Cbus in a new house

Hi All,

I am Building a new house and i am looking at using C bus
but i have some questions for you guys.

1. What do you think would be the cost difference between conventional vs c bus wiring a house in %. eg 30%

2. What are the best things to control on c bus in a house.

3. What is a fair hourly rate for paying someone to programing c bus.

4 Are the c bus courses worth the money to learn programing for cbus.


I have attached a plan of my house

Thanks for you time and answers.


Hilly

 

C-Bus takes 30% less labour to install the wiring loads because all the lights, fans, irrigation, door controllers are wired to the c-bus directly and not to a switch panel. This means you have a cabling run point to point and its not time consuming to bundle these cables to a control room.

It costs about $300 for a common bedroom to have C-Bus added to it. This includes 1 or 2 control channels for lighting and the one wall switch.

In rooms like garage, laundry, toilet and bathroom you can have a wall switch but totally automate the functions as soon a person walks in. You will agree that some of the most annoying places to find a switch are when your hands are carrying a basket of clothing or bags of groceries.

Also, you can interconnect your C-Bus to any alarm on the market. You add relays to your alarm panel and junction the relays with a bus-coupler which you can say what the relay means. For example: In case of fire close alarm relay 5 and then with c-bus coupler open garage door, switch on all lights above doors and stairs.

Thirdly, you dont need to know one thing about which switch is for which light. you can decide all this when you do the coding. You dont even need to decide how many buttons you need. That can come later too.

Fourthly, if you install a notional PINK cat-5 port beside each bed you can later add a touch panel alongside the bed at some future budget.

Fifth, c-bus is 30 volts or so. This means your light switches can be handled much more safely than a normal 240v wall switch. At my home if my hands are wet I dont care. The worst that can happen is the switch gets wet. I like the low power side if the switch panels.

C-bus keeps improving - for example. My friend had his house super-wired for the future with Cat-6 for LAN and extra c-bus ports in the bedrooms. Now after 10 years, we are adding touch panels, new wall plates and a bedside touch panel. The system is one big network of smart modules that do not need a central server to operate.

From the master bedroom my client can operate his poolhouse, his garage doors, side gates, all of the lights and so on. He has 4 levels in the main house and 3 levels in the pool area. You don't want to be going around and switching all of that.

Your biggest choice is which lights will be dimmable and which will be on/off. If you plan to invest in solar power and LED lights then you may want to look at on/off switching through relays (in some kind of low power-user house) or you can opt in for expensive dimmable LED lights and use them on the dimming modules.

Step 1 is a master wiring plan. You cant really go from traditional to C-bus without some heartache. However, to save money you can do part c-bus and part "old school". Public areas of the house where you wine and dine are perfect for mood scenes with c-bus. If money is tight ... you can do the basic social areas. If you have a good budget then go all the way and have it done so that you can grow with new products.

Step 2: Do the course because it gives more back than it costs. I think it comes with a touch screen.

Step 3: Speak to people in the course. Make new friends and influence people.

Step 4: Do a master layout plan. This is down to personal taste. I personally favour the "hub and node" method. I break the building up into wiring zones and I cable within that zone not to one huge central hub. I use challenger alarms for this reason because it handles this type of wiring design. Other people run every single wire to one spot. There is advantages in both methods.

Step 5: Pay for someone to inspect your preparation. If you dont lay channels in the right locations it can be a nightmare to cable afterwards. A project like yours can take about 4 boxes of Cat 6, 2 boxes of clipsal c-bus wiring and another 900m of power wiring. Plus alarm wiring.

Step 6: Think about adding to what have. There is nothing that says you have to install everything now.

Step 7: Make sure that you lay massive channels for network, c-bus and alarm cabling. Remember, cables do get hit by lightning and do get burned. So why not make sure you can pull them through again.

For example: I once saw this project before plaster and the electrician cabled for speakers using this horrible wire the size of a human hair. Plus he stapled it to the timbers. Naturally none of the wires worked because the staple gun was better suited to attaching two pieces of plate steel to each other and each staple was more or less a knife not a staple. It would have been more prudent to run plastic pipe and then feed the speaker wires into the pipe.

Take into consideration that 10 years ago
------------------------------------------
Speakers wires were thick braided copper
TV was coax
Computer was Cat 5
Alarm was 3 pair cable

By 2015
----------
TV will be Cat-6 (coming out next year)
Speakers will be Cat -6
Computers will be Cat 6
Alarms will be based on cameras not motion sensors (also Cat 6)

So having the ability to replace cables is not a bad thing.

 

Thanks

Tobex,

Thanks for you reply,
I have the following cable already for my house.
3 boxes of cat 6
3 boxes of clipsal pink cat 6
15 rolls of 1.5 light cable
14 rolls of 2.5 power
1 box of 4 core alarm
2 boxes of rg6
10 hdmi cables

I have split the house in 2 zones and built 2 areas in the house for
the cbus to be mounted.

I will be doing cbus in ever room i just have to work out what to dim or not.

I will do the course asap as i want to learn how to program myself.

By 2015
----------
TV will be Cat-6 (coming out next year)

1,
This is is interesting i was going to run a data point to each tv
as well as rg6 so should be blue cat 6 or pink ?

Speakers will be Cat -6

2.
I was going to put fig 8 cable to most of my rooms to share music
Should i add a cat 6 cable with it in blue or pink ?

I wounder if clipsal will make Saturn switches for muiti room audio.


Tobex if this was your house what cables would you run to each room

I will be running hdmi to each room but there is a limit of 20 mt for
1.3 gb transfer cable.

As for a master wiring plan i am looking for the best software to draw this up
I have a basic electrical layout see attached.



Hilly

 

I have a slightly different way of doing things to most people but I think my way is less painful in terms of labour and design.

Central point ------------- Satellite point

In this distribution I run (these are not fixed amounts)
------------------------
25 pair Lan 5e (as far as I know they dont have 25 pair Cat 6)
2 strands of C-Bus
4 strands of Cat 6
2 strands of RG6
Power backbone
Challenger backbone cable (alarm)**

Satellite point (hidden in false panel in closet or dead space)


Satellite point ---------- End end point
-------------------------------------
These make the visible ports of the job as far as TV, Phone, C-Bus pink sockets are concerned. This also breaks out to keypads and alarm hardware.


In terms of ideal satellite points.
--------------------------------
- common wall on two rooms.
- kitchen
- any remote buildings
- any level that is more than 2 levels away from the main hub.
- master bedroom (usually needs its own satellite)
- home theatre.


In terms of your design. Up to 5 satellites would be possible.


The idea of a satellite is to work inside the limits of the technology. Why send 30 x 1 amp loads x 25m radius when you can do them locally and bridge them to a backbone with a 7m radius. There is no appreciable loss in signal with Cat 5e, Cat 6, Power or Challenger alarm backbone. Thus it does not require authentic point-to-point cabling like a military base would.

I would consider fibre optic - but it looks like those days are over.

In the satellites I use many "intelligent" wiring solutions such as those from Krone / Clipsal / Wago. Many people told me that you can not join Cat 6 and that it has to be installed in one run. They were wrong. With specialist products from Krone you can patch together Cat 6 with no measurable losses. I was using a product from Krone years ago that allowed me to join dozens of C-bus stands together with total reliability, It also works perfectly in alarm panels.





Similarly with new hardware developments you no longer need to power remote switching hubs for LAN with a power point. Using the POE capability (power over ethernet) the remote satellite hubs can derive power from the main control room directly.

Therefore in a satellite area you dont always need to have it on top of power. I tend to isolate the runs so that power does not live directly on data. That is basic cabling sense.

You can operate a power satellite as a different concept to a data satellite since the power can come over the LAN. This applies to CCTV, Speakers, Hubs and to a lesser extent C-Bus itself. In most cases the power satellite and data satellite will always tend to be next to each other.

Much of what you are trying to do will be determined by the brand of your hardware. In this respect the consultant totally controls the options. Therefore leave some design aspect for cabling renewal.


**Please note that Challenger now also runs on Cat 6 backbones. So you can flick that older cable too. Only thing is the Cat6 adapter costs $900.





My designs tend to looks like this
==========================

POWER FROM STREET --- MAIN SWITCH --- SURGE --- SUB BOARD --- POWER SATELLITE --- LOADS
<solar system> --- <current sensing to lan>

NORMAL POWER --- UPS --- EMERGENCY POWER -- SPECIAL POWER

INTERNET --- MODEM / ROUTER / HUB --- REMOTE HUB --- NETWORK CLIENT <wired><wireless>

CBUS MAIN --- REMOTE CBUS JUNCTION --- CBUS PANELS --- <lan portal><lan>

MAIN ALARM PANEL -<lan optional>- REMOTE DATA GATHERING PANEL --- KEYPAD / SENSOR / CARD READER --- <lan port>

FILE SERVER -<lan>- MUSIC CONTROLLER -<Cat 5>- KEYPAD* -<Cat 5>- SPEAKERS <iTunes><personal digital collection>

CCTV SERVER -<lan>- CAMERA <lan><iPhone><remote viewing>

ANTENNA / DISH / <cctv portal> / PERSONAL DIGITAL MODULATOR --- TV AMPLIFIER --- TV / PVR <lan portal to server><mp2 mp3 mp4>


You will notice that all technology now has the LAN bridge. This includes all AV, ALARM, CCTV, CBUS and even now POWER 240V.


Products on my design sheet
-----------------------------
Emergency power - APC
Power - Clipsal
Wire management - Clipsal / KRONE / Wago
Main cabling stock Cat 5/6 - Clipsal Pink, Belden, Seimon
Lighting control - Clipsal
Alarm - GE / Tecom / Interlogix
CCTV - As needed per price / QNAP / ....
MP4 players - Asus / Playstation
Routers - Clipsal WISER / Apple / HP / Cisco / Netgear
High end MP3 - Linn
TV - Low power consumption LCD with LAN port
File server - QNAP
DVB-T modulator / antenna control / IR control - Clipsal / WISI


You may also like to look at
----------------------------
- Number plate recognition (for garage door / gate operation)
- Various climate technology for cooling / heating
- Rainwater systems
- Phone system for internal / external calls / intercom / gates
- Remote internet server storage for files / intrusion images / secure backup

DISCLAIMER
-----------
The advice given here is only my personal opinion and does not conform to standards or regulations outside of my location.

 

The cost difference is going to be more like 15-30 times the costs for a basic system, going up from there.

Take just 1 light controlled by a single switch. Your looking at about $100 for a basic 2000 series switch or $200+ for a Saturn switch and about $100 for a 1/8 of a dimmer channel. Plus then you need to factor in a share of the cost of a power supply, programming interface, labour etc, so min $200 per light but more realistically $300

For a mechanical light, your looking at about $8 for the switch. Sure there could be some savings in cable, but not much and besides most of the savings are eaten up by the cost of the pink C-bus cable.

C-bus is really for those who want the look and/or features and don't care about cost. Though with the look you can now acheive this to a certain extent with the new mechanical Saturn switches Clipsal has introduced.

 

thanks

Thanks Guys,

The cost difference is going to be more like 15-30 times the costs for a basic system, going up from there.

did you mean 15-30% more or something else.

Tobex,

Thanks i think i need think about it some more
so you recommend clipsal cat cable to data points instead of blue cat 6

In terms of your design. Up to 5 satellites would be possible.

I looked at clipsal site and could not find any reference to satellites
can you give me more info please.

I tried to get someone to do a design layout in melb but they wanted
to do the total job not just the design layout and drawings.

As for my alarm i was looking at a bosch 16+ with 16 pirs would this be any good.

My main power is 3phase to my shed and from shed to house

Sorry if i sound lost but i am just trying to get it right on my dream home.


Hilly

 

Hi Ashley,

I agree with you however I want to emphasise that many clients have opted for a C-bus in the dining, home theatre and shared spaces. It cost about $2000 to really improved the look and feel of a few rooms. The client was balancing a budget and they allocated some for AV, some for lighting and some for alarm system. C-Bus has as much scope for very small clients as for very large clients. Unlimited budgets are very rare and 90% buy expansions up to 10 years later.

I encourage clients to adopt what they can afford.

I want to mention the fact that $8 wall switches work just fine with C-Bus. All you need is a bus coupler. This proved very useful in reworking an old house with brass pipes and having only enough clearance to install Cat5 down the pipes to the wall plate.

There are thousands of old homes in Australia that need new wiring and these jobs can be done with C-bus very efficiently.

 

The satellite concept is purely a cabling idea not a Clipsal marketing concept. I like to have distant hubs and many thin backbones running to a control room. I am generally opposed to having 300 cables inside one spot. I think its overkill in material consumption.

I can not advise you on security matters other describing a known product and how it works. What it offers above other products. This is a legal point according to ASIAL guidelines and Master Permit holders. Just be aware that every alarm panel on the market except Challenger requires a full cable run from point to point. The only panel I know of that is capable of running a backbone is Challenger. So if you want to measure security activity 50 metres from the central point then you are able to run a backbone to the local area and then use a "security hub" that talks back to the main panel via a single cable. As far as I know with the Bosch you have to run each cable the full distance.

For example: a typical security design in my client is one where the windows are protected with their own sensors as well as motion inside the room. This enables the perimeter to be armed while people are walking around inside or sleeping. This type of design gives intrusion detection at night etc. You need to consult with a master permit holder. It is not appropriate to give protection advice on alarms via a forum I am just giving my own examples.

I'm afraid that not many people do drawings only. It just depends on who you speak to.

If you plan to run Cat6 then look around to see who has what. I cant decide based on the local supply of materials. I often look for clipsal and if they are out of stock I use some other product. There is only a requirement for pink cable on clipsal C-bus modules for warranty purposes. You get the most support if you stay inside the installation guidelines.

Generic lan cabling is really a personal choice.

This job you are proposing will have about 1000 terminations of all different kinds. That includes both ends and the lights and power points. If each one takes 10 minutes thats 10000 minutes. Which is about 150 hours. At $100 per hour (two senior and one apprentice) thats about $15,000 in copper wiring labour. So look to spend about $2000 getting a drawing made. You want that drawing to take into consideration the final floor height and you want it to be in 3-D also.

A typical bedroom has about 15-25 terminations at one end if you include speakers, lights, GPO, phone, data, TV and C-Bus, alarm.

I think your first step is to the get the Clipsal electrical checklist. Then also purchase a local edition of the Australian wiring rules.

 

No, I seriously meant 15-30 TIMES the cost, though thinking more it is probably more realistic to say 25-40 times.

As I said for a single point using a C2000 switch and a 1/8th share of a dimmer module you are looking at about $200 min as opposed to about $8 for a mechanical switch. When you do the maths that puts C-bus at 25 times the cost. But clearly this will vary depending upon what you install.

Now yes you can bring the costs down using a bus coupler as tobex has said, but using a 4 channel bus coupler your still looking at about $50 for a 1/4 share of a coupler and a switch. So your still looking at $150 per channel minimum, but with a less 'sexy' switch.

As I said you install C-bus because you like the features and benefits it brings, not because it is a cost effective system.

Tobex what you were talking about is what I did with my place when I had c-bus installed back in 2000. Though back then the costs were much cheaper, so I was able to do 8 dimmer and 4 relay channels, using C2000 switches for about $2000. The rooms I didn't do were the two minor bedrooms, laundry, toilet, main bathroom and ensuite.

As to why I installed it, the two main reasons were security. By that I traveled quite regularly so with the aid of a Home Minder system I could turn lights on and off. The 2nd reason was I like technology so thought it would be a good thing to install. Don't regret doing it, but probably wouldn't do it again because costs have got out of control. Think I calculated it before but to do what I did when I built would now cost double in real terms what it did back then.

 

When I added C-Bus to an old house I did the power cable runs down two sides of the house, left bank / right bank with a large amount of Cat 5 and alarm cabling in the middle where the old wall switches used to be and so on.

The cabling was done in the driveway using the distances + drops. Obviously we did the GPO at the same time. Then each fat bundle was fed into the roof and terminated at both ends. This is why I believe C-Bus is a time saver for installation. I did not need to know which cable was which, only if it was GPO or dimmer / relay. Clearly GPO is thicker and very few loads are relay.

In the bathrooms and laundry I installed C-bus PIR with a light + ducted fan (as needed) and about 15m of sealed duct. You only know the fan is working because the light is on and air is moving.

I like small old houses with C-Bus - they have so few light fittings and can be done in one weekend. The amount of time a person needs to spend in the roof is minimal.

 

Yes it can save time and materials, but no where near enough to offset the cost of the c-bus parts, the cost of the pink C-bus cable and lets not forget the cost of programming and commissioning.

 

90% of people want the lights to go on and off. The extra stuff can come later so long as the house is pre-wired. Because so many companies are pitching at the larger concept it scares away many smaller clients who start with some mood lighting and get a quote for $90,000.

There is still a market for simple jobs. C-Bus is not something beyond most people which is why learning mode was created so that software was not a factor.If C-Bus costs 30X more then I would say I can sell $3000 bundles to do a dining, living and some basic automation. Most people look at $3000 and think why not. It costs less than a TV and much less than what goes into the petrol tank.

 

Tobex,

I would have to agree i priced all my cbus yesterday it comes in a $8,000 more on top of my electrical quote cost and then i can build on as i want and then i will be ready for the future developments.

Hilly

 

Hi Hilly,

Just keep in mind that if you want power blinds or power curtains you will need a data point and power at the window.

cheers,

 

Tobex,

Thanks, so i will have to put in 11 of each more work for me.

I read some where that you can have 6 x 35 watt osram globes to each 1amp circuit is this true.

I like this better than 4 x 50 watt per 1 amp circuit.

What is the best way to transfer sound around the house to different zones.

What about ceiling fans ?

Hilly

 

I note that in the forum here a number of people are starting to look at some of the more upmarket dimmable LED lights. They are compatible with leading edge dimming and cost about $90 each. If you want freedom of expression you can also look at very long strips of LED normally used on the underside of an outdoor step tread. If you are having coffers or shadow lines then you have even more options. It depends on whether you want direct lighting or indirect lighting and whether or not it is for reading or purely for entertainment. Warm or Cool colours matter too. The nominal load is 250W less 10% for certainty in a standard 8 channel non-premium dimmer. 6 x 35w is less than 225 so it fits into the load capacity. Bear in mind that Clipsal make a 4 channels x 2.5A x 240V (~500W x 4) dimmer and also premium models with very high capacity.

There are a multitude of audio solutions on the market today. I try to avoid using the TV as a radio or music player. It draws insane amounts of current for nothing but audio. As you are aware, clipsal does a room solution and if you have cash in your mattress (read this as a mattress full of cash) then I would look at Linn from UK.

What you can do is look very sharply at the wiring needed for the Clipsal solution and then also the wiring needed for some other brand and see if there is significant crossover in cabling requirements. You may find that the top 5 brands have up to 90% similarity which means that your wiring concept will be viable in many directions.If you install a PACA module and the correct IR management system then you can interface to anything and everything.

I know nothing about ceiling fans other than it can be controlled by C-bus only you have to watch out for current demands. This may require a more robust dimmer than the standard 8 channel model.

 

6 x 35 watt osram globes is 210W. Each L5508D1A dimmer can have a load of 1A per channel, which is 240W at a nominal 240V supply voltage. The 210W doesn't take into account the transformer losses though. If the lamps + the transformer losses are less than 1A (240W) in total then you can use them.

There is a C-Bus Multi-Room Audio system. There are also lots & lots of other products out there, and how easy/hard they are to integrate varies from system to system.

Clipsal has just released a C-Bus Sweep Fan Controller. It uses the capacitor that is supplied with the ceiling fan controller to set the speed.

 

Phase control dimmers can be used for ceiling sweep fans however they can generate quite a loud humming noise when the speed is varied in this way. Even 2 seemingly-identical fans with the same manufacturer may result in one fan that is quiet and another that buzzes when dimmed.
The best way to do it (bar a sinewave dimmer ) is using the supplied capacitor block, which plenty of people have wired into (typically) 3 relay channels and used the interlocking option to enforce mutual exclusion. Now that there is a dedicated C-Bus product for this purpose, it just got a whole lot easier.

 

I have been a fan of GU10 globes for some time. The lack of transformer is quite a nice feature.

The only thing I don't like about them is the tendency for the single globe to blow the 10Amp protection MCB on the module. When one lamp blows the whole thing goes offline till I power it up again.

Ideally I should be using 1amp MCB on each channel. Let me get back to you on a concept when I come back from Germany. I may have a product with 1A fuses and a much narrower width (part of the cabling management I am investigating).