Networks, Wiring and Power for Smart Home Success
September 3, 2024
When building, renovating or simply upgrading a home, a smart home foundation should always be considered. You must start with a well-designed wiring and cable, home network, and power management infrastructure. While there are certainly flashier technologies available to homeowners, without these essentials, the connected devices that comprise even the most basic smart home present potential inconsistent performance, outages, and security issues.
To learn more about the foundations of the smart home — wiring and cable, home networks, and power management — here’s what to consider in a smart home installation.
Wiring and Cable
It may be a bit confusing trying to separate wiring and cable from the home network, as the two are almost always intertwined within a smart home. Hardwiring a home network is more reliable, stable, and secure than WiFi but from my experience, most new home builders and their clients don’t. It’s been disappointing as Debbie and I have done scores of new home tours for ideas for our new home build and find no networks in most and those we did find cable in, they ran Cat5e. Why not Cat6? The labor cost is the same and for just a few more cents per foot you get a faster network that’ll last longer. Builders really need to embrace the home network as a differentiator and upsell to their clients as hardwiring provides a bigger return on investment.
With this in mind, though, it’s essential to first know which types of smart devices — and how many of them — will require a cabling connection. As a rule of thumb, I’d suggest running extra cable if you can, as the cost of doing it later will be far greater. Also, make sure the cabling you are putting in is compliant with current performance specifications. This can be difficult, given the constant evolution of cabling technologies and standards, so do your homework.
The quality of cable and how it’s run make a significant difference to the performance of connected systems as well. Higher quality cable is also usually easier to work with and install, which saves time and lasts longer. Look for cable that’s been individually tested and third-party certified or verified. It’s easy for any brand to tell you that they are the best but much harder to do so when they have to prove themselves through independent certification from organizations such as UL, HDMI, HDBaseT and DPL. Certification is your guarantee.
It’s important to think about potential future needs as well. I hate using the term ‘future-proof’ as that’s really impossible at the rate technology changes. I refer to use the term ‘future-flexible,’ especially with something as important as the foundational network. One way to lean into this with your cable system is to install pathways or conduit that allows you to pull more cable or replace cable easily. Obviously, this represents an added cost, but again, saves you in the long run or avoids the inability to run new cable. Technology upgrades will happen much faster than changes to your home and being able to accommodate those changes easily relieves a lot of stress as a homeowner.
Additionally, installing single-mode fiber, that can easily span 1000 feet, is easy to terminate, can support 1GB, 10GB, and beyond and is not susceptible to EMI and lightning. And it’s cost effective compared to several higher tiers of copper.
For more details on smart home wiring and cable see my post ‘What Do I Need to Install My Own Ethernet Cabling?’
The Home Network
The first step toward making sure that a home network is up to the task is understanding technology needs and expectations. Consumer-grade, professional-grade, and enterprise-grade networks all have their place in today’s homes. Establishing expectations will help you choose the right solution. The homeowner needs to understand that as they raise the bar on their home’s capabilities — control, distributed AV, lighting, shades, security, surveillance and all aspects of home automation — designing a network that can meet those requirements is essential. Building the right network impacts the entire connected experience.
A good place to start is by connecting everything you can to the network. This ensures better speed, reliability and security as well as avoid unnecessary traffic on WiFi. Access point layout and coverage in the home is next to support systems and devices that can’t connect physically and mobile devices. This gives a clear picture of what the coverage will be like, especially in complex home floorplans with multiple floors. Proper planning, proper products and proper configuration go a long way to installing a secure and robust network that simply works.
The network is the most important thing. Though not as ‘sexy’ as some of the more ‘shiny object’ aspects of smart home technology, if the network goes down, everyone is unhappy. Keep in mind that not everyone will use the ‘shiny objects’ every day, but everyone in the home will use the network, every single day. It must ‘just work’ without issue.
This makes the case for installing commercial-grade or ‘pro-sumer’ networking gear that offers ‘category-leading’ features and warranties. Many products offer a lifetime warranty and have excellent performance capabilities for WiFi and switching.
For more details on smart home networks see my post ‘Wired vs Wifi: Skip Wifi in Favor of Ethernet Where You Can.’
Power Management
Another critical element to a successful, robust home network is power. Requirements for power are fairly easy to determine once your planned systems and devices are documented. Another area to plan is placement of power. Going back to my comment above about no cabling at obvious locations like for TVs over fireplaces (not recommended, by the way), frequently there’s not power. So you have the issue of unsightly cables hanging from a focal point in a room.
Power quality and reliability may soon become the most important smart home foundation category due to the increasing inconsistencies of our aging power grid, more occurrence of extreme weather incidents, and the rising use of solar panels. Power reliability has gotten most of the attention with homeowners, who often resort to generators and more recently battery backup to keep their homes operating during power outages. However, black outs and brown outs actually should be the least of their concerns. A lack of consistent power quality is a bigger threat.
As the Internet of Things has transformed our homes with devices imbedded with microprocessors, they rely on constant and consistent power quality to perform at their optimum levels and provide us with the conveniences they were intended. To achieve this, a home should have a zero transfer online UPS with enough capacity to protect home devices from large electrical transients and feed them with clean, stable, regulated electricity.
Power management can be identified by the homeowner’s short- and long-term power objectives. Are they concerned about managing their grid usage by offsetting consumption with batteries during peak billing times? Do the owners work from home and need power protection to stay productive? Do the homeowners place a high value on unusual amenities like a wine cellar, a high-end home theater or a ‘whole-home’ automation system?
By determining lifestyle, expectations, and concerns, the homeowners can determine if a single device, a couple of devices, or a whole-home power management system is right. One way to accomplish significant impact on a home’s power quality is by isolating the entire AV and control system from noise, artifacts, distortion, and harmonics that are present on the voltage line. Too much noise on the powerline robs an AV system of definition and detail which influence the system’s overall performance. Artifacts, distortion, and harmonics on the powerline will cause excessive heat to build up in the power supplies of sensitive AV components, which can lead to equipment failure or operational issues with the entire system. By understanding the detriments of dirty, unstable power, builders and homeowners are better equipped to take the necessary precautions. By applying appropriate power-quality solutions, they can assure that an AV system performs optimally and without continual maintenance.
The first necessity is proper surge protection for all system components. This can entail either a simple surge-protected outlet behind a TV, or a component-based surge protector in an equipment cabinet or rack. This can be complemented with an online double conversion UPS for ‘perfect’ 120V/60Hz power 24/7. This is considered a highly recommend item for the main IT equipment, including the network, whole-house control processor, and surveillance systems. This approach, including the UPS, mitigates lockups caused by very quick brownouts and voltage sags or spikes.
For more details on smart home power management see my posts ‘Electrical Wiring For Your Smart Home’ and ‘Smart Home, Power and Sustainability.’
What are your thoughts on smart home wiring and cable, home network, and power management infrastructure? Have you installed any of this in a new home build, renovation or upgrade? What are your experiences with these in your smart home? What would you add?
Let Debbie and I know what you think in the comments, DMs and emails as we really enjoy hearing from you. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through the process. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’
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