Wiring method enquiry.

Hi,
I am currently in the cabling stage of a fairly big house which is all going to be C-Bus. I completed the C-Bus basics course last year and planning on doing the touch screen course also, so i am keen to do the programming for this job myself.
A few things i need to clarify in regards to wiring are:

-For example, in a bedroom if the plan shows 4 down lights switched together and then another one light switched separately, is it ok to run one feed of twin and earth from the C-Bus board to the 4 down lights, and also run a single switch wire from the C-Bus board to the other down light which will be switched on its own? and then i will take a neutral and earth from the group of 4 lights to the light that is on it's own?
The reason i want to know is because it will save me in running unnecessary amounts of twin and earth cable and will be cheaper.

Thankyou for your time.

-deekay

 

As long as doing so complies with ay relevant electrical codes/regs where you are, then the answer is yes, you can.

 

The customer is also insisting on all switches being run in cat 6. I was under the impression it had to be cat 5, seeing the only pink cable is cat 5. Has anyone ran the switching in cat 6 before?

 

Hi,

Myself personally would use the clipsal pink cat 5e as it is ment to be a
mains rated cable outer insulation. The pink cat 5e is clearly recognized as C - Bus cabling. Also you can't get an approved site with anything but pink cat 5e.

The 240v cabling get in the habbit of running SDI cables to each downlights or extra cables, (allowing extra functionally if the customer changes there mind and they do) the less twin + earths at the panels the better. At the end of the day a few extra drums of SDI is less of a headache then working out how you have to get extra cabling in after the walls have been enclosed. You can also suggest changes to switching/scenes.
Using the same neutral is fine as long as it's on the same circuit, conforming to AS3000,

Depending on the size and layout of the house would depend on a centralised location for the panels or spreading the panels around the house in cupboards. Just keep in mind having to service the panels in future.

Hope this helps you out.

Steve.

 

Thanks steve that helps a lot, its a double level house but the customer insisted on having everything in one location, so the 240v sub board and all the c-bus boards are going to be in one fairly large cupboard. Can the touch screens be looped off the rest of the switching or does it need its own power supply?

 

Hi Deekay,

all touchscreens need cbus cabling the c touch colour bigger one requires a seperate power supply for it aswell as cbus connection.
There is a new colour black and white size of black and white but colour runs straight of c bus power same as standard black and white. There is also wiser which is a must these days allowing remote access to site via web based connection or via wi fi (iPhone or smart phone of the wiser app.) also runs direct of cbus power this requires abit of setup home networking etc. Also gives you remote access to programming via toolkit/wiser.
All devices use a bit of power so compensate with extra power supplys.
Some come with logic which is a good idea for hallways and bathroom lighting in the middle of the night.
Don't just control lighting with a project that has touchscreens it's a waste try to sit down with customer talk about what they want or they could be dissapointed with the end result.

Hope this helps

Steve

 

Just wanted to add a few notes.

Bedrooms
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When you are designing a bedroom bear in mind that you will be flat on your back when the lights are on. Therefore, you never want a halogen over a pillow. It is very uncomfortable and as we move toward LED, even worse.

Bedrooms need at least 3 channels for couples and two channels for kiddy rooms.

This allows for foot-lighting which is very easy to handle and a reading light per person. This implies you would need a bedside touchpanel or a wall switch near the bed. The switch can be any dry contact operating through a bus coupler. So it can be a very discrete and easy to operate button.

When you wire a bedroom consider that you spend so much time there and having switches and lights in the wrong place is generally painful. To add complication to this the LED lights have special needs of their own in terms of the number needed per channel.

For this reason some people have a vertical coffer built behind the bed so that indirect light bouncing off the wall behind the bed can provide varying levels of ambient illumination. This satisfies both the indirect soft light and loading requirements.


Other comments:
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The clients preference for Cat6 is valid for data only. The C-Bus network is its own product with its own cabling.

 

Wiring

I have always found it better to wire in T&E to every group. That way there is never any issues with swapping groups from Relays to dimmers or crossing neutrals anywhere. Simply install a neutral link for each circuit breaker & you can't go wrong. In the end the difference in cable costs is offset by the time you save cabling

 

I tend to agree that materials are the least cost. Labour overcomes any savings made in installation if there is a modification. Systems designed with the least possible materials are the most expensive to improve. In the worst case the $20 saving is a $2000 repair.

Given the client wants Cat6 I think there is no reason to bother with less wiring.

 

Deekay

Make sure you run data to the location/s of the colour touchscreens for ease of programming through the network and not having to goto each location and plug in


Kev

 

Thanks for all the help so far guys, much appreciated.

When you say data, do you mean the cbus cat-5 cable ran back to the c-bus board?
Another thing, the touchscreens that need their own power supply, does that mean i need to run a single cat-5 cable from that touch screen to the c-bus board, instead of having it daisy chained off the rest of the switching circuit?

 

I'm not sure it would be any worse noise wise, because the pairs that are parallelled, are still used as bona-fide pairs.

The only thing that CAT6 buys you over CAT5 is reduced crosstalk, but that's not the least bit important for C-Bus where two pairs are in fact connected in parallel, and teh other pairs have only dc signalling if any signalling at all.

Re-use of the cabling in an application demanding the high-speed qualities of CAT6 would be very difficult unless the cable were run with an appropriate topology for the application (most likely STAR topology to a common switch point), which would certainly be different to the wiring topology used for C-Bus (lots of nodes simply strung in parallel)

The pink cable is best!

 

Heres the trick. Tell the customer that C-bus uses special C-bus cable that just so happens to looks like CAT5 but really isn't CAT5.

 

Its Cat-o-nine-tales.

 

I'm currently running all the tv points and data points. Now the customer hasn't asked for anything specific in terms of what he wants, and tell you the truth i don't know much about all the new methods of running tv and data in relation to c-bus. I've read a bit about star serve and what not, but i'm confused. I want to do it in a way, in which it is future proof, so if at the end of the job they ask to link it up to c-bus i can.

So in your opinion what is the best and most future proof way to run tv and data in a c-bus house.
Thanks again.

 

The first rule is the c-bus is a separate network and system. So wire that using the pink cable and don't worry about trying to integrate that with data and TV.