Structured Wiring plan

This was what I put together in October and pretty much what we went with. Didn't do the speaker in the entry way, as it is pretty open to the great room. We also don't have speakers in the master, but we did run wires in the wall.

- Circles are ceiling speaker placement, just have to run 14/2 CL2 to the box over the woodbox. Was thinking it might be nice to run the external speakers to a volume control first though. Probably need about 380 feet for the main floor.
- Boxes are the wall plates for "stuff", at this point I just want to run conduit to the basement and wire it later when I figure out what I want where. There are 6 boxes, one external one (I can run the two over the fireplace on the inside wall), so 3 low voltage brackets, a large indented bracket behind the flat panel (saw one at menards today), a 2 gang box (or larger) over the firebox, and call it 60 feet of 3/4 inch conduit (just to drop it to the basement).

- Circle is again a ceiling speaker, run that wire to the boxes over the woodbox on the first floor again 14/2 CL2 call it 60 feet.
- Triangles in the bedroom are wall speaker locations. I am thinking of just leaving the speaker wire running the length of the wall top to bottom, until we get what we want there figured out. That way we can open the wall and grab the wire, for in wall speakers, or attached to brackets on the wall. Run the 14/2 CL2 to the double box in that room, about 180 feet.
- Boxes run up to the attic, 10 boxes about 10 feet of 3/4 inch conduit per box for 100 feet.
- Blue box is a structured wiring panel, which has 2 2 inch knockouts on the top and bottom, and I think only 2 2 inch knockout on the bottom. I think there will be more wires coming into the top so we will put that up. And run that up to the attic as well. So 20 feet of 2 inch conduit and 20 feet of 3/4 inch conduit.
- Also have to run 2 inch conduit down to the basement from the blue box. Call that 60 feet of 2 inch conduit.

Lights going in! Fireplace done.

As you can see the lights are going in today and the fireplace stone is pretty much done, as far as I can tell. The trimmer was there as well, finishing stuff up. I am thinking we can probably install the ceiling speakers at this point, so we might try and do that tonight to show we are doing our part ;)

Speaker placement

These are mud rings for the speakers in the living room. Chris D. put these up for me while I worked on the low voltage stuff. We have 5.1 in the living room and master bedroom. This isn't a home theater obviously, but should be nice for casual movie watching and out of the way.

Over the weekend

Over the weekend we did a bunch of work on the house. On Saturday, Greg and Joanne came down and help us run some low voltage, add a couple of outlets... Chris D. came over as well and ran speaker cable all over the place :) Then today, we finished up running low voltage and my parents came over and insulated the garage. I will get some photos up tomorrow and explain everything a little bit better as well.

Speaker enclosures on the porch

I wanted to have some speakers on the porch outside of the front door. I thought it would be nice for background music while looking out over the bowl. I had the brackets, but they weren't very stiff, so I thought to back it with some plywood.

Then I figured why not build a box around it as well, to get better bass response. I hope it works out, I am not too sure of the air tightness of the enclosure.

Also, I am a little worried, since the bottom board isn't attached to the frame on the sides. It is only attached to the bracket and the bracket to the joists...