March 11, 2005

I have been trying to get around to sending this update out for the past couple of weeks. I keep thinking that there is not much to do and then I get swamped again. We did move our furniture in on March 3, one year and one day from the day we broke ground. We have been putting away and cleaning ever since then.

Weather has prevented us from doing the finishing grade work. A crew is working on that today. The picture below shows the grade around the front of the house. They are still working around the house. We have made arrangements to have the entire yard hydro-seeded when they finish the grading. By the time I bought the fertilizer, lime, seed and straw and then had help putting it down the cost would be about the same. They can do it in about 3-4 hours what would take me days.





We still have a few things to do inside the house and with the packing boxes and stuff about the house, I am going to defer sending pictures of what the inside looks like until the next update. I will share with you some of the things I have completed since the last update.

First we have finished the satellite TV system. We are using the Super Dish network that will pick up the local channels so we do not have to have a separate TV antenna. We have video outlets at sixteen places in the house. All of the cables are a home run back to the equipment room. Four of these positions have cables to take the satellite signal to the receiver, bring the signal back to the equipment room to a splitter and then go any other place in the house where needed. For instance, in Becky’s sewing room there is a receiver and from there it goes to the outlets in the kitchen. So whatever she is watching in the sewing room she can also watch in the kitchen. If we want to change the kitchen to a different receiver later on, we can do it with patch cables in the equipment room. Below is the video cabinet in the equipment room.

There is strip down the middle that acts like a terminal strip to dead end all of the cables. The splitters are the four silver boxes on the right. The six incoming cables from outside are at the top. The three cables coming from that are for the three receivers we have in the house. One runs to the main TV in the family room, one to the game room in the basement and the bottom splitter is for the sewing room. The door to the cabinet just drops down over the cabinet. The extra patch cables are on the door. I still have to fix a place to hold them inside.





We have twenty-three telephone outlets in the house. Just about everywhere you we want to plug in a phone there is an outlet. All of these lines also have a home run to the equipment room. Below is a picture of the telephone junction box in the equipment room.

All of the cables are terminated on punch-down blocks. The upper center block is for the incoming cables and DSL line. The lower two blocks are for the distribution into the house. The large red cable is a power cable brought over from the server cabinet(see below) in case power is ever needed here. There are also seven CAT-5 cables going between the server cabinet and the telephone cabinet in case there is a need for interconnection. There are three cables from the shop to the house. One is for the telephone and DSL line. One is for data back to the shop and the third is a spare.





We have also installed a telephone intercom system that will be of great value to us. It ties into all of the music speakers we have in the house. To page throughout the house and shop, pick up the phone and press #P and make the page. The other person picks up the phone and either person can press “0” and you can talk without being on the intercom. If the call comes in and it is for someone else, when you press #P, the call is put on hold and the call in reconnected when the other person picks up. The front door and back door bell rings on all of the speakers also. The front door has a speaker and when the bell rings, you can pick up the phone and press #D and talk to whoever is at the door. This works throughout the house and shop, so if I am in the shop I will know someone is at the door. The call can also be put on hold with a #H. I still have to run the cables for the speaker system to the shop, but I do have a spare conduit to do it with.



I was also able to get a server cabinet at the right price (free). There are eighteen data lines in the house and one in the shop. The server will be installed tomorrow and then I can go ahead and move the computer to the study, in the basement. Below is the server cabinet.

The server cabinet is located in the storage room in the basement. The room has HVAC so it will be in a controlled environment. There are four fans on the top of the cabinet to provide ventilation. You can see the terminations of all of the cables on a patch panel at the top and the patch cable down to a hub below. The hub is a 24 port so it will handle all of the 18 positions in the house and the 6 back over to the telephone cabinet in the equipment room. There is a Plexiglas door on the front.




When we get the yard hydro-seeded and the house arranged some, I will send the final update on the project.

Fred