Smart Home Build — Week 17
June 3, 2025
As my career in sports technology has given me the skills and experience from building and upgrading sports venues, I’ve been planning the network and audio for our home for what feels like forever. The proper infrastructure to support all of the technology we’ll use in our home (and some speculative elements for future flexibility) is essential to the successful integration and operation of our smart home. We’ve finally gotten to the point in the home build project that I’ve been waiting on for literally years. The smart home work begins!
The network and audio cabling team was onsite this week and made pretty quick work of the Cat6, speaker wire and HDMI cable installation. They started by nailing the port boxes to the exposed studs where I marked up the studs last week per my network plan, indicating locations of wall ports. This gave them the target locations in order to pull multiple cables at once to work more efficiently.
To accomplish this, the team took advantage of multiple boxes of Cat6 cable, pulling wire through the AV wall box in the office into the attic. Pulling from multiple boxes allowed them to bundle wire for common wiring paths through the attic, branching off where necessary to terminate at the port locations in the walls throughout the house. Running the speaker wire was a similar process though done strictly in pairs. This was done because my audio plan is built around pairs of speakers in in a variety of rooms around the house.
The HDMI cables were the only one-offs that were run as they are all single runs. The purpose of the HDMI cables is to connect the wall mounted TVs’ HDMI ARC ports to the amps in the office rack. This simply allows the TV audio to be routed to the ceiling speakers in the rooms with TVs. This will be particularly effective in spaces like the patio with ambient outdoor noise and in the open floorplan of the living room, kitchen and dining room to evenly distribute the audio versus blasting the TV from across the room.
It only took the network and audio cabling team 3 days to get all the cabling done. This did not include terminating any of the cable at either end of the runs as that will be done after drywall install and painting. At the office rack end the cable terminations will be punch downs on Ethernet keystones (which will be clipped into a patch panel in the rack) or RJ45 jacks, in the case of the POE cameras, plugged directly into the DVR for power and recording video. At the destination end it will be similar with keystones clipping into wall plates or RJ45 jacks plugging directly into POE cameras.
The speaker wire was cleverly weaved between rafters so, after drywalling and painting the ceilings, holes can be cut for the speakers and wire pulled down to connect to the speakers. The speaker wire at the other end in the office rack will connect to the same amps as the HDMI cables for routing audio, integrated with voice assistant, for music in an individual room, multiple rooms or the entire house.
While the cabling was being done, I spent some time after hours extending the last of the ‘Smurf Tubes’ from the upper boxes for the TVs to the attic. As I’ve described before, the ‘Smurf Tubes’ are for running cable through the walls between upper and lower ports to conceal them. The purpose of extending them from the upper box to the attic is for any future need to add cabling from the rack to the TV locations, basically making access easier. All of this may sound like overkill, especially considering how often they may get used, but I did all of the work and actually enjoyed being hands on with our house build.
As there was extra Cat6 left, I ran more lines myself to the garage to an existing port above where my work bench will be. Debbie has been suggesting it for a while just in case I decide to put a TV in the garage or need to expand the network to a second rack in the future. I’ll also be adding extra Ethernet drops behind the refrigerator location in anticipation of a smart fridge someday and a line into the laundry room in case Debbie may want to watch TV in there while she’s doing laundry or crafts. There may be more runs depending on how much cable we have left so stay tuned.
As if all that work wasn’t enough in Week 17, there was a lot going on outside as well …
The team of brick masons continued working their way across the front of the house. Their work has been consistently top tier and now completing the front, the home build has been taken to a whole new level. With the work around the entry and front columns our house is starting to really show some personality. It has been super gratifying for Debbie and I to see our planning and choices come to life through the process of the build — with lots more to come.
The water well crew was also back at work in our front yard. I got the opportunity to chat with them about the specific details regarding our well. It turns out the well they drilled for us last week into the Ogalalla Aquifer was 483 feet deep. They explained that they were onsite to run the water pipe the distance to the aquifer. Surprisingly, they also shared the way the well works. The pump is actually placed around 450 feet below the surface and there will generally be 100 feet of water in the pipe above it to help maintain pressure. This is a more efficient design to reduce the amount of work the pump has to do, extending it’s life and reducing electrical consumption.
Once the pipe and pump were in placed the crew tested it by pumping water into the retaining pit they dug last week. One of the well crew shared that he’d taste the water being pumped once it was flowing clear. The next steps will be to set up the pump control temporarily at the well head so water can be accessed onsite as part of the build. The first need for water will be for the crew coming in to do the stucco work on the exposed ZIP board around the house once the brick team is done and have cleared their equipment from the site. Eventually, the well head will be connected to the conduit leading into the house and the control unit will be installed in the closet with the water heater, water softener and the Phyn smart water leak detector.
As you can see it’s been a busy and exciting week. But more to come as insulation work and drywalling will happen soon. Ordering and installing the garage doors will follow soon after that along with our cabinet design and review for the kitchen, bathrooms, office and living room. And there’s more smart home integration planned.
Let Debbie and I know what your thoughts are on our plans and progress in the comments, DMs or email. 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 of our new smart home build. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’
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