Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Matthew Carberry on November 17, 2011, 05:49:28 PM
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Looking at running to every room, maybe from a central box/point with a conduit to outside, to minimize having the utilities drilling multiple holes in the siding.
I think standard cable may be on the way out but if you tech-savvy guys could do it over, what would you have wanted in your home at this point and how distributed?
Yeah, that's right, I'm looking for free consultation services suckers....
=D
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If I had been involved in the construction of my house I would do more or less what you described.
Each room would have 2 CAT5e or 6 runs and a coax run in modular jacks, possibly multiple for rooms that might get swapped around including the garage. Additionally, each location there is an appliance would have the double CAT6 runs to them as well for when smart appliances, toilets, and etc become prevalent. It would be done in conduit with several extra labeled pull strings to make it easy for future upgrades.
All of it home runs to one closet, wherever it works, with a patch panel and the standard telco plywood wall panel for mounting switches and whatnot.
If cost were an issue, I would cut back on the extra wiring but double down on the pull strings.
Instead, my house is underwired the only phone outlet on the ground floor and no data anywhere (this was built in 2001 even!)
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I'd also sneak in speaker wire to various locations I might ever stick components of a fancy stereo.
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I'm thinking some kind of panel type box with power to it and a fat conduit going to the outside for the home runs to he utility's hookups and another up into the attic. Then each room getting a conduit down to a box inside a cabinet (kitchen and bath) or in the wall so any further runs could be made discreetly or connections made room to room in the attic.
Boxes and conduit are comparatively cheap and I could let future residents do their own wiring configs even if I don't.
Gotta remember pull strings.
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Both. Coax may soon be going the way of the dodo for some things, but it can still be useful for transferring A/V signals room-to-room. I'd also do a double run of twisted pair for everything in anticipation of more and more services requiring it. A few extra bucks now is a godsend in the long run.
Your idea of running everything to a central box is a good'n. Excellent, in fact. Run everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, to a patch panel - both twisted pair and coax. That gives you the ultimate flexibility to divert signal paths down the road. Even if you have unused circuits now, in the future you can parallel or daisy chain circuits as you desire.
I wish all houses were done that way. Would make home theater and data or A/V distribution a snap.
Also, don't forget to run circuits and mount boxes for home theater speaker cabling. You may not use now, or maybe ever, but it's a dandy selling point if you ever decide to move. Ten boxes - front and rear centers, left and right mains, front and rear subs, left and right mid surrounds, left and right rear surrounds. On second though, make that twelve boxes to add left and right front surround circuits. Yes, I know that nothing right now uses a rear center or front surround fields, but it's coming.
Don't forget to add lighting circuits for alcove, above-cabinet, under-counter lighting. Again, they may not be your cup of tea but having the legs run and boxes in place gives you plenty of options and makes for a good selling feature. You may just find you end up using them anyway. Ditto for under-eave outdoor boxes you can switch from inside the house (Christmas lights and holiday/occasional decor lighting).
Edit to add... Don't do pull-string light fixtures. Go ahead and wire switched circuits in the closets/areas where you might be tempted to use pull string fixtures. It might save you, at most, a couple bucks at that location, but it looks and feels outdated and cheap.
Edit to add again... When you run an attic light circuit, for the love of Pete don't do the single one-bulb fixture thing. Go ahead and spend the few bucks to add plenty of fixtures to the circuit so you can actually, you know, SEE when you go into the attic. Also, put decent lights in the garage, okay? Wire in at least two boxes, one per side. Four, preferably, spaced towards the corners. To this day it befuddles me when people who spend a lot of time in their garage won't put in decent illumination.
Edit to add, part III... Presume that, at some point, there will be a ceiling fan in each lighting location. Even if you're not going to install fans, put the bracing in place and use a double circuit (seperately switched fan/light). Also do that in exterior places that tend to get used a lot (back porches, atriums, etc).
Edit to add, part IV... in every area where you will eventually need access to plumbing that has in-wall valving (showers, tubs), put a friggin' access panel, okay? Nothing like having to dig through a closet or scrunch yourself into a tiny cabinet just for the pleasure of hacking a hole in your nice virgin wall.
Edit to add, part V... Also have the plumber run a softener loop somewhere in the home that has enough room for a softener unit, plus a dedicated pre-softener line for ALL the exterior faucets. Again, you may not use a softener, but someone in the future likely will and it's nice to be able to install it without having to do major surgery on the plumbing.
Document everything, of course. Pics too. Make a notebook of all the niceties, both for your own reference and for a potential future buyer.
Brad
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Boy, if I was building a house today, I would have phone, coax and cat 6 run to every room.
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Also consider cabling for a surveillance camera system on the outside of the house.
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consider doing the same with other systems as well. plumbing comes to mind. pex is cheap and easy
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Fiber optics everywhere, just in case! You can get finished(connectors) duplex jumpers in just about any length you need.
Run 6 pair cat 3
minimum 2 runs cat 5/6
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Edit to add... Don't do pull strings. Go ahead and wire switched circuits in the closets/areas where you might be tempted to use pull string fixtures. It might save you, at most, a couple bucks at that location, but it looks and feels outdated and cheap.
When he says pull strings, he means to turn light fixtures on and off.. not pull strings in the conduit to make future additional wire pulls easy!
At least I think he does...
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When he says pull strings, he means to turn light fixtures on and off.. not pull strings in the conduit to make future additional wire pulls easy!
At least I think he does...
Pull-string light fixtures are what I was talking about. Nothing like walking into a nice new home, opening a clost, and seeing a pull string. It's cheesy and reeks of "cheap". It's also inconvenient as heck, especially if you have an arm full of something you want to put in, or take out of, the closet. Spend the extra five bucks for the switch and box it would take to do it right.
Brad
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I read it as pull ropes inside the conduit for additional circuits
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I read it as pull ropes inside the conduit for additional circuits
In that case, YES!!!! Be sure to label them.
Brad
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Brad,
Yep, whatever the commo guys use for conduit pulls is what I meant. I'll make sure I take note of all the speaker and appliance suggestions folks made, didn't think of that.
Electrical I am comfortable with and I've already got power going everywhere and capacity for more built in (as a handyman and semi-pro remodeler I'm big on making it easy for the next guy).
You did essentially confirm everything my electrician buddy recommended, but with him I had a beer while I listened =D and I'm reading this at work =| .
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Run two (or three) cat5e or cat6 lines, coax if you want. You can use the cat5e or cat6 as telephone wire if you want, so no need to run that. Go with cat6 if the cost isn't hideously expensive, but if not, don't worry about it. 10 gigabit ethernet isn't going to be necessary for a long time inside a house unless you do weird stuff. Run it to a central patch panel, and label it. Conduit with pull string would be nice, and recommended if the cost isn't excessive. Label and document EVERYTHING.
Mount a gigabit switch right underneath the patch label, and use 6 inch patch cables to connect.
If you need recommendations for anything, lemme know.
Read Brad's post about five times, he's very much right.
Off topic, but get a ridiculously over spec'd UPS for your sump pump. Or a super ultra high UPS for something else that you can retask to the sump pump if required.
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Sorry mods, hit reply to.theft notification email.
Again. :facepalm:
Thx for the recommendations. Though I don't need a sump pump.
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i try to heat and bend my conduit where i can wire seems to pull easier with less fittings and joints
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Speaker wire is old school.
Moderne audio is a media stream from the central NAS to an iPod or another smart player.
TVs are shipping with RJ45 connections
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Additionally, each location there is an appliance would have the double CAT6 runs to them as well for when smart appliances, toilets, and etc become prevalent.
All electrical service goes to your wiring closet. Run everything else POE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet).
(For the humor impaired, I'm kidding.)
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Mount a gigabit switch right underneath the patch label, and use 6 inch patch cables to connect.
These are pretty reliable and you should never have a capacity issue in a single family home (or small city).
http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/switching/qfx-series/#products (http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/switching/qfx-series/#products)
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Off topic, but get a ridiculously over spec'd UPS for your sump pump. Or a super ultra high UPS for something else that you can retask to the sump pump if required.
Or a pump with a DC motor and as many deep-cycle marine batteries as you are willing to buy, with a trickle charger.
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Save the money and put in cat5e. Cat6 isn't worth the money or effort in a home setting. As soon as you terminate the cat6 it's going to be cat5 anyway unless you understand the difference and how terminate cat6. Put four drops in each room, two each on opposite walls and home-run them to a central cross-connect. Put two coax connections in each room as well, on opposite walls. LABEL ALL OF THE WIRING.
I do this for a living. Since I have an older home, I put in drops as I need them or use wireless. My lab closet/server room/house cross-connect is adjacent to my office here at the house. I just put a 16-tuple through the wall. The lab has eight routers and four layer 3 switches. The house router and switches are in the rack as well. There are actually fewer than a half-dozen wire drops in the rest of the house, primarily for phones. The server and the desktop are wired; all the laptops are wireless. One of these days I'll get around to putting in another WAP downstairs at the other end of the house for better coverage out on the deck.
Russ
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Well, I'll be the odd man here. In most modern construction houses, running new wires is trivial as long as you have access to either basement or attic on one side of each living floor. You can put 4 jacks per room with 4 cat5 and 2 RG6, and still in a couple years find one that's in the wrong place by a foot. Also, most modern equipment comes with wireless built in, so you may not even need a drop at all. Why have an unused wall plate there if you could have nothing? I install internet service as a side-job and at least half of my customers are only using wireless devices - laptops, tablets, game system etc, all wireless.
I would run cabling for what you need now and any likely future uses, and leave it at that. If you want to future proof, just install empty boxes and the flex plastic conduit that telecom guys use. If you realistically plan on doing a home theater in the next few years, do the wiring for it now, otherwise, just run it when needed.
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I would run cabling for what you need now and any likely future uses, and leave it at that. If you want to future proof, just install empty boxes and the flex plastic conduit that telecom guys use. If you realistically plan on doing a home theater in the next few years, do the wiring for it now, otherwise, just run it when needed.
I have to disagree. Running the cabling and installing boxes now, as part of a new build, takes almost no time a very little in the way of supplies. Running it after the fact is a huge headache and can get extremely expensive due to the added labor costs.
Also, I know a lot of people are going wireless, but cabling is not only still useful but more secure than wireless (wierd people like me think about stuff like that, and I think wireless security problems are going to become more of an issue in the near future as readily available decryption technology leaps past the current generation of wireless product engineering). It's also a HUGE selling point for the home if he decides to move, and it costs very little if it's done as part of the build.
I've seen far, far too many people who did the "I don't need it now so I'll save the extra $100 and do it if I ever want it" only to end up spending many hundreds a few years down the road. I've also seen many newer (and some new) home that didn't sell because the it was going to be expensive to upgrade the plumbing/wiring/tech for current trends, or to future-proof for reasonably anticipatable 5-10 year demands or future service issues. (Builders who put whirlpool tubs in a cozy little alcove with the pump assembly facing the rear and then completely seal up the surround should have their heads examined, yet it's done every day)
Almost forgot amongst the other stuff... If you're using a mechanical closet for your HVAC/water heater, please, for the love of all that's good and proper, make the access door big enough for stuff to fit through when work needs to be done. I've never yet comprehended why people, especially builders, will put in a mechanical closet that's just barely (by mere fractions of an inch, on occasion) big enough to hold an HVAC system and a 50+ gallon water heater, then put in a standard interior door for access. Apparently these idiots have never gone through the joy of having to completely dismantle an air handler, and sometime even pull out the entire door frame, in order to have enough room to change out the friggin' water heater! :rolleyes:
Brad
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Much, much, much!! easier to do it during the new construction before closing the walls.
I ran all new cable and double runs of Cat 5 in all the rooms of my present home (original cable sucked, and I wanted more rooms wired). Took me a couple of weeks, and it was even more of a PITA because it is a two-story. You wouldn't believe some of the routes I had to take between floors.
Major drywall repairs...good thing that I am a mudding and texturing god. :P
Would have taken a day when the house was just the framing...
Sawdust
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I should add to all of this that at this very moment my parents are going through the "we shoulda done (X)" blues on the house they built just five years ago. I tried to get Dad to do a couple of small things (cabling/wiring being the biggie, plus a couple of plumbing things) and he didn't because "we don't need it". He's spent at least two grand over the last year having things either added or corrected that would have cost, at most, and extra $200-$300 if they'd been done during the build.
The next nicety they're going to face will be the flood that happens when any one of their three water heaters lets go. Dad didn't think that emergency drains were necessary even though I, the builder, and the plumber told him that it would be a very, very good idea. Slab floor with lots of custom tile and very expensive barnwood flooring. It's won't be pretty. It may also be more expensive than he knows because some insurance companies won't pay for water damage due to water heater problems if you don't have an emergency drain in place.
Brad