On February 12, 2019 at 05:11, crosen said...
Say you are doing a whole house system and you are brought in after the architectural plans are complete. You gather the system requirements, draft the device location plans, and then consider how to shoehorn the devices into the existing design for the house.
Two projects come to mind. Both were 7 figures with a lot of equipment. The first was long island. A theater that was going to be shoved to one side of the 3rd floor. We took their blueprints and totally redesigned the 3rd floor taking 1/3 of the 3rd floor up for our theater. We also stole the 300 sqft "luggage room" for our control room. At the end the luggage went into a smaller closet and the theater is a fantastic crown jewel of the home instead of a mediocre media room.
The second time was when the builder and architect wanted the control room for security and av to go in the attic above the garage. The garage had a 20' ceiling with a fold down ladder. The ceiling was so high they had to custom make a ladder for it. They wanted us to install 4' tall racks in the 4.5' tall room in an attic in South Florida. They expected everyone to lay on their sides and install equipment for 3 months...and then for two weeks every year during system maintenance. After a meeting we ended up with a 2 story 1000 sqft control room.
You aren't doing them (and certainly not yourself) any favors by letting others make plans for your system. Think about the roofer having you tell them how to do the roof.
Here's my question: how hard do you fight for revisions to the home's design that you would ideally like to see for proper accommodation of your device plan?
For example, let's say you conclude that you need X amount of rack space, but the home's design affords you something shy of X. Part of you is thinking that you need X to do the job right, and perhaps part of you is thinking that if you're resourceful you can make it work.
The thing about rack space is that you always have to have extra because 1U devices change to 5U devices and 5U devices become 3U and then the client wants outdoor speakers and subs and now you have half a rack of gear that needs rack space. Rack space in a large home is as important as storage or the size of the water heater.
Which way do you lean? How much do you make space allocation the battle that you need to win? What "best practices" are you prepared to work around for the sake of being an accommodating vendor and where do you draw the line so you know your systems will be reliable and maintainable?
I know there's no black and white answer here. I'm just looking for some insights to solidify my own thinking.
I think you have to fight for what you need and you have to offer them real world examples of what happens when the minimum system requirements are not met.
See the before pic? The entire floor was gutted and rebuilt so the AV guy could have made his equipment room any size he wanted. He ended up with 2 5' slide out racks. When that got full he cut in a small rack on the side. Then he added conduit so he could use space on the other side of the room for phone and cable. By the time we got there the old AV guy had a stack of components sitting in the floor behind the rack.
We ended up uninstalling all of it and having carpenters rebuild the space so that we could get 4 8' racks installed. Heres a pic of me standing in one of the racks.
