Wired always works (barring physical failure) -- wireless can be a crap shoot with iffy results sometimes. Wired gives you 1 gig connectivity. Wireless 54 meg, guess they're pushing 100 meg now, with actual throughput being? Not knocking your opinion of wireless, it has its place, but with new construction wire every room in the house.
In my house I have 1 wall plate with 2 cat5e runs for network, 2 cat5e runs for phone or other, and 2 coax cables. On the other wall plate I have 2 cat5e for network, 2 cat5e for phone or other. I didn't run speaker wiring and have regretted it. I also didn't wire the dining room and bathrooms, and regretted it. I don't personally want a phone in the bathroom, but someday you may sell the house and some folks like that. Dining room doubles as gaming room, and sometimes we want a computer connected there. Cat5e can also be used for video distribution, home automation, intercom, and other things. Highly recommended.
2 coax cables are for video distributions and 2 is so each location can be input as well as output.
Also, highly recommend wherever possible (where there's a hanging ceiling, or attic space above or crawl space / hanging ceiling below) put in a conduit to every place you've got a wall plate. Might even consider putting in a blank wall plate with conduit stubbed up. Makes it much easier to add/retrofit things later in the house and costs very little.
Also - if you have a multi-story house, consider a single bigger conduit from the attic to the basement, to be able to easily run cable from upper to lower floors later.
Also, if you can, designate a closet (presumably in the basement if you're building one) as the data closet with adequate power and an HVAC vent or other means of cooling. Home run each cable to the data closet (each cable runs directly from the end point to the closet). Don't daisy chain the phone cabling for instance from one jack to another, and certainly not the network cabling!
My over-riding principle when I built my house was not "what am I going to do with it at the start" but "what might I want to do with it in the future?" Wire for flexibility and you won't be sorry later.
I concur about the Christmas lights and outside outlets. Put outlets in many locations on the outside of the house. Left and right side of any doors so you don't have to run power cables across the doorway. Outlets at strategic locations on the second and any higher stories so you can power lights and such without running cables all over the place.
Strongly urge you consider pre-wiring the house for a home security system. Don't fall for packages that include 1 or 2 doors and a window -- those are inadequate if you're really worried about security. Any window that can be gotten to can be a point of entry in the house. Pre-wire the house for an alarm system that covers all accessible windows and doors. Don't forget windows that are accessible on the second floor by climbing on overhangs and such. Also fire and smoke detectors. All that stuff can be pre-wired by a good security company for a fairly low cost without further obligation. Better to pre-wire cheaply than pay through the nose or have limited options later.
Also, pin down exactly where furnaces, water heaters, and such are going to go. We didn't and had to pay to move them later when we finished our basement, as they were placed for the convenience of the installation, not for our ability to maximize use of the basement as a play area.
If you're going with an unfinished basement, be sure to consider future plans that require water/drainage. For instance, will you put in a bathroom later? Mud-sink maybe for cleaning up gardening debris? Going to put in a wet bar? Get plumbing laid out appropriately for future use.
Gosh, so many things to think about
(We built our house 10 years ago).
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Topic: New Home Construction what extra goodies to add while constructing (Read 4860 times)
