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Wiring A New House?
jbp123 asks: "I'm building a new house. Once the electrician has run the phone lines I want to run cat5e ethernet cable. I figure two drops to each of the 6 rooms with phone lines. I've never done this but my plan is to run the ethenet cable through the same path that the phone lines follow. I'll use up the rest of the 1000 foot spool by running a third cable to a few of the rooms. Ethernet cable is cheap. I found solid cat5e 1000 foot spools for $60 delivered so the decision to run cat5e cable is a no brainer. The question is should I run fiber? I really don't know how much the cable costs since I don't know what cable to use. It is much easier to run cable before the drywall goes in so I want to make an informed decision now. Ten years from now will I need/want fiber?"
Dropping wire down the inside of a wall isn't a hard task (even with drywall up); all that needs to be done is to first find a spot (inbetween studs) that you want the wire to come thru, put a hole in the wall (small hole, about the size of an american quarter), get above the wall (this is hard with a ceiling, but i have seen it done from crawl-spaces) to the desired location along with a nut and some string (fishing line works great).
Tie the nut to the line, and lower it down to aprox. the location of the hole. Tie the other end of the line to your wire/fiber etc... and get yo' ass back to your hole. Now fish (thru the hole) your line/nut and pull it out of the hole. Eventually your wire will come following along. So hypothetically, if you didn't lay fiber now and wanted to put it down later (or whatever other new fangled cable types we discover in the next 10-20 years) all you would need is to have some way of getting above the walls.
As far as co-running your lines with the phone lines, you might want to inform anyone else working on your house as to what you've put in, you wouldn't want to later discover that some phone-co employee has removed your extra wires thinking that they were mistakenly laid phone line. (get the idea?)
I'd say run fiber now, it's fairly cheap and even if you never hook it up to a computer you could always have cool looking dots of light scattered about your house to really confuse others in the dark.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
...do you really want to have to standardize on fiber adapters for all your devices?
Besides, GigE over copper is here now. I've just purchased an old house that needs a lot of electrical work -- while the walls are open, I plan on running Cat 6 STP cabling to my drops.
GigE might be the last gasp for copper. Then again, some were saying that about Fast Ethernet when that debuted.
Trying to build in anticipation of what the standard will be in 2012 is an expensive crapshoot. Go with what works now (i.e. Cat 5e/6) and count on the size of the installed base to ensure continued support for it.
Rather then running seperate conduite for cableing, use the cold air returns. talk to the HVAC (heating/vent/Air cond) and makesure that you have a main return running straight from the basement to the atic, and floor and celling returns in each room (good practice for ventilation anyway.) And you should have no problem running plenum rated cable (fibre, cat5e whatever) through them.
as an asside, if you plan on having 1 room in the house with most of your equipment, add extra registers to get more Cooling in summer and dont forget about fans in the ducts to improve air circulation)
Oh, I just thought of something.
It will be a little more expensive, but you might want to think about stringing "STP" CAT5, instead of UTP... that's Shielded Twisted Pair instead of Unshielded.
STP is what is plenum graded, so that it doesn't catch fire as easily. Also, it's better shielded against interference from other electrical sources that might be in the wall.
It's not a requirement or anything... but it might be worth considering simply for safety reasons.
Everyone is telling you to put conduit in ... this reminds me:
The Cambridge University Computing Service, several years back, wanted to run a network round the city to connect to various University departments, colleges etc. To pay fo this they had to persuade all these bodies to cough up a significant amount of money as their share of the capital costs.
Trouble was that people thought they were being asked to pay for high-tech stuff which would go out of date in a few years, so the marketing job was to persuade them that they were actually being asked to pay for an extremely low tech hole in the ground, through which any appropriate type of cable could easily and cheaply be drawn in years to come.
This worked. The hole got built.
I did this to my house last year.
If you go the Cat5e route, be absolutely certain to pay the extra few bucks to get Plenum rated cable instead of PVC. Plenum rated cable won't put off toxic fumes if it catches fire. Also, your local fire marshall will love you.
I recommend running wire, the night that only one side of the drywall is placed, this way you have something to anchor it to and get a reference of where your plugs are and need to be.
Phone cables now are typically Cat5 or Cat5e. Don't use them unless you must, crosstalk can be bad.
Lastly run 2 cables everywhere a computer can fit. Do you want an automated house in the future? Plan now! Maybe you don't but when you sell the house do you want that as a selling point? HTH
Perhaps going a bit off topic, but, one other thing to think about, before you sheetrock, is deployment of sensors for eventual energy management (smart-house) systems, and fire/burglar alarms and intrusion-avoidance systems. Typically, these systems require shielded 1 or 2 pair leads to analog boards which then convert to digital and feed the controller. Having these planned and at least the wire in place can save unsightly wires on the wall later.
I think fiber at this point would be a poor idea because by the time you need it the standard will have changed. I know thats a problem in our current communications industry (the many miles of forever dark fiber).
I do recommend running sound cables and cable tv cables all over, also maybe other sort of video cables.
Also instead of duplicating runs, look into the possibility of switching wall plates. I saw them on some review site not long ago and they look like a great way to fake 4 connections into 1 wire run, though you are limited to always having those puppies on the same segment I guess.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
http://www.homedirector.com/
Use ALL CAT5 (no "standard" POTS lines) for phone and data, and RG-6 quadshield for satellite/cable TV connections. Have it all terminate at the Home Director box... Congradulations, you can now rewire any jack in the house to do whatever you want from one single location.
This is how most of the new homes built in central FL are now wired.
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Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
look, ive doen this to two differnet houses. Its going to cost you a LOT less to do wireless. Just take the plunge...that wired shit is going to be antiquated as hell in a few years.
________________________________________________
Consider using a modular connector system like this one. I saved a lot of time and hassle using them and the result looks great. You can also intermix CATV, voice, data etc. however you like.
Use a star from a cable closet (could be a cabinet in your garage or next to the water heater, doesn't matter). Consider running everything to a patch panel. If you don't want to spring for the connectors etc. of a patch panel, at least create a 'virtual patch panel' where every circuit is tagged and accessible. Leave good documentation in the cabinet 'cause you'll forget what goes where.
Follow the Cat5 specs: minimal bends, minimal tension when pulling cable, loose cable ties, no regular tie intervals, cross AC power perpendicularly and rarely. Pick the cabling spec you'll use and stick to it. Avoid doing what I had to do: running voice on the unused two pairs of my 100Mbs data circuits (even though I've had zero problems).
Be sure you have power near your drops and plenty of power and some shelf space in your closet. You'll be terminating your outside internet connectivity here as well (DSL, cable modem, etc.) so be sure to plan space accordingly for routers, console connections, hubs, UPS, etc.
See the remarks elsewhere here about using plenum cable if you're not installing conduit. But conduit would let you use fiber or other more advanced media in the future.
Invest in some cheap test equipment so you can verify continuity, correct pinouts, etc. in all your cables.
HTH -- Spiny
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Since this is new construction, go the extra mile and feed each data outlet with some sort of conduit (PVC, EMT, or flexible). That way, when you want to upgrade or expand, it's a no-brainer and you don't have to rip things apart. EMT conduit has the added bonus of providing RF shielding to your copper cabling, provided it's properly grounded (which it should be). This also gives you the advantage of only needing to put in the plumbing before you put up the sheetrock, and then running the actual wire later.
Also, Leviton makes a very nice modular structured media system that allows you to do neat things like audio and video distribution in addition to phone and data - they have modular patch panels that make it very easy to do.
Lastly, whatever you do, TAKE PICTURES of everything you do before you put the sheetrock up - you'll want them for reference when you make changes later.
Don't you read slashdot everyday? Shame on you if you don't!
Just a few weeks ago there was this article about 3com faceplates. You can consolidate all your phone and data into 1 jack while running just 1 cable run to your rooms. Now if you got money to burn, you might consider one of these babies from Cisco. This is their media convergence server which will combine voice/data/video into something that can run over cat5. A MCS will cut out your need to run separate phone and video lines. Hey want to hire me to set this stuff up? I'm totally jobless right now and could really use the money :)
Good luck on your house!
The company where I was employed one year ago had shared plugs for ethernet and phone. They set up every plug in the wall according to their needs. This could be very good, since it gave all the things a good modularity, but they had lots of problems (mainly about performance on the ethernet side). I can't tell you whether this problem was related to the shared plugs or to the ethernet structure. I know nothing about how this could have been done (except that they didn't use Voice over IP). Just be warned about possible problems of this solution...
I'm fat, you're ugly. I can get slimmer, and you?
The only thing that makes it cheap to install now is the ease of installation, and can be easily offset by that expensive fiber becoming useless by advancing technology; maybe the latest stereo equipment in 10 years needs a certain quality fiber and your stuff just doesn't match...doh!
;-)
Put in string/wire for pulling new runs into each room. Having the string to pull new cables will make installing the latest+greatest in 10 years a snap if you need it. Also think through how "hard" the house really will be to wire once it is built. Consider that very few rooms will actually NEED ethernet, and houses with a complete basement or underground space access and/or attic space access are pieces of cake to wire(I wired the downstairs of one house with a full basement with open ceiling(ie floor joists visible etc) in about 30 minutes; the longest part was triple-checking where to drill holes through the wood flooring and terminating the cables.) Attics make wiring upstairs just as easy. Drop a wire down into the wall, poke hole in wall, pull wire into room, cut hole for electrical box, install box, terminate, and put faceplate in. Done.
The trick/problem is when you need to go from the attic to the basement etc, or you need to get up to a room in the 1st floor and the area underneath it has a fully finished ceiling(like a plaster ceiling) and you can't just drill from below. Raised tile ceilings for basements are a great idea for exactly this reason, very easy access, and lower sound, too; some panels are very sound-absorbing, both reflective and transmitted(ie, sound in the room vs sound from upstairs etc) compared to a plastered ceiling. You can also sneak cabling up to there with a wire tube(some nice ones come with self-adhesive tape on the back, peel+stick after marking w/level etc) and just toss it across the tiles. Anyone who has worked at a startup company with a raised or open ceiling is very well aware of these advantages
Run the Cat5e now because it's not going to get much cheaper, it already -is- cheap, and its easy to install now(plus, its extremely common and unlikely to go flying out the door any time soon.)
Don't waste time having the contractor terminate the cables(it represents most of the labor) unless he/she can certify the runs(this means plugging in a VERY expensive piece of test gear, which runs dozens of different signal strength/crosstalk tests etc; the guy then gives you a sheet for EACH run that says its up to spec; Lucent, for example, requires this for use with their gear, as they do Lucent cable, which is some of the best I've used) otherwise, you're no better than they are and you'll save serious dough(server rooms where lots of runs are needed are a different matter; the pros can lay down cable, bunch it up and terminate it into patch boards into something that looks like fine art and works terrifically, plus they can certify each run, and you can have someone to scream at if the run doesn't work and the boss can't check his email; ALWAYS have a server room wired by the pros unless its less than a dozen runs and you don't need things to be critical.)
Consider a patch panel in your wiring closet, and make accomodations for proper power(one dedicated 15 or 20a circuit should be fine), lighting(I suggest a long flour. light, NEVER a bare bulb, you'll be able to see much better) and cooling(vents top and bottom in the door.) Put a weatherstrip on the bottom of the door, this will keep out dust bunnies.)
The patch panels are not -that- expensive, $100-200 for more wiring than you'll ever need. Same goes for 19 inch wallmount racks, they're very cheap and usually offer a swing-down design that affords VERY easy access to the backs of equipment. Spaced out, everything will keep cool, be easy to clean, and isn't going anywhere.
Oh...also consider plenum instead of PVC. PVC puts out some -really- nasty stuff when it burns, and it's very thin, so it does burn very quickly(unlike thick PVC plumbing which is also full of water usually.) Plenum doesn't put out nasties when it burns(which is why its allowed in more places in commercial buildings than PVC is.)
HTH!
Brett
All
Instead of trying to figure out what to run and what not to run to particular rooms, it is better to run conduit to your specific rooms. This will give you the flexibility to pull CAT-5, Fiber, phone cable, etc. into a particular room without going behind the drywall.
Therefore, to give yourself the greatest flexibility, I would run conduit down each of the walls in your house. In addition, conduit will protect any cables that you run in the future. One of the problems I have seen with running "naked" cables - of any kind - is that nails or screws used to secure the drywall often end up breaking them. A conduit will protect your cables and "clothe" them.
In addition, if I was building out a new house, I would put in a few additional items that will make your life easier over the long-term. First, I would build a "wire closet" to which I would run all of my conduits. Second, I would create places in the roof to receive wireless points of presence, so that you can get full coverage over your whole house. Make sure that these wireless access points are appropriately wired for power and have a conduit with CAT-5 running to them. Depending on the size of your house you will need two to four. Position them by looking for a coverage zone of 75 feet (yes, I know that they claim they can hit 150 feet, but this will give you strong coverage). And third, I would look at running a home automation network that would allow you to control lighting, heating, etc. throughout your house.
Finally, if you haven't put up the roof yet, look at going with solar shingles with a grid tie power system. This will cost more than a standard roof, but with the buy-down that you can get in many states and the zero electric bill you will see, it will the same as a standard roof in the short-term and will cost less within 5 to 10 years.
What I would suggest if you
Again provided the corners are smooth.The manufacturer suggests a min bend radius.That should ultimately be your guide. . ,it's easy to add .Specially if you add a pulling string when you install the conduit
But again fiber is best left alone for now.
Technology changes all the time.Yes there is fiber but what kind ?this is why conduits are ok in my book.Place conduiting for future upgrades
wait till you know what you need.The conduits being there
but then you can. elect to install cat5 under conduit in the first place and have a junction boxes where all the piping joins.Conduit in a house makes sense.. specially in our multimedia days.Solves many problems.
I can't stress the importance of FFFish's comments enough. Make certain to take pictures (digital cameras are great) of *every* cable run in *every* wall before the rock goes up. It's so much easier to be able to have an "x-ray" view of your house when doing additions in the future. Additionally, it's a nice resale point for prospective future buyers ("and, should you ever want to upgrade, here is a look behind the walls").
As for the original question, skip the fiber -- go 2 RG6 and 2 CAT5 to each room, and run flexible conduit for future expansion (don't forget to run a length between the attic and the first floor/basement -- it'll save you)
-D
use the national electrical code standard of 'between plug' distances.
more than this is going to fill your house with
more EM radiation than necessary, make weird
EM interference when you try to add ethernet cable
(parlell with power wiring = weird problems) because
you dont have enough distance. well in theory anyways.
I used 1/2" flexible NMT, aka smurf tubing, so-called because of its baby-blue color. It's big enough to hold three cat-5 wires. I would have preferred 1", or 3/4", but the 1/2" was all that the electrician's supply store had in stock. I realized that I wanted conduit shortly before the drywall was to go up; after I had installed all the cat5 I thought I would need.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Wire/coax are cheap if you value your time at all. Don't bother with phone wire, use cat5e for phone lines you get more options this way. Run 2 coax and 3 cat5e to way more places than you ever think you'll want to, but you don't have to actually hook them up right away or ever. Use Panduit Mini-com jacks that can be removed from the cover without unwiring them and just terminate what seems reasonable at the present time. Put blank covers on those places that you're sure you'll never need anything and roll the wires up in the box... you will need to connect something to at least one of those ridiculous wires sometime. I put a cat5 jack out on my front porch last summer so I could sit on the porch swing with my laptop. Will run one out by the pool next summer.
I like to buy different color cat5s and hook up the blues to ethernet, the reds to phone but leave the yellows dark. Everything should be a star (including security/smoke alarms) and should terminate in a nice large closet that has a big piece of plywood on the wall.
Use cat5 e for security wiring too. Even though a lot of security systems require their circuit to be wired in series this can still be accomplished at the head and you may want change our your security system at some point. You waste a lot of wire this way but you've got more options. Run 3 cat5e and 2 coax to the detached garage, but if it's very far away run a 4 "conductor" fiber out there too and don't forget to run a string or two in that conduit. Even if it's not so far, the fiber won't pass the electrical potential difference that can occur when lighting strikes close to your garage and you'll save your hubs/switches.
I've done a lot of this and even by being anal as hell there's always some place I miss. It's not at all unreasonable to put a mile of cat5 in a small house. Also buy as many boxes of wire as your biggest run (most conductors). That way you can run all the wires simultaneously and they'll look better when you're done. Don't pull on the cat5 very hard at all.... if it's stuck get off the ladder or off the floor and gently massage it into place.
If you stub a conduit up into the attic make damn sure you insulate and seal the top of it. In a factory I wired, the electricians had graciously ran conduit from the attic down all the walls to metal boxes. They left the conduit sticking up through the insulation in the attic so I could stuff/fish my wires down them. They didn't cut them to length up in the attic some were just through the top plate and others were 18" above the insulation. The metal conduit acted like a chimney in the winter, warm air rose up the conduit, hit the cold attic, water condensed, ran back down the conduit and shorted/corroded about 150 jacks (Panuit mini-coms BTW). Ports on the on the phone system began to blow and I couldn't figure out what the hell was happening. Fortunately one of the metal boxes got crushed by a fork truck and I discovered the corroded jack. Upon replacing most of the jacks in the building water actually ran out of some of the boxes when I pulled the covers off.
In a home where romex electrical wiring is allowed, non-plenum wire should be just fine. Romex is the 12-2 14-3 etc wire that is inside a flatish molded plastic covering. if your building codes won't allow romex and you're house has conduit you better buy the plenum.
A big UPS in the head is always nice... maybe you should have your electrician run a few "home" runs of 110V to some color coded electrical jacks to get that UPS power up to some of the more deleicate and expensive electronics equipment in your house. Have your electrician put 110V recepticals and light sockets on many of the junction boxes in the attic and crawl/basement... when you have to add a phone line that you forgot you'll be grateful for the handy power and light and it's so inexpensive to do before-hand.
Run a couple of power home runs to the entertainment center area.... you won't need the amperage but you'll get cleaner power for the tivo.
That is all.
No Really that's it.
Other than bragging rights, fiber in the home is pointless. Your CAT5 can be used with gigbit ethernet NICs and switches to give you performance that is just as good. Your other alternative is to go with 802.11a (high speed wireless). It's faster than the 11 Megs per second (Approx 54 Mbps) that 802.11b gives you and performs better over longer distances. The money you'd spend on fiber should give you more bang for your buck if you use both of the above mentioned approaches in combination. I wired everything up for CAT5 in my house (14 nodes) and I'm a happy camper.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I strongly suggest you do not install fiber. For many reasons. First, fiber is expensive. Second, terminating fiber is expensive. Third, the toold are expensive. Fourth, the NICs and hubs/switches are expensive. Fifth, you can't just "run" fiber. It takes special conduit, or armored fiber. Feel free to contact me with more information.
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You should check with your local city building code before doing this. While most places won't have a problem with it, in the village where I live (Chicago area, ~30,000population) any in-wall piping is required to be metal conduit. This is done for fire safety reasons regardless if it is electrical wiring inside or not. Just something to consider.
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