I was hoping some of y'all could give me some advice on building my house. I am building a house (that is, my father and I) and I want -- as much as possible -- to anticipate all the things I may want or need during construction. One item in particular, I know very little about and my father doesn't know much more, which is running wire for ethernet and cable and, to a lesser extent, speakers and phones (and maybe maybe for an alarm system). Now, the concept isn't very complicated and, despite my inexperience, I'm sure I'll do an adequate job. I was wondering, though, if anyone had any good advice and/or internet resources on the subject. (I have found already www.homepcnetwork.com/ which I think will be helpful.)
I haven't checked too deeply since I'm still a long way from being in a position to custom-build a house. But I do know one thing..save yourself alot of time and trouble and install conduits to every room and have them easily accessable so you can always run more lines if you need to later.. I am having trouble wiring my house for ethernet to connect my computers to my brand new cable modem(High speed i-net access for me...wooo hooo!!) the way this house was built makes it difficult to damn near impossible to run lines thru the walls.. edit: here's a quick find I think might be helpful...Smart house wiring and a book on the subject..
Two things: (1) Listen to everybody, then double the amount of wire they suggest. It is always better to have the capability ready to go. Lots of room in your conduit helps, but its not a trade off for actually having wire ready to go. (2) Remember to plan your speakers/TVs/computer locations before hand. Makes the "home runs" to the wiring closet much more efficient. This thread on another board covers a number of different opinions: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64246&highlight=wiring
Thanks guys. Edc, I suppose there is a more appropriate forum out there, but -- this being the only one I visit -- I didn't know where it was. Thanks for pointing the way.
Juan, Your mission right now is simply to lay the wiring. Everything else is about connecting the plates, leading the wire to a hub/router room, and hooking the router to a cable modem. Not that difficult of a technical job, at all. Just mapping the house and figuring where your Ethernet will go is all that is difficult, but that is just from a planning perspective. There is a very easy approach to this. Just run the wire out holes in the wall and cover them with plates, until you figure out how to connect it. Just leave them dangling for now with a heavy washer on the end or something. Go to a serious electronics story and ask them for a big spool of Cat 5. I'm not sure what I have, but I think it is 1,000 ft. If they don't have it, ask them where. They come in boxes about the size of storage boxes for documents. Run as many drops as you want computers in any room. Don't think twice, just drop it; this is not all that expense. TV cabling is much more expensive, imo. Consider the need to rearrange furniture as time passes, and take into account that if you have a laptop it is cool to go into any room with it. Drop one for the TV center, just in case PS2 or whatever, needs one latter. NUMBER all these lines. Give them numbers on BOTH ends and right down a map of where they go. You can buy labels for the outside of the wall plates as well. Now, the question is where do you lead these bare lines to. You lead them into an easily accessible (air-conditioned) room like a utility closet or storage closet. This is where you will place your Hub and Router. The cable modem can go in here to so that it is in closest proximity to the router, but you can also place the cable modem in a computer room so you can always see the lights blinking. The electronics stores will (I recommend Electrotex on Richmond near Shephard) will also sell you plates. You can also buy this stuff at Fry's. The wall plates can support various combinations of cable, Cat-5 and phone. I recommend buying just dual Cat-5 and placing them liberally and conveniently so that you can move your furniture over time. The idea is to just go really silly on the wiring, when you have the chance, and label them all. You'll only have one wire per physical computer and per possible laptop position "hot" at a time, but you will have many more wires to make hot as you re-arrange furniture as the years go on. Thus, you buy an 8-port hub, and plug in the 8 hot plates you want to start with. Everything else is an unconnected wire in your hub room with a number label and map showing which wall plate female connection that makes hot. If you have the money for a bigger hub, you can make them all hot at once. If not, you can buy more 8-port hubs as needed, chain the hubs together (very easy, like chaining mutliple VCRs). As for making the physical connection to the back of the wall plate....this is actually pretty easy and requires no special tools. The plates are tools themselves to splice the wire in place. This is no more diffult than making a new jack for a phone, and there are diagrams on the Internet for this.
Necro-bump. I'm selling the house I built back in 2002. Its sad to sell and move, especially since my father was the builder and I actually put in some work framing, sheet rocking, tiling, etc. And wiring the Ethernet. Its funny reading this thread because everything went wireless soon after and I haven't used any of my jacks in years. Oh well. The good news is I'll get a very nice premium on the house. That's a credit to my father for doing such a great job.
