Hello;

I am prewiring a customers home for shade control. How does one prewire for it. Are all the motors on the right side of shade? What kind of wire should i use? i have seen 7 conductor wire need for some brands with varying wire sizes??? Lastly, where should i run these wires to? The keypad location, but what about the 110AC needed? Your help is appreciated.

This is impossible to answer given the information you provided. How are you to interface into the shades? Via Shade company's interface product? Via a keypad? Via a Relay? Via lighting control system? Are the shade motors AC or DC? Do you need up, down and stop or only up and down? What is the control system? IR, Automation, lighting?

Do you need to run power wires to the shades or only control wires?

Alan

First question, who is specifying the shades? This is one of those areas where its likely that your job will be accomodating someone else's choice. Window treatments tend to be the domain of the interior decorator/designer/consultant. When I get to decide, I choose the Lutron/Vimco Sivoia, there aren't any more capable products. In that case, a "proprietary" 7 conductor sheilded cable is used, location depends on the control layout, shades are available motor left and motor right. Traditionally, motorized roller window shades tend to be run by tubular AC motors, for which you'll need to run a 3 conductor Romex or equivalent to the AC shade switch or shade group controller. The most common "cellular" shade is the Hunter Douglas Duette, which has 3 motorized versions:
Battery powered, no prewire,
Remote controlled, 16/2 to the controller box, 6 conductor UTP from the controller box to the controls
and Switch operated, 16/2 from each shade to the switch, and then to the power supply.
In other words, pick the shade first, then follow the spec for that product, there is no one size fits all for shading solutions.

jcmitch

I agree with these guys, we need to know what you are doing, and what you are doing it with, but if you are just looking for ideas,

We have used a draper motorized drape system, that uses a makita motor with a built in IR, so Basically, I run 14/4 to the right side of the drapes (which is where that motor always is) and a cat5. That way I can splice the 14/4 for power, and use the cat5 for either 12v trigger or IR...

But that is a stand alone system, basically. If you are going to use one of the fancier systems with a piece of equipment that sits in a rack, it will prol'ly have a prop cable that you will either need to custom order or hopefully you can cut and splice into later

G