Wiring a House While It's Still Being Built? 172
digitalamish asks: "Back in 2001 Slashdot had this Ask Slashdot about wiring a new house for networking. Some of the comments in that discussion talked about running fiber vs cat5e. It's more than two year later, I'm starting to build a house, and I'd like to update this topic. So, what's the current state of people's thinking. Is good old Cat-5e still good enough, is fiber a better option? What about other options like Cat-6? Or with the state of wireless, is wiring a house even worth it any more?"
Re:Some thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Label *everything*. All gang-boxes should have a number corresponding to a number in the wiring closet. Every piece of cable you run should have a number or letter or color or whatever. When it's time to hook up a new phone or TV, you just look for wall plate 6 wire 4 downstairs and you're done.
Do it now! (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, the cables will cost the same, but installation is relatively free right now.
Cat5e is fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wireless is advancing at a pace that wired solutions never did; in just a few short years we've gone from 11mbit to 108mbit, with faster speeds and longer ranges in the cards for the future. By the time gigabit ethernet isn't enough for you, I'm certain wireless will be the solution you adopt.
Re:Plan for the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Central Vacuming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PVC Piping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some thoughts... (Score:2, Insightful)
If the conduit is mostly straight, yes. If, however, you have to do a 90 angle
Watch the money (Score:3, Insightful)
All the advice above is okay, but you can easily ad $30,000 in extras by following it, and you will never get it back when you sell.
Figure out what you want and put it in. I'd go cable TV to each room, and a two runs of cat-5/6, one for phone, one for network. Wireless works great for a lot of purposes, use it!
Put surround sound jacks in the rooms where you will use it - family room, and perhaps living room.
Run two cable runs to the attic for future satellite and antennas. Hook them up if you want latter.
Forget about conduit, it sounds nice, but will you ever use it? Even if you will, will it help? For a single story house it is easy to come up from the basement/crawlspace where you need wires. Even for a two story, do you really think you will ever want more wires in the bedrooms? For that matter I've been in houses that have been completely re-wired a couple times, and you can't tell from the inside. Wall spaces are empty, meaning they serve double duty as conduit.
BUT WATCH THE MONEY. All these add ons cost money, a little planning will reveal that not much is likely to change, so why spend extra money planning for a change that won't happen? Instead plan for todays needs, and the obvious needs of the future, and counts on the far future taking care of itself.
Re:Stick in everything you can afford (Score:3, Insightful)
Still unless there were some extenuating circumstances I wouldn't see any need for much more than a gig in the near future, but then again as long as the conduit is there, you can always retrofit.
Re:Check your local building codes/laws!!!!!!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Licensure isn't required, but you do need to have an agreement with the contractor to do work in the house before it is completed.
Re:Some thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Put one or two strands of CAT 5 and 1 COAX cable to each room for phones, TV, etc.
We've found that's overkill. We have rooms where none of the cable's been used. However, we ran 2 cat5e and one coax line to, minimally, all upstairs rooms. The upstairs are the hardest (IMHO) to do after the drywall's up. The first floor is easy because there's a basement under everything.
If you're going to use the cat5 for your normal phones, be sure you have a seperate run of cat5 for your computer, after all you'll want 100mbs or gigabit, right? It works better with all pairs of the wire available to it
Like they say, if you're going to pull one cord, you can nearly just as easily pull two cords to the same location
2) Run CONDUIT everywhere.
YES!!
5) Think about running your empty conduit to locations near power, so you don't have to run a bunch of extension cords.
In my experience, you want to *not* do this. You want your conduit away from your power sources. Generally, there will be wall outlets for power every 6 feet (standard code for most of the country now-a-days).
7) Run string in the conduits and tie it off on both ends
If you do this, don't let the string hang out. Tape the string to the inside of the conduit. Most places the builders will rip the string out, if they see it, to make sure that it doesn't catch the inspector's eye and cause an inspection to fail.
Also, buy caps for both ends of every piece of conduit. Some places won't pass a house w/ conduit if the ends aren't capped, because it's a direct pipeline for fire to shoot up, so the inspector's baulk.
8) Run all your conduit to a central location (probably in the basement)
Be ready to be able to *hide* it. Most builders have contractors who like to do this stuff. When they see all the cable that you've run, that they didn't, and weren't paid to do, you can run into problems.
Also, pickup a cable tester. Get a good one. I'll make youre life easier after you've run the cables and your drywall is up and your jacks are in place, you can find out which cables were tweaked, ripped, snipped.
And, since this is a new build, I'd put the conduit in, but leave it empty. Run the wiring through the studs like any normal wiring. Leave the conduit for future expansion/use. There's no need to use the conduit immediately on a new build when a hole through the 2x4's will suffice for threading your cables through. And that doesn't look conspicuous to contractors like a piece of PVC in the wall does.
Take Pictures Before Drywalling No Matter What (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Plan for the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Check your local building codes/laws!!!!!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
> would have been well within his rights to do what was described.
True, but then again, with the exception of a few markets, I'd say passing inspection is a hell of a lot easier than it should be. I've seen stuff in my own house pass inspection that wasn't acceptable to ME, let alone an inspector. Yet it passed without mention.
Don't do it (Score:3, Insightful)
My advice? Don't do it.
For the cost of installation (in 2004 dollars), I could have upgraded my wireless infrastructure about a half-dozen times. Not to mention all the time wasted on the terminations, debugging dead lines, protection gear (all that wire is one big antenna), and interface equipment.
With Ultra-Wide-Band offering gigabit speeds in a few years, it won't matter anymore. The components (video, speakers, stereo, etc.) can all be wireless. There's more than enough bandwidth with today's technology, and it's cheap.
Get your price quotes for conduit and Cat5E/6 and all the rest, then compare it to what it will cost for a really good wireless implementation. You'll find that you can save quite a bit -- and use it to upgrade when the technology improves.
This wasn't an option when I did my network, burglar alarm, media cabling and termination. Rather than go through the cost of upgrading that outdated cable, I moved most everything to wireless. I'll never go back.
something else to consider installing (Score:2, Insightful)
this article is a day or two old at this point so no one is probably going to read it, but trust me, it is worth it.
Re:Some thoughts... (Score:2, Insightful)
Um...not a good idea. PVC is nice a cheap, but you run into problems installing anywhere near someone's living space. If there's a fire PVC tends to have some problems with dangerous fumes...