Trying to figure out how to save some money on low voltage wiring on some starter homes.
In our office I notice that some of the phones (which have RJ11 male ends on the cords) are plugged into RJ45 female wall jacks. There is a wiring closet where everything is patched together.
The idea for the houses is that we need to supply phone/data(RJ45)/CATV to various locations in the home. Part of the reason for the data requirement (as opposed to just wireless) is that there is fiber being run to the houses and the idea is to allow them to have the ability to utilize the bandwidth available. If this is wrong or un-necessary, please let me know. So an RJ45 wall jack could be used either for phone or data.
BTW – the reality of it is that since these are starter homes, most are bought my young people, most all of whom use wireless networks and cell phones, so whatever we install may never be used. The idea is just to have the functionality there.
The wire in the wall will be Cat5e home runed from the individual face plates in the various rooms to the SWB (structured wiring box) in the coat closet (or whatever). The use for the cable (phone or data) would be determined by how it is hooked up at the SWB.
So my Qs are:
1) is there a little adapter plug that goes from RJ45 female to RJ11 male? Or maybe there is some kind of small and cheap patch panel to accomplish this? This all needs to be “plug in play”.
2) Would both the phone or the data cables in the wall all be wired straight through?
Replies
I am not sure exactly what you are looking to accomplish.
But the common 4 pair CAT5e cable (there are other sizes available) can have 2 phone lines and one 10/100 mHz tBase10 data line. That is not the normal setup, but most people that have done it says that it works fine. And a the outlet install a 2 module face plate with one RJ-11 and one RJ-45 with only the "1st" 2pair connected.
At the central location you can get inexpensive phone blocks for 6 or 8 outlets. I used one that will acept upto to 4 pair income and 6 outlets. Or you could jumper 2 of the income lines to support 12 outlets with 2 lines. But they unit is not marked up for that.
I also has the special RJ connector for an alarm connection and a RJ-45 for jumper to a slave unit. It is strickly a pushdown block (110) and not a patch panel. It was about $25 IIRC.
So split the cable and send to lines to the phone block and 2 to a RJ-45 patch panel.
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
Thank you both for your responses. I'm gonna have to think a bit to decide which way to proceed and/or what questions I need to ask.
If you are worried about hitting a price point I would just drop a cat 5 into a low voltage ring and let the customer decide if this will be a network or a phone.
are you saying do no home run the cables?
No I mean do the home run back to the utility entrance point and let the customer decide what the terminal trim will be. You can use keystone covers and there is a big assortment of devices that will fit.
Matt,
If you are going to run wires, the labour is the main cost: pull two different colored cat 5E wires or perhaps a CAT 3 and a CAT 6 wire to each location. Definitely use a home run scheme. But increasingly, the world is going to wireless LANs as the cost to constantly upgrade the wire becomes prohibitive. Since I first wired a home in CAT3 12 years ago, we've had 3, 4, 5, 5E and now 6. I have recently wired my renovation with a phone, CATV and a cat 6 data cable to each bedroom, because I was going to run the phone wire anyway - with 5 teenagers I assumed 5 telephones would be needed.Net, I have since discovered that 5 teenagers use 5 cell phones almost exclusively and the wired phone jacks rarely carry a signal. The CATV jacks often carry a signal, as do the data jacks, but I'm never upgrading again: going wireless.The thing is, the wiring will keep evolving. 10gig E is now up and will come to a home near you soon - and the applications - in particular VOIP and IPTV - will require state of the art connections and cable going forward, so the last thing I would do is compromise a data cable by sharing it with a voice connection. I recognize a starter home, so this may not apply for you, but on the latest reno, we ran conduit to each spot because I knew once I closed the walls I was never going to open them again, and with the conduit I can use the old wire to pull a new wire easily.You can terminate all 3 - or even 4 connections in a single box on a single face plate using stuff readily available at any HD or electrical supply store.FYI, if you want to save cash, CAT 3 or even 2 pair phone wire will more than cover your phone needs.Don't spend a second trying to get a single Rj45 connection to provide connectivity for an RJ11 phone cord - as noted it will create noise and wear, and result in an unusable / unstable connection. Gavin
Gavin Pitchford
"Sail fast - live slow" (build even slower)
OK - so the tables turn and now you are able to help me :-)
Regarding the main cost of running wire being labor, the thing is that the electricians will be running whatever we decide on so the labor problem is still a problem. Even if I were running them my labor still isn't free. For now we are basically building houses just for practice - IE - not making any money on them - just breaking even. I do have a job though :-) but whatever we add we likely will not be able to charge for.
I think I scraped the idea of plugging RJ11 into RJ45 jacks, and the idea of using 2 pair for voice and 2 pair for data sounded good for about 1 minute.
You really hit on it though when you said about the teenagers and cell phones. Installing a bunch of wiring in a house that will likely never be used is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I've actually built homes for people who said "I don't need any phone lines". I always tell them to get 1 or 2 for resale value. Maybe we need to limit the voice lines we are providing so we can provide drops for other things. All these people have wireless routers too, but I think we need to provide at least a few RJ45 jacks for high speed data.
BTW - I wonder how the speed of wireless LANs compares to what speed might be coming in on the fiber from the "WAN".
Also BTW - I wonder if quad shield is really necessary on RG6?
Regarding the conduit to each drop - that is cost prohibitive.
In the last house I built for DW (dear wife) and I I had 2 jacks with voice/data/CATV in nearly every room. None in laundry room or closets and only 1 in kitchen. It was quite a bit of Cat5, and RG6. I think about 15% of that wire was ever used. The 12"x14" structured wiring box I used I found to be too small as I had 10#s of sheet in a 5# box. The AV system wiring I installed was used heavily.
I owe you !
When I was talking about the labor I meant you can pull 3 wires simultaneously - the cost differential is exclusively for the wire - and the terminations only.The most used wire in my house at this point, outside of the CATV wire that is - is the one that connects the IPOD to the amplifier, and the amp to the in ceiling speakers.I would say in my experience RG6 not required anywhere in a house - although I'm sure there will be 10 people who can quote odd situations where needed. I've just never had a problem using old unshielded anything for phone wire.Gavin Pitchford
"Sail fast - live slow" (build even slower)
>> I would say in my experience RG6 not required anywhere in a house <<
Can you esplain that please?
Brain freeze. I assumed you meant the shielded phone wire.
Unless I got my numbers confused and you are talking about the CATV cable - in which case... never mind and ignore my post.Gavin Pitchford
"Sail fast - live slow" (build even slower)
RJ11 plugs are unreliable in RJ14 jacks. They wiggle around too much and will start getting scratchy pretty quick. There is also the possibility of plugging a LAN card into a phone line. The ringing current will probably fry a LAN card.
Although it is also not recommended you can split out an unused pair from your CAT5 and punch it down on an RJ11 jack. You won't be able to run gigabyte ethernet tho, since it uses all 8 as I recall.
The other problem is ringing current may cause an error on 10/100 ethernet but I haven't actually seen it be a problem. If you are not banging the LAN pretty hard you would not see the errors anyway. It would just retry and move on.
I assume you ment RJ45 - not RJ14... Or, I don;t know what an rj14 is....
Self delete.Replied to wrong message.William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
Edited 8/8/2009 11:13 pm by BillHartmann
Hi Matt,
For starter homes I would make a home run using Cat 5e everywhere you think a phone may be used and a second one where you think someone might want to have an ethernet connection......such as....phone in "every room" with a second cable in the spare bedrooms which may be used as a home office.
I would go ahead and terminate the phone jacks in the kitchen and great room and add an electrical outlet at the wiring closet/case/box.
Put blank plates over the rest of the boxes and sell the house as "pre-wired" for phone and network with verbage mentioning that cables have been ran such that your computer service tech can choose which rooms and how to finish for their specific needs.
Pedro the Mule - Cost effective with basic function at move in