall cutouts. We waited till after handover to put in all the input & output units (due to theft/loss not being covered by builder's insurance) and I did the TK programming as he wired them in.

My garage wall has 3 x 4FCC60s neatly spaced - one is the sub-board and two are C-Bus 240V. One thing I overlooked early on was the need to keep SELV gear such as the 5500SHAC / DTSI separate - it shouldn't go in the 240V cabinets. I ended up putting it in other cabinets elsewhere in the house.

Hope that helps some.
Click to expand...

Where did you put your 5500shac? In a separate 6 module enclosure somewhere else? Ive got 4 enclosures, 1 DB and 3 cbus, trying to figure out where to put the shac.

Ashley · Dec 13, 2018

Keep it out of any enclosure that has mains connected. If you don't have any SELV enclosures a separate 6 module enclosure is fine.

daniel · Jan 9, 2019

Nath1304 said:

Where did you put your 5500shac? In a separate 6 module enclosure somewhere else? Ive got 4 enclosures, 1 DB and 3 cbus, trying to figure out where to put the shac.
Click to expand...

I have a networking cabinet (example) with a switch and patch panel in it for the house's ethernet ports. I ran a C-Bus drop there as well. I fashioned my own DIN RAIL mount inside with a bit of timber. This has the nice benefit of keeping all the IP equipment close together.

Advice for a new home build

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