Wiring Your Home?

Ever wonder about what you might need to wire your own house or apartment with its own LAN or home automation system? This might just be the topic for you. Royster and theguru are both looking for information as to the best ways to go about this. I'm sure there are quite a few of you Slashdotters out there who have already gone through such things and could help out these two with any issues they might have. Read on for their actual submissions.

Royster asks: "I've just got my mortgage commitment and I'll be closing on a house this month. It's time to start thinking about wiring up a home network that's a little more extensive than the 10-base T patch cables strung across the living room of my apartment. I want 10/100 base-T and a phone jack in every room (perhaps not the bathroom). I guess I need to get some Cat-5 wire and learn how to attach and test connectors. Can I run 10/100 base T and a phone line through a single set of wires? Do I need to run conduit or can I snake the stuff through the walls? Any suggestions for sources and resources?"

theguru, looking to be a bit more ambitious, asks: "In the next year I plan on starting construction on a new home. What do my fellow Slashdotters think I need to consider when it comes to the wiring of the house? I'm talking about everything... electrical, phone, cable, home entertainment, alarm, home network, the works. I want the controllability I have now with X10, but without the ugly warts. I want to enjoy DVDs, DirectTV, cable, music, etc., from almost anywhere in the house. I want high-speed networking to almost every room. Most of all however, I want flexibility and growth. I currently have a cable modem, but I want to be able to keep up with technology for the next five years at least without any major wiring changes. Also, help me think of anything important I'm forgetting. "

Comments

Conduit, moisture, heat

[Louis_Wu]

Remember moisture. You don't want your cool new 10/100 8 port hub to start having problems in 6 months because there's a little condensation on the inside. If you put your stuff in a basement, think about moisture.

Conduit. Definitely conduit. I was the lead sound tech at my church for 4 years, and when we did an upgrade (we being me and one other guy), we pulled about 2 miles of microphone cable and speaker cable through tiny little holes in walls and closets. For a new house, I would suggest conduit everywhere, and bigger than you think you'll need. After all, conduit is for those unforseen wires in the future. And you will need pull-strings. A pull-string is a piece of string lain in the conduit to let you pull wire through. You tie one end of the pull-string to your new wire, and you pull on the other end to snake the wire through your conduit. Just remember to tie another sting to the back end of the wire, so that you can do it again the next week. :) I recommend 3 pull strings (fight Murphys law), and secure them to each end of the conduit; otherwise, you might drag your other strings out when you pull with one. You should seperate your power from your signal, which might mean two conduits, or leaving the power in the wall without conduit.

And in reply to the AC (Cat-5, Coaxial, etc. Cat-7 or Fibre?) who said Just don't short yourself. You won't be able to go back! - conduit lets you go back, that's its purpose. A big enough conduit, with several pull-strings, and you can run more Cat-5 when you want to turn your home office into a home-ISP.

BTW, if you plan a big setup, you might want to think about heat. A hub or two, two servers, and a patch panel in one closet might get hot enough to need cooling. I haven't run the numbers (though I am a senior in Mechanical Engineering and I know cooling), but if your closet is next to the water heater, in the middle of the summer, and your personally hosted website is mentioned on Slashdot, you might have a heat problem. Just another worry for you. :)

Good luck.