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New House Construction - Cable Management ???
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: saint on October 08, 2010, 11:51:42 pm ---Conduit. Conduit from every location up to the attic or down to the basement if you'll have a drop ceiling in the basement. That way it's easy to add things later. I ran 4000 feet of cable when I built my house, and still regret I didn't run conduit. I did run a long conduit from the basement wiring closet (doesn't everyone have a wiring closet?) to the attic which was a brilliant idea that my builder had. I've used it for a couple of things so far.
--- End quote ---
Saint is wise in his suggestion. We simply don't know what kind of wiring will become popular in the future. The best way to future proof a house is to make sure you can easily run new wiring.
Also a central closet is a good idea exactly as he says.... quite useful indeed.
Other suggestions:
Skip the fiber. We can't really know what will be used in the future, but the use of fiber in a normal residential home is doubtful. There are places that don't even have anything better than dialup, so I don't see T1's in the hosue happening within the next 30 years or so. My guess is by the time home access does reach those speeds, we might have a new cable type anyway.
Skip the phone lines. You can run your home phone via cat5/6 (you might need an adaptor at the faceplate, but still.) So that is what you should do. If any wiring standard is on the way out, phone lines are.
You need 2 cat6's and one coax in EVERY room. I mean every room, even the bathroom. (For that smart toilet, and tv in front of the can. ;) ) Coax is important becasue of tv and because most high speed home internet is cable-based and it is doubtful to change in the future. Cat6 is very flexible and that is why you should install it. You can use it for internet, phone, intercom, home theater, ect... The wiring is thick enough to handle most low voltage use, it's easy to run, it will be useful for years to come and it's cheap. You might even consider 3 cat6's per room.
Make sure you have enough electrical outlets. I would suggest two recepticals in every room at least and have them wire it so that each room can handle a lot of juice. Over the years the average home has used more and more power due to more household applicances and I don't see that trend changing anytime soon.
Blanka:
--- Quote from: BobA on October 08, 2010, 08:24:17 pm ---The wave of the future will be fibre.
--- End quote ---
Nope, it won't
Fibre is too expensive, too sensitive, and it does not deliver power.
The next big thing for the coming 20 years is HDBaseT. It even works on current CAT 6 Power over Ethernet cables.
So I would either install cat 6 power over ethernet cables, or better, use empty tubes that you can wire easily in the future.
And make EVERY socket capable of an ethernet cable (and duo sockets 2)! So count on 50-100 Ethernet cables in your house! This system is going to be used on EVERYTHING. All iphone/camera loaders etc will use HDBaseT to charge and sync at the same time. Make some room in the utility room as the routers for this will take some room (they can deliver 100W to every cable, enough for your PC, TV or monitor!).
saint:
I'm a network guy and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wouldn't run fiber if you're running conduit. I *might* hedge my bets and run fiber if you aren't running conduit, but so far what runs on conduit today has been able to run on copper tomorrow. Sooner or later that will run out but I'm suspicious that will not be an issue for the home.
I ran 4 cat 5e drops and 2 coax drops to one side of each room, and 2 cat 5e drops and 2 coax drops to the other side of each room for maximum flexibility in each room. So far that's paid off in a couple of bedrooms where we've changed the orientation around and were able to change where television and computer locations were.
I ran 2 coax instead of 1 so that I could have video in and video out. We use that to distribute video from our Dish network locations throughout the house. In my study, and in my living room, I have receivers. We can watch what's playing at either of those locations everywhere else in the house via an A/B coax switch in the bedrooms and other watching locations. I run the output from the receivers down to the wiring closet, then redistribute them back out to the primary and secondary coax outlets in each other room.
You can also do that over copper these days, but I built this house 11 years ago when that wasn't so certain/easy.
I would run Cat6 these days, it was magnitudes more expensive back when I built mine with cat5e instead. I have a gigabit network running throughout the house with a central HTPC server with content that can be accessed in every room with cabling. We watch movies in the basement that run over the network from the server 2 stories up, no lag. It's awesome. We have wireless but never use it.
I didn't run cable to my dining room, kitchen (other than 1 for phone), or bathrooms. I regret that. Wish I had. A computer/tv in the kitchen. Computer in the dining room, which doubles as a gathering location sometimes. Resale value of having data/voice in the bathrooms someday.
Highly recommend a drop ceiling in the basement if you have one instead of a drywall ceiling. Makes future upgrades much much much easier, and you can get fairly attractive ceiling tiles.
Used mine 10 years after I built the house to extend my Wii and other video game cabling. My receiver and other gear is to the left of the room. The projector screen we added is in the front. I put audio/video hookups, including USB in the front underneath the screen, that extend through the wall/ceiling to the receiver. Kids/guests can hook up video game systems straight to the projector screen area, and not have to run them straight to the receiver which would have cables across the walkway. Also I put a Wii receiver bar above the projector screen, and ran cabling from it across the ceiling (used 2 extension cables) to the receiver area where the Wii is. Works much more reliably than the wireless model. Upgraded the speaker system through the ceiling very easily in the basement, and also in the living room above since I had easy access.
Etc. Very happy with my choices. Flexibility is good, you don't know now what you'll want in several years.
--- saint
Flake:
For this of you using HTPC's - where is your computer located in relation to the TV you primarily view the content? I guess my question is I originally wanted to put centralized server/HTPC in the basement. But how would you control that from say the living room? Remote reaches down there? For that matter how does one access content in the bedrooms?
Ed_McCarron:
Despite the naysayers, I use fiber extensively in business applications -- the lightning strike that fries one computer may not fry others -- unless you use that new conductive glass.
Of course, if it gets into the power, all bets are off -- but I like glass as a layer of insulation against electrical damage. The comm ports of a device are typically more sensitive to electrical spikes than the power side.
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