Constructing an Owner-Built Home in Greater Victoria - Personal Experience

tieing this in with the previous comment regarding home automation - if you DO go with baseboards, see if you can wire them up together for zoning, and just get a couple of NEST thermostats - setup and forget. Cheaper long run.

Nest thermostats only work for central systems, not baseboards. 

Nothing wrong with baseboards in the bedrooms.  Gas fireplace in the LR combined with a ductless with heads in the LR and each bedroom you want cooled would be a good start.  Sounds like that would leave room in the budget for heated floors (Do the kitchen, Marko, for the few hundred it costs for some NuHeat cables....) 

Install an extra breaker and wiring to allow easy installation of a second ductless system near the garage if you want to expand the system later on.  I'm not sure what the max run is on the linesets, so you might not be able to cover everything with the one system anyway. 

Nest thermostats only work for central systems, not baseboards. 

 

Just use relays...

You're better off with basic programmable thermostats.

We don't have anything in the budget for home automation and there is nothing that really screams to me, "I need this."  Wiring just the basics, media panel with cat5e/coaxial in each room, throw in a bunch of in-wall speakers (inexpensive) with volume controls, half decent thermostats, and wire for security system. 

Those Leviton type structured media panels are expensive and limit your expansion and equipment choices.  You're better off mounting things on plywood in your mech/elec room.

For sound there are a few things that you'll want to consider which will affect your wiring plan. 

Some systems offer amplified keypads, deriving their power from their own CAT5 cable run back to the main controller.  Speakers are wired directly to the volume controller in the room and the volume controller can provide other functions such as changing input sources or controlling whatever media player you're using via an IR relay over the CAT5.

Other systems use a simple amplifier (A/V receiver) distributed out to volume controls then to the speakers.

For maximum flexibility and to keep options open for you in the future should you want to upgrade to something more advanced, I'd suggest running a CAT5 cable to the volume control location, but also ensure your speaker wires pass right behind the volume control with a couple feet of wire coiled up.  This will let you use amplified controllers, simple volume knobs or more advanced systems without having to re-do wiring in the future. 

^Isn't it Sonos?

1000ft of speaker wire costs about the same as one of those Sonos speakers.

You're better off running the wire now in the build stage than trying to do it later once the walls are up.

And reliable

Radiant heating is really expensive.  On a three level home like this you would need to install pipes into the slab plus you would need to pour 1.5'' of concrete on the upper two floors which would require additional structural engineering, etc.  I am guessing the total bill would run north of $50,000.  

Then you still have the issue of no A/C.  Then I also have some 1st world pet peeves such as the thermostats run by the air temperature and unless you have money to burn you probably can't afford to have specific zones for each bathroom/kitchen which makes it difficult to achieve the really warm floor feeling that you get from electric cables and thermostats you can set to operate to floor temperature.  

Those Leviton type structured media panels are expensive and limit your expansion and equipment choices.  You're better off mounting things on plywood in your mech/elec room.

I was thinking about two media panels? One for main house and one for potential office space above garage.  The Leviton boxes don't really break the bank too much, less than $100 each online and they look clean.

and yea, lot's of different uses for Cat5s, I saw online that you can run two Cat5s as replacement for HDMI?

In terms of baseboard thermostats I came across these on costco online, I like the small look and simplicity -> thermostat 

Not daily programmable? Restricted to their heaters only? Hmm....

If I end up going with a combination heating system the baseboards will be in the spare bedrooms.  Main living areas  would have gas fireplace, inverter heat pump, and heated tile floors (kitchen and foyer), and master bedroom would have invester heat pump and heated tiles in ensuite.  All three of those have programmable thermostats.

I really don't like the look of these for bedrooms - programmable thermostat I installed one in my 834 condo to replace the garbage one the developer had and while I like the little LCD screen we never used the programmable features once.  In my opinion the programmble thermostat feature is best use on the master ensuite for the heated tiles.  For example, if you wake up at 7:00 am you can have it start heating the tiles at 6:45 am and have it turn off by 8:00 pm.

I guess a lot of these things come down to personal preference.

Radiant heating is really expensive.  On a three level home like this you would need to install pipes into the slab plus you would need to pour 1.5'' of concrete on the upper two floors which would require additional structural engineering, etc.  I am guessing the total bill would run north of $50,000.  

 

Then you still have the issue of no A/C.  Then I also have some 1st world pet peeves such as the thermostats run by the air temperature and unless you have money to burn you probably can't afford to have specific zones for each bathroom/kitchen which makes it difficult to achieve the really warm floor feeling that you get from electric cables and thermostats you can set to operate to floor temperature.  

Are we talking about different forms of radiant heating?  I was talking about electric in-floor heat for your kitchen and bathrooms. 

I was thinking about two media panels? One for main house and one for potential office space above garage.  The Leviton boxes don't really break the bank too much, less than $100 each online and they look clean.

 

and yea, lot's of different uses for Cat5s, I saw online that you can run two Cat5s as replacement for HDMI?

 

In terms of baseboard thermostats I came across these on costco online, I like the small look and simplicity -> thermostat 

I'd centralize all your wiring in one point.  Cat5, coax, speaker wires, etc... it'll give you the most flexibility down the road. 

Yes, there are HDMI over Cat5 systems, also known as HD Base T. http://www.atlona.com/home.php  Lots of solutions for HDMI distribution and switching.

Yeah ok. Makes more sense. Honeywells are mostly big and ugly but there are a couple of nicer ones.

I bought a really nice touch screen one that that I can also control the temperature from my smartphone.  Its nice when I am coming home from a trip to turn on the heat from 4000 miles away