Central Vac with Hide A Hose! You still have time! I will never have another home without one!

How about an alarm system? If not already in, have a independent local alarm company wire the property. Do not use one associated with the nationals like ADT, Brinks (Broadview), etc.

Plumbing: Outdoor water spigot's at least the front AND back of house!

Any narrow walls? Don't forget outlets there too. (We have a 3 foot wall between a foyer and adjacent office space. Wish we had an outlet for uplight, small lamp, Christmas decor, etc)

We routed our surround sound in great room, back porch, and master bath to a closet under the stairs -- that's where the cable box and all the A/V equipment is. We even included an air vent because all that stuff gives off a lot of heat.

I am planning on having a hose spigot on all four sides of my house. I only had two on my last one, and as I became more interested in gardening and landscaping around the whole house, it became a pain to haul hoses around.

If you have any need for warm water outside, you might want to make one hose bib have hot and cold water. They are relatively inexpensive to put in while constructing. I intend to put one near the driveway for hose washing, dog washing, slip n slides, etc.

Def. several spigots and at least one with a hot & cold. Our hot and cold is by the garage also.

I don't know if my pics will help but here is our data/communication/speaker shstuff. It gives me a headache to think about it so I don't really understand it.

And it isnt complete yet, but this is how it looks so far:

This pic is the cabinet to the right of my fish tank. It houses things like Christmas light switch, and maybe the speakers and I really don't know.

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This is another pic

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This is how it looks downstairs in the mechanical room.

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And this is the wiring for the security alarm

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Thanks! All good suggestions so far.

Gopintos - what a mess is right! I don't understand it either. DH says he can run all the wires I miss once we were in. I know I want recessed speakers in GR and Kitchen and off the back porch. In the GR we are mounting our TV above fireplace and I'm wondering where to put the DVD player, satellite/cable box etc. DH was going to run all the wires up to a spot in the wall and then I was going to get a cabinet to put all that stuff in. Can all that stuff be housed in another room or does it need to be close by T.V. for the remotes? I guess DVD would need to be for inserting DVD. Anyone have pics of where they've housed theirs?

Cat 5e or Cat 6 communications cables.

I spent a week pulling low voltage wires before the drywall went up. It is much harder to run them after the house is built, even if you have a basement rancher with a dropped ceiling, as we do. If you are on a slab or have multiple stories, it is orders of magnitude more difficult.

If you do any outdoor holiday lighting, think about outlet placement for that...I have a couple of spots on the porch that need an outlet and wish I'd have thought about that...

We put in outlets above the kitchen cabinets for rope lighting (on a timer), and also had some on an architectural feature in our old house (it looked really nice at night to have a glow up high). Also, what about low-voltage lighting outside? Where are you going to put the control box? And do you have enough electric in the garage? Take the time NOW to walk through your house, opening doors and walking into rooms.

Think about the placement of outlets and switches so that they are most convenient for you. Also think about what the wall will look like after the drywall is in... will an entire wall be screwed up because there's one switch there? Can you relocate it if so?

We also put an outlet about 4' high in the pantry so we could put the dustbuster in there and keep it charged. Very handy!

We did not do structured wiring in this house since we did it in our last one and never used it. If you want it, though, do it now. You'll need to account for speakers, wall control switches, etc. As for how to do it without seeing the equipment -- there are other pieces of equipment you buy that control everything, but we didn't realize until after we did all the wiring that they were out of price range (after deciding to have kids... lol). They use IR with small (pencil eraser sized) receivers that you point your remote at, and then it relays the command to the DVD player or receiver that is hidden in a closet. But, as you note, you still have to go to the closet to change the dvd. I also realized that unless we bought a REALLY expensive remote, we wouldn't be able to see the display on the system, either. So if there was a problem, it would be a PITA to troubleshoot without physically going to the closet. So, for now, we'll keep it simple with prewired speakers in the ceiling and wiring for wall mounted TVs in the LR, FR, and MBR.