Wiring a House While It's Still Being Built?

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?"

Comments

Some thoughts...

[eric2hill]

1) Put one or two strands of CAT 5 and 1 COAX cable to each room for phones, TV, etc.
2) Run CONDUIT everywhere. I can't stress this enough. DO NOT PUT ANY CABLES IN PLACE WITHOUT CONDUIT!!!
3) Make sure and put conduit (empty is fine) in ceiling locations as well. You never know when you might want to install a multi-room audio system.
4) Use 3" conduit in your entertainment room. You will want high-quality audio cables for a surround sound system, and they can quickly fill up a 1" or 2" conduit.
5) Think about running your empty conduit to locations near power, so you don't have to run a bunch of extension cords.
6) Fiber is an option down the road ('cause the equipment is so damn expensive), so don't do any tight conduit turns. This is pretty easy in a 4" stud wall.
7) Run string in the conduits and tie it off on both ends. Running new cable is *really* easy pulling a new cable and string with an existing string. Repeat after me - "string is cheap".
8) Run all your conduit to a central location (probably in the basement). You'll want a nice (rack even?) open area that you can mount equipment as well as patch panels, etc. Wire ties are your friend.

Hope this helps!

Re:Some thoughts...

[lambent]

hear hear ... well said. As for string ... string dessicates. It will become brittle over time. Just use plain old insulated wire, instead.

Also, keep in mind the fact that insects and rodents can't seem to resist those tasty tasty wire casings. There may come a time when some segments fail inexplicably.

Re:Some thoughts...

[jungd]

I just finished wiring up my new house before the drywall went up. So I though I'd add some tips.

Firtly, I went crazy with Cat5 and thought - I'll never use all this, but just-in-case. Well - I after living in the house a few months - I don't have enough of what I want where.

The suggestion about the cunduit is spot on - that's what I did also

9) don't forget good 'ol coax. I've always had cable and switched to sattellite for the first time after moving. The first thing the installer needed was 3 coax cables running from outside into my distribution box. How many do you think I had? 2. So I still had to make another hole in the wall. Put plenty of coax in anywhere there isn't conduit.

10) don't forget cables (or conduit) provision for IR. I had all my TiVo, cable boxes etc. in a central distribution closet. I had planned to have IR recievers wired to a single IR xmitter in that closet. What is the first thing my wife wanted after moving in? To watch a DVD in bed. Well, the DVD player was one thing that isn't in the closet (on account of needing access to put DVDs in). I had assumed just watching DVD in the living room would be fine. Nope, so now I needed a way to get composite video from the living room to the closet and out to the bedroom & to get IR from bedroom to living room). Luckily I had enough stuff in place - but only just. Make sure you run conduit to several places in rooms you use heavily. For example, to at least three walls in the living room.

11) Also, I ran conduit over the fireplace so that I can connect surrount speakers without cables going around (in the future).

12) If you're using X10 for automation, don't believe their claim of 1 signal booster per 1000sq/ft. I've had to buy 4 extra (at $99 each!).

13) Don't forget you probably want video/phone/net at convenient places along the kitchen counter tops (for web recipes, TV while making dinner (so you don't miss anything) etc.)

Check your local building codes/laws!!!!!!!!!

[rudog]

In -A LOT- of locales it is illegal for the soon-to-be-homeowner to do anything to the structure of the building during the construction phase. Cat5/Coax/Fiber communications cabling of any sort requires a low-voltage contractors license.

TRUST ME, it is worth your time.

There was a famous (ok semi-famous) case here in Phoenix where a guy went through all the work of getting Cat5+Coax run with conduit through several rooms of his custom home over the weekend. He came back the next weekend to finish the job only to find that the drywall was up in most of the rooms and everything he installed had been removed and junked by the General Contractor.

Being just a little upset, he decided to try and sue the General Contractor to have them pay for his time and materials and to have the General Contractor hire a sub-contractor to put in everything after the house was done.

The General Contractor filed a counter-suit for the cost of time and materials to remove all of the cabling the home-owner had installed, AND for the time and materials to replace all of the studs and beams he had drilled through to install all of the conduit.

Not surprisingly the General Contractor won. Why?

Because the home-owner wasn't. The house isn't actually yours until the final papers are signed on your final walk-through of the finished home.

The funny part is that the Judge fined the soon-to-be-home-owner several thousand daollars for trespassing on private property and performing electrical work without a license etc. ON TOP OF awarding the General Contractor the damages they requested.

Bottom line? He ended up paying about $24-thousand more for his house. And the General Contractor -refused- to allow a sub-contractor to install new cabling.

Power

[cft_128]

As a side note, be sure to have enough power (circuits and outlets) in every room, even rooms where you have no plans for power hungry devices. Spare bedrooms can turn into a server room before you know it.

From someone who did it for a living

[UserChrisCanter4]

I once worked for a company who worked exclusively with low-voltage systems like you are describing; essentially, we ignored electrical systems and focused on networking, home theater, automation, etc. My advice would be the following:

Ignore fiber for now. Consider that CAT-6 has a reliable throughput at 1000Mbps. Cat-5e will allegedly also do 1Gbps, but CAT-6 is now almost as cheap, so I would definitely run with CAT-6. Now consider that unless you're running some sort of ludicrous colo system from your house, the most stressful load you'll put on that infrastructure is probably streaming HDTV. Over-the-air HD is ~27mbps, D-Theater (the stuff recorded on D-VHS tapes) is about 37mbps, so even at that we're talking about well over 20 simultaneous streams moving out of a central file server, assuming you have something that can sustain 1Gbps reliably. Run plenum-coated cabling, even if it isn't required in your area; again, it isn't too terribly much more expensive, but the safety issues aren't worth saving $200 on your project.

The second problem with fiber is that you won't really know what type to run or how to terminate it. Unless we're talking about doing 1000 base-FX connections for existing equipment, do you run glass or plastic fiber? Multi-mode? Perhaps 1394b? What sort of connection should you terminate it with? Without any sort of consumer equipment to even build towards, your guess about any of those questions is as good as mine or anyone else on /. For these reasons, any suggestion that pushes you towards running conduit with pull string is one that needs to be modded up.

One other recommendation about the CAT-6 or CAT-5e : Run way more than you think you'll need. In addition to serving as POTS pairs, lots of cool, esoteric devices out there can use CAT-5 for things you might want further down the road. I've seen KVM over Cat-5 systems, video distribution over CAT-5 (essentially, feeding a single video output from, say, a DVD carousel to a crapload of non HTPC-equipped TVs), and audio distribution systems (same idea as the video, but for whole-house audio). Using CAT-5 for some of that isn't the best solution by any stretch, but if you decide 5 years down the road that you really, really want whole-house audio and decide not to go conduit-pulling, it may make your life easy. Additionally, if you decide to do a PBX-style system (they have a lot of nice benefits, and there are some cool OSS implementations), most PBXes will need to use star topology systems like an ethernet setup, rather than daisy-chained systems like most POTS will be run.

Pull some RS-232 to video source locations (ie. where you might put all your home theatre equipment), lightswitch boxes, and computer locations. X10 is some bootleg home automation equipment, but some of the serial controlled stuff isn't actually all that expensive, and setting up a home automation system is a really fun geek project.

I would also recommend that you not neglect good quality Coax layout and runs in your eagerness for CAT-5 and Fiber fun. Satellite and OTA HDTV will both be easier to setup and rearrange if coax is home-run to the same point as everything else. Use RG-6, preferably Tri- or Quad-shielded cabling. Consider devoting a large-ish closet or basement area (if your region has basements). If the HVAC guys haven't come through yet, try to get them to put an AC and return air to a closet if that's where you want to put some stuff; that nice linux firewall box, mythTV server, networking equipment, and Home theater gear (if you decide to hide it) will thank you later.

Someone else mentioned the issue of doing it yourself, and that's definitely one to be aware of. If you are buying your house from a large production builder (Pulte, David Weekley, etc.) they will not let you do any of this. You don't own that house until you close on it, and they can't risk your stuff not being up to code, or you suing further down the road. They WILL tear your work out. If you're usi