# Electrical home gadgets (New home)



## jase888 (Oct 14, 2014)

I have just bought a house and will be moving in shortly and decorating, I want to have a good network setup and install a few electrical gadgets. I plan to CAT5e the whole house, have Ethernet ports in each room and use a Gigabit switch to make transferring files /streaming HD vids / etc faster an no network issues. I also plan on sticking usb sockets round the house to make it easier to charge devices.

I am loooking at getting some wifi switches possibly and thermostat but not too sure yet.

Is there anything else people recommend that I should look into? I'd rather sort all this out before so don't want to finish up then realise wish I'd put in.......

Just looking for ideas of electrical products/parts/gadgets people have added to their homes and recommend, nothing too crazy though.

Thanks


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

The biggest thing is to have the cat5 run during the build. With the cabling in place, hardware can be added/changed/moved as needed. The biggest issues most people run into is cabling.

USB charging wise, you can add outlets: Shop Cooper Wiring Devices 15-Amp White Decorator Duplex Electrical Outlet at Lowes.com


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## sobeit (Nov 11, 2007)

I use tcp connected lightbulbs. makes it easy to turn off lights when I am too lazy to get out of the recliner. If you are planning to get a wifi thermostat, make sure there is a c wire to your current one. You can also get wifi door locks now


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## beecee42 (Jun 28, 2011)

jase888 said:


> I have just bought a house and will be moving in shortly and decorating, I want to have a good network setup and install a few electrical gadgets. I plan to CAT5e the whole house, have Ethernet ports in each room and use a Gigabit switch to make transferring files /streaming HD vids / etc faster an no network issues. I also plan on sticking usb sockets round the house to make it easier to charge devices.
> 
> I am loooking at getting some wifi switches possibly and thermostat but not too sure yet.
> 
> ...


 Hi
I'm from Blighty and I'd suggest you check out and obtain a Synology NAS and run RAID. 
Make sure (if you do) get Western Digital Red drives which come with a three year warranty! I've got a DS413J 4 Bay with 2 x WD RED 1TB 3.5" SATA 6GB/s 64MB Hard Drives. Great kit and I'm still getting my head round ALL the optional applications. Goanna buy 2 x 4TB shortly. 
If you also back up to a cloud service (which is an APP. so you can do) it's almost bullet proof! And get a APC UPS with 4 sockets then your main PC, router and NAS etc will back up before closing down, if required.

Be cool, BC


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## donald_b_bell (Nov 12, 2014)

I have accomplished this and my biggest challenge was finding a patch panel that would fit with my old construction. There were plenty of pre-fab patch panels, but they were all designed to fit into a 19" rack and not into the sheet rock closet of a house. There were some interesting solutions from Leviton, but they were geared at new construction. Putting them into an existing closet was not possible. So, I put together some surface-mount boxes from WireMold with keystone type female jacks and a wire loom from Panduit. I used shielded components from Siemen that I collected on eBay (took me over a year). I mounted all of this on a stainless steel base plate that I designed and had cut out on a WaterJet. Please take a look at all of my posted photographs.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

Looks good.


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