New Build Questions

Shelster

Shelster

Shelster

Associate
Joined
3 Aug 2003
Posts
2,028
Location
Plymouth, UK
Hey all....

Me and Mrs S have finaly made the decision to settle into our own place (4 year wedding anni tomorrow and hav ebeen renting all the time we have been together)

When I was chatting to the sales woman the other day I briefly mentioned about having networking run in and she looked rather befuddled and then said 'we don't have that on the options list'

We are supposed ot be meeting the site manager in about 2 weeks so we can go through site rules and also the working drawings for the plot (don't even think the house has had it's foundations laid yet) so am hopeful I may be able to sort somehting out there.

Has anyone had any experiences about this and how did it go?

Have to say, I am one of the worst people when it comes to bargaining / haggling to.

Was looking to have master phone point moved to understairs cupboard along with 2 extra power points put in there. Would be Cat 6 cable run in with 4 x runs to living room, 2 for kitchen diner, 2 for master bedroom, 2 for spare room, 2 for my 'Geek room' and then possibly 1 run for an upstairs WAP on the landing near the loft access hatch.

Development is Cherry Tree Gardens in Plymouth by Taylor Wimpey and the house style is a Gosford (for those that are curious / down right nosey :p:p)
 
Easy enough to run cables at 1st fix.

Surprised Taylor Wimpey don't offer the option for it, as other some developers do.

And I seriously consider x6 runs minimum for living room, tv, blue ray, sky,home av, etc the number requiring networking soon adds up
 
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On my £225k house I was told by the first sales agent they don't negotiate. The second said "you have £7k to play with. Either buy stuff like a fridge, carpets, etc, or bring down the price of the house". Both were at the same site and house builder.

Side note: I'm intrigued as to why people get networking run. Doesn't everything run off WiFi these days? Fairly sure the latest Macbooks don't even have Ethernet as an example. Most other devices are Wifi only or won't move from near the router (e.g. PS3).
 
Kemik said:
Side note: I'm intrigued as to why people get networking run. Doesn't everything run off WiFi these days? Fairly sure the latest Macbooks don't even have Ethernet as an example. Most other devices are Wifi only or won't move from near the router (e.g. PS3).
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I was wondering this too. My NAS and my Freesat box aren't WiFi as standard but the NAS sits next to my router and I bought a dongle for the Freesat.
 
Nightglow said:
Easy enough to run cables at 1st fix.

Surprised Taylor Wimpey don't offer the option for it, as other some developers do.

And I seriously consider x6 runs minimum for living room, tv, blue ray, sky,home av, etc the number requiring networking soon adds up
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I thought they may have offered it now, but guess not. Know how easy it will be to run in, but guess it will come down to Mrs S making lots of cakes for the site team :D. She did mention that we are not allowed on site to do any work until legal completion. Was asking about being able to get in to lay wooden floors (floors and carpets not included either) before they stuck teh skirting on and she said that was a legal requirement for them to get NHBC cover to have teh skirting fitted.... so its a case of paying them to fit the floor or ripping off the skirting when we get in. KNow which one Mrs S will go for and it doesn't involve me breaking out my Dewalt nailer.

Kemik said:
On my £225k house I was told by the first sales agent they don't negotiate. The second said "you have £7k to play with. Either buy stuff like a fridge, carpets, etc, or bring down the price of the house". Both were at the same site and house builder.

Side note: I'm intrigued as to why people get networking run. Doesn't everything run off WiFi these days? Fairly sure the latest Macbooks don't even have Ethernet as an example. Most other devices are Wifi only or won't move from near the router (e.g. PS3).
Click to expand...

That sounds very promising. Only 1 sales girl at this sitre though.

Am going for wired as have found wifi to be relatively flakey, especially when I am streaming large files. Plus the internal walls appear to be a mix of steel studs (inc platerboard and insulation) and dense concrete blocks, so they will suck the life out of the wifi. Will be usefull for general web browsing etc, but prefer hte reliability of wired.

Have used homeplugs before and they are good when not going across different ring mains.
 
If it's not a standard option you'll probably have the chance to have it run as a non standard extra.

Our developer had 'networking' down in the extras book at £80 a point I believe it was, whether or not that means 4 runs to a single socket would be 80 or 4*80 I have no idea.

As much as I wanted to get it done we didn't in the end, did make sure we got some sockets for power and phone moved around though.

I'd highly recommend going over the wiring plans and really think if everything is in the right places and if not get it noted that you want it moved as they'll do that no hassle. Same for putting in extra stuff, they'll charge you for it but worth getting done at the time. We missed a few things that we just didn't catch when looking at the plans, nothing major though.

Might be worth seeing if you can approach the sparky or whoever directly and asking him if he can do anything whilst he's there as a private job at the same time.

We recently bought and the developers wanted an arm and a leg to put spotlights in, so spoke to the sparky doing the site work who basically laid all the cabling for them so that he can come back after and fit them privately for a third of the cost and not much hassle as all the wiring for them should already be correct and present ;)

Shelster said:
She did mention that we are not allowed on site to do any work until legal completion. Was asking about being able to get in to lay wooden floors (floors and carpets not included either)
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Always get flooring thrown in! That's one of the good reasons, it's done from day one then with no hassle.
 
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Some good points to consider there Ev0. Hadn't considered gettgin the sparky ojnside and laying the stuff in before hand and coming back

The extra book did have the spots in the kitchen in there, but as you mentioned, they want a ridiculous amount of money for them. From what I can recall I think they want about £80 per LED spot put in ...... why does my bladder feel very empty :p
 
Yup I think ours were about £80 book price as well, silly money.

Chap is fitting ours for a lot less and using the same lights.

As said just check the position of all the sockets and switches for each room and hallways to make sure everything looks logical.

I heard one chap on our development saying they put the light switch to their bedroom outside the room!
 
Kemik said:
Side note: I'm intrigued as to why people get networking run. Doesn't everything run off WiFi these days? Fairly sure the latest Macbooks don't even have Ethernet as an example. Most other devices are Wifi only or won't move from near the router (e.g. PS3).
Click to expand...

Wireless adds latency and you may notice stutters when running HD stuff from a NAS or such like.

Wired is also a lot faster (1Gbps as opposed to 300Mbps) and a lot more reliable. You can always run a WAP of one of the cables if you want to add range, etc.

I'd certainly, if it was an option, have CAT6 throughout my house.



M.
 
I bought a tw property and networking points were on the options list for me. Only cat 5 and they refused to run cat 6 - but ultimately 1gbps should be fine for a while.

Each cat 5 point was charged once for both ends. I really don't regret getting wired networking installed, though in hindsight I may have put 4 points to the living room instead of just 2. It works well for me to have all my networking and master socket running back to the cupboard space as well.
 
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I’ve just bought a new house via Barratts.. we got it off plan before the foundations were in.. rather than get them to run network cabling for me i got them to run 2" pipes in the house.. one from the cupboard under the stairs to where the TV is in the living room and one from the cupboard up to the loft where the server will be… i was expecting them to quote me silly money for it.. in actual fact they just cost £50. Now i can just run the cabling that i want through these pipes.. and in the future will be much easier to upgrade!
 
durosity said:
I’ve just bought a new house via Barratts.. we got it off plan before the foundations were in.. rather than get them to run network cabling for me i got them to run 2" pipes in the house.. one from the cupboard under the stairs to where the TV is in the living room and one from the cupboard up to the loft where the server will be… i was expecting them to quote me silly money for it.. in actual fact they just cost £50. Now i can just run the cabling that i want through these pipes.. and in the future will be much easier to upgrade!
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Clever *******!
 
Have to say, I am one of the worst people when it comes to bargaining / haggling to.
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Well obviously, you're way overpaying for a poorly built house on an estate while will invariably end up being rough as *********.

Wouldn't trust the builders to run it, get a networking company to go in and do it on first fix.
 
I CAT6 wired my flat a year or so ago. It's a pretty easy job really - especially in a new build.

Cutting holes in the plasterboard for the back-boxes took the most time as I had about 18 to do. Then you just drop the cables down the walls and use a cheap punch tool to connect it to the end-points. Another cheap tool allows you to test the connection/wiring is working.
 
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