Any one know of any good references or books (did not find anything on Fine Homebuilding) on running CAT5 and Coaxial. I thought I would tackle it as a DIY and wanted to catch the best practice for installation.
Thanks,
Tark
Any one know of any good references or books (did not find anything on Fine Homebuilding) on running CAT5 and Coaxial. I thought I would tackle it as a DIY and wanted to catch the best practice for installation.
Thanks,
Tark
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Replies
Try looking through "smarthome.com"
Well, from the standpoint of the wire itself, don't run parallel with (and within about 6" of) AC lines (including doorbells, thermostat lines, etc), stay away from transformers, motors, and fluorescent ballasts, and avoid kinks and sharp bends. Otherwise regular wiring techniques are fine.
There are several schools of thought for both overall layout and termination, but they basically center around assumptions as to the desired flexibility and longevity (in a computer generation sense) of the wiring.
You may cross AC lines at a 90 deg angle, and limit runs to 300 feet (295 feet is the published spec) to maintain the category 5 rating. There's a free Hubbell reference your supplier probably has
Edited 4/24/2007 9:24 am ET by Jess
What aspects of running it are you looking for- terminations, drilling holes and fishing, where to place the cable coming into the rooms, how many feeds, what special tools will be needed, what location to use for the central point of the system (home run)?
What kind of house and how old is it? That makes a big difference. If it's balloon framed, fishing to a second floor is a lot easier than in a house that was built more recently. If the sub flooring is boards instead of plywood or OSB, it's easier to know where the walls are and drilling up can be more accurate (less chance of drilling through the hardwood floor or carpet).
Lath and plaster, drywall, wainscote, wooden panelling all need different treatment regarding finding studs as well as mounting boxes and plates.
Thanks to everyone that responded. I will check out the resources many of you provided. The house is around 60 years old and the walls have mostly been opened up, so there are a lot of options. This is a whole house remodel and the electricians and plumbers are doing their thing, but I thought I'd handle phone and coaxial lines myself.There were 7 sets of twisted pairs originating from the phone company's box running in all directions through out the house and it was high time that something be done about it.I understand the basics of running wire, etc, yet just was looking for best practices.Thanks again,Tark
The big question is how fancy you want to get. A "minimalist" installation daisy-chains phone lines and relies on several splitters throughout the house to split cable signals. A better scheme is to "home run" everything to one spot, so, eg, one TV cable can be connected to "cable", another to a rooftop antenna.To go further still you run multiple cables, so that every location has the option of either broadcast or cable TV, eg, and so that, for the Cat 5 cables, one can be used for your local net and one for a special connection of some sort. (I've actually used them to feed MIDI signals from a computer in the bedroom to the electric piano in the living room.)And of course there are those who say you should run nothing but fiber, or that everything should be in conduit so you can pull the cables and run fiber in the future. The options (and expense) are endless.But keep in mind that the amount of cable you'll use isn't much and it's relatively cheap as a result. Much more expensive to fish stuff afterwards. And it's usually just as easy to fish two cables as one (if you have two spools of cable). So double up on cables. If you have some you don't want to "terminate" yet, put them in boxes with blank covers or just leave them dangling in the walls (but make some sort of map of where they are).Termination is another area where there are also a lot of opinions. I like the neat look of a patch panel on one end and a wall plate with "keystone" outlets on the other, but other people are happy just running the cables out of the walls and terminating them with plugs.One thing you should do, though, in any case, is have several unused conduits (or flexible "smurf tube") running between the various utility areas in the house. Eg, run (or have the sparkies run) conduits from the utility room in the basement (where your "head end" is) to the attic above the bedrooms. This way, should a new circuit (either low voltage or regular AC) be needed in the future, you don't have to spend a lot of time fishing wires, except for the last few feet down a wall.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
However, a couple of main conduits from say attic to basement would be handly for future changes.And also for those areas that would home theater and office spaces. But it depends on the construction and how accessible those particualer areas are..
.
A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Yeah, I said that, more or less, towards the end of my post. You have to study the layout, figure out what areas (attics, unfinished basements, etc) allow access to other areas, and then plan the conduits accordingly. Running some conduit from the main power panel area to the garage may also be appreciated in the future.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
Thanks Dan. A home run system is probabaly the way I'll go. My next stop is to do some more reading up and planning.
FYI- the NEC now calls for old, abandoned wiring to be removed from the area of the service. Phone lines, coax for cable feeds, etc need to be cut back so they can't be re-connected. Not hard to do in your case and now that we know it's a whole house remodel, that does make a difference. I would wait until the plumbers, electricians and HVAC are done, or at least talk to them to find out what areas they will definitely be using. That way, you don't waste time and materials by placing your boxes and trim rings where you think they won't be, then find out that things need to move for their systems. It also allows you to have a main trunk coming up through a central area of the house, to feed the second floor. One rule of thumb is to limit your right angle bends in the wiring to two. Don't make any of it break over a sharp corner, since all wire has a minimum bend radius and kinking wires makes a difference in their performance. Also, if you have wiring going all the way up to the attic and there's a lot of it, pound some romex staples into the studs along the way up so you can use tie-wraps to secure the bundle and take the weight off of the top. Anyplace the bundle takes up a lot of the plate's width, use nailing plates, the same as if it was plumbing or high voltage electrical. If you plan to live in this house for a long time, think about running some Smurf tubing to key locations for future wiring upgrades. It won't be long before fiber is a major player in home systems, IMO, and if you do a bit of work now, you'll make it easier on yourself later. Always think in terms of being the next guy to work on the house so you don't have to guess where things are, what they are for and what you were thinking when you installed them. Label your wires- all of them and keep a log of all of them. No white electrical tape or paper tape with pencil or regular pen- use good labels that don't fade, Brady labels or something of that quality. If you'll be using more than one coax or Cat 5E at each box, think about using bundle. It's a lot easier to run one bundle than 2+2, especially when you only have one roll or box of each. Let the tails at the head end reach the floor, and then some- you never know if something will make it necessary to move your head end and if you cut them all too close, you have wasted a lot of cable. Make sure there's at least a duplex box near the head end for cable amplifier power, modems, etc. If you do a bunch of home theater, there are even more power and grounding considerations to deal with.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Since you have most of your walls open, put in boxes with stubs of conduit up to the attic/down to the basement. The extra expense isn't so much, and it lets you upgrade to whatever you want in the future without having to mess with plaster demo/patching/paint....
-- J.S.
Yep, and stub it up above the insulation depth. I hate pawing through insulation to find conduit stubs. Also be sure to put box connectors with bushings on thin wall conduit and file down the rough edges on pvc or use connectors there also. For those empty runs of conduit, use tape to seal the open ends. No point in dumping unconditioned air from the attic into the living space.
Dave
Some inspectors and local codes won't allow an open conduit from basement to the attic, so if conduit is installed, the easy way to be approved is to install a box on each end. The top one can be above the insulation but it must be fastened to something, according to code.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
http://www.derose.net/steve/guides/wiring/
is a first step
http://www.pcmobilehelp.com/support/cat5WiringDiagram.htm
is a basic
http://www.homephonewiring.com/blocks.html
has some advanced stuff and some links
http://www.netadmintools.com/art147.html
is part of a series to scare yourself
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
You have good advise from the other posts.
One thing!!!
Do not buy cable from HD or Lowes. Buy the 1000' spools from an electrical warehouse! Save big bucks!!!!
I would say, don't buy one 1000 foot spool -- buy two 500 footers (or whatever is appropriate for the total footage you figure you need). It's just as easy to run two cables at once if you have two spools.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
Home depot is currently 20.00 per thousand cheaper than the "electrical supply house " locally on cat 5e cable
Edited 4/24/2007 10:49 pm ET by skip555
Coax is going to be obsolete in five years as everything in TV land switches over to digital and HD. Consider running some HDMI drops as that technology looks like it will hang around for the next 10-20 years. Smarthome sells a bundled cable with multiple Cat5, coax, and fiber optic for about $1 a foot -- pricey but convenient.
I guess the safest bet is to run everything in conduit along with a pull string...
Why do you think coax will be obsolete in 5 years? Digital signals and HD run just fine over coax.Personally, I doubt there is a future for fiber optic INSIDE the house. It just isn't necessary. Cat 6 runs 500 Mhz no problem, and coax tests to 3 Ghz.Plus you don't need HDMI for security camera, baby monitors, etc.But my crystal ball is hazy this morning.
GOOD coax does 3GHz, the rest is OK for composite and other things.Once they get to the point of making better plastic fiber cabling, the cost will come down and I think it'll be used more as the price of copper increases further. 3M makes crimp-on, non-fused fiber terminals now- media convertors are becoming more common and less expensive. I think that, in ten years, a small bundle with minimal metallic conductors will be the way information will be transmitted in homes. We're already being smothered in RF and while it's easier to install wireless devices (put it in place and configure it) but directly connected is still better, unless the conductors are damaged.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
> GOOD coax does 3GHz, the rest is OK for composite and other things.I don't follow what you're saying. What does "composite" have to do with the bandwidth of coax?
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
I would never run HDMI as a main feed. There are too many problems with the plug, it's too expensive and the maximum length of run isn't very great. Also, AFAIK, the ends can't be field-installed. People in the industry will generally run multiple coax/Cat 5e or Cat6 or serial digital cable to the locations where a HD TV will be and plastic conduit (Smurf Tube) to the locations where it's likely that the cables will need to be changed. HDMI is not the best way to go, it just became the method the HD DVD makers chose. remember, just being picked as the standard doesn't mean something is the best way- look at the RCA connector on tape/CD/DVD/phono equipment. Unbalanced, the shield carries signal (terrible way to do things) and because of the high impedance, long runs lose signal quality very quickly. 'But it's the standard, so it must be good!" BS!Coax is already used to send HD and digital TV. If it becomes obsolete, it'll be due to the high cost of copper, not frequency response limitations. There are already UTP to Component, DVI, HDMI, S/PDIF, S-Video and composite video baluns and they are gaining acceptance in the industry every day/week/month. I agree with the idea of running conduit- it eliminates the chance of wasting a lot of money now by installing cabling that won't be needed later and if some other technology becomes more practical, it's easy to change to the new one.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
"I would never run HDMI as a main feed."Highfigh, I'm not sure what you mean by "main feed". Today the drop from our cable company is coax, but the installer for the digital phone service told me they will be transitioning to fiber (it's already out at the street) drops within ten years. As HD becomes more prevalent, and more services are added (BB internet, phones, movie downloads, etc.) coax will have to be replaced to allow for higher bandwidths. Now if I have a 10 GBps fiber drop as an input, why in the world would I want to wire the house with coax that only has a fraction of that bandwidth? That's like taking a 1" water line from the meter and plumbing the house with 1/4" tubing. Sure you could do it, but why?HDMI runs make sense because that's what most new TVs and AV components are using. You get up to 8.1 audio and HD video on a single, relatively small cable, and it meets all of the latest DRM requirements they are tacking on in the hardware these days. Expensive? How much will it cost to re-run that coax line buried behind a stone fireplace five years from now?
I'd never bury coax behind a fireplace without putting it in conduit anyway, if only to protect the coax from damage during fireplace construction.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
I should have said main video feeds and since there are many other ways to send video, HDMI is may not last long, from what I hear in talking with installers, dealers and some electrical engineers who work for manufacturers of A/V and home theater equipment. It's the "chosen" connection now but that can change. Go to http://www.remotecentral.com and look for a thread that asks what people do when a customer asks for HDMI. HDMI isn't so much "what most TVs and AV components use", it's what they were designed to be able to use in addition to the other input connectors. It's what some installers are made to use and dealers make good money on the cables buy it's not what I like to use because the plug can fall out (no retainer clip of any kind), some initial failures upon startup, it's bulky, you have to amplify it if you want to go more than 50' and there are very few right angle HDMI adaptors for the displays that need them. It's good that they made one connector that handles HD video and audio but I agree with the engineers that they should have come up with something else. If you have HDMI, don't take this personally, it's just my opinion based on conversations with quite a few people who are also in the industry.Your connection to the router/modem may be over 1GB/sec but not to the outside world. If you look at your connection speed on your computer, it may show 100MB/sec. That's not your internet connection speed. The speed is ultimately determined by how far it has to travel to the next node. Yes, fiber will be here (not soon enough for me) but when you look at a box of coax and it shows 3GHz, that's for the entire length of cable, not one foot. You're talking about GB and the spec for coax if 3GHz, not 3GB. The first thing we need to do is work in the same units, then deal with what is happening in the field. We may want 10GB/sec but the industry may not give it to us when we want it. Another thing about broadband- Road Runner and systems like that use shared bandwidth and when the number of users increases, it slows down. DSL (technically ADSL) is bandwidth guaranteed by the contract with the provider so it doesn't slow down."Expensive? How much will it cost to re-run that coax line buried behind a stone fireplace five years from now?"That's the point of running conduit or Smurf tubing. It's a lot easier to re-configure or re-wire a house when the cables aren't stapled to the studs. As far as 8.1 audio- name one disc that uses that and a receiver or pre-amp that can decode it. No cable or satellite provider uses it, most rooms are too small for it and most people won't want to pop for an array of 8.1 speakers when they already look at us like we're from Mars when we tell them the price of a good 5.1 system. In ten years, I think there will be more GOOD and GREAT wireless speakers (other than the power cord) but there aren't many now. FM radio wireless don't work well and there are more that use 802.11 (or a variant) coming out all the time. The trick will be in configuration, not installation. The issue I see with so many new wireless devices being introduced is the interference that can occur when there are conflicts. I don't know if you read or saw it, but there was an article in the papers a couple of weeks ago that stated that the internet may be scrapped so a new and better/more secure one can be instituted. It said they have been working on it for years now and it's just a matter of time. That alone will cause some of what is now "future technology" to be rethought since what is a limitation now may not be with a new system, even though IPv6 is coming very soon. XP comes IPv6 capable and XP isn't particularly new, either.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
"Street" fiber has entered homes in test areas. The fiber is terminated in a NID or now referred to as a break out box or point. The light signal is MUX into a electronic format thru a modem. All signals (BB data) from that point are transmitted via cat5 or coax.
Water mains are typically much larger, like 4" or so, and we run either 1" or usually 3/4" from them.And the reasoning is exactly the same. Yes, fiber along the street make sense because there is much more traffic out there. But my driveway doesn't need to handle X cars an hour doing 35 mph, and my house doesn't need fiber or equivalent inside of it. I'll be real surprised if any application comes along that needs anything greater than Cat 6 capability within 20 years.
Quicky read thru some of respones on here so forgive if I am repeating what someone already may have pointed out. In my opinion I dont think it will be long before everything is wireless.....I just ran about 100 feet of cable in my house and installed 4 cable jacks mainly for cable internet.. in the process I switch over to dish network which required me to have to cable company come out and install a new line just i could continue with their cable internet. Since all the cable I just ran is now worthless for the internet I had to get a wireless router..... a little more money but now I can use my laptop anywhere the house. There was also an article on msn about wireless cable for tv is being developed ........ they are close but not there yet.
for whats its worth
Dan
I don't understand. If you were installing cable for internet it should have been Cat5. That would continue to work fine regardless of what sort of modem you use.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
You can use your laptop anywhere in the house and I would bet that someone can use theirs outside, too. I bought a wireless bridge for a customer's music server and when I plugged it into my laptop at home, it fired right up. Thinking it odd that I should be able to log on wirelessly without having configured my router/modem for that, I checked my connection speed and found that it was 2.7MB/sec. I was using my next door neighbor's RoadRunner connection. As I said, we're already being bombarded by so much RF it's ridiculous and everybody thinks an endless list of devices can be used without interference, but it's not true. The more RF flying around, the weirder the problems will be.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Yeah, at some point RF from home networks will get to be like spam -- so much of it that the medium is useless.Not so much a concern in the boonies, but you need to think about it in the burbs or in town.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
One guy who worked at a local computer dealer was able to drive from his place to work and never lose his connection for the online radio station he listened to, and that was about 12 miles.There were so many hot spots along the way and apparently none were secure.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Interesting......
Spent some hours last week reading up on head end & master antenna spec.s....
I'm tangentially involved in bidding out the backbone for 450 rooms that already have horizontal home-run co-ax and Cat5 "for future use" pulled....
I'm used to stacked runs with splitters & taps....which gave good service, but I guess everything has to be high-test these days...
I'm thinking the Cat5 is gonna be a huge waste of money (there's a second Cat5 pull for the LAN)...
Got to talking a to a guy at the local Tweeters store, he said these days the typical McMansion setup is cable in, co-ax to all the drops, then converters and HDMI to the screen-I was kind a flabbergasted- "I need more than one converter box?".....oh well, guess if you can spring for the 60 inch screens a couple of extra converter boxes is no big deal...
Me myself, right now I'm so pissed at Comcast I spent $150 on a USB tv stick & some rabbit ears...got neighbors with open wi-fi networks so internet's covered- but 'round these parts they don't have master antennas, and my hovel gets really bad reception, tv and cell phone-I'm only getting 7 channels on the laptop...
I may have to get over it and get that Comcast one year triple play deal...
I think you would be surprised by what can be done with Cat5e. HD video, 100MB/s (for no more than 185m), control, RS-232, all kinds of A/V distribution, phone systems, etc. It's not a waste but once fiber comes to the consumer level, it'll be a second level conductor, but still very useful.McMansion setup for them, not everyone. If you want to watch different things on different TVs, yes, more than one convertor. The director of a company I worked for probably has a dozen cable boxes. He also has 32 channels of distributed audio and on at least half of those 16 amps, they had hum problems and apparently nobody in the installing company or the one he and his son-in-law started knows how to get rid of the hum without going to Radio Shack and getting a bunch of ground loop isolators. I thought that was pretty lame, although I never mentioned how pizz-poor I thought it was that they did that to get rid of the hum, which was most likely caused by Time Warner not grounding their feed properly or some equipment is on a different phase of the electrical service. The one I'm finishing up had hum until I grounded the splitter on the cable feed to my equipment rack. Instant quiet, when he hears it he'll be a happy camper and that's what I get paid for.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
The extent of my experience with video over Cat5 was using it plus some Extron hardware to run signal from a conference table to a plasma tv, where svga cable would have been both too thick and too far....the extron hardware was not quite ready for prime time, according to the A/v tech who came to commission the setup....we got it running, but the quality was sub-par.
They might eventually get around to using the Cat5 that's pre-installed alongside the co-ax, but as of now it's just going to be punched down in a "duplex" (?dual?) box with the co-ax jack behind the TV, and left hanging out of the ceiling in the tel/data closet on each floor-I pointed out that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to terminate one end, and not the other...how are you going to verify it for the building owner-but what do I know ;-) If it was coming out of my pocket, I wouldn't even punch down the end in the room until the "future" arrived...
All-in-all, I view HDMI cable sort of like the whole "Monster Cable" and HI-Fi discussions/arguments over the perfect speaker cable.....mostly hype & marketing...
Since you seem to be fairly knowledgeable, how about a quick primer on the whole DRM aspect..the guy at Tweeters didn't think that was a big driver to HDMI, but I thought it was....
I don't know how many thousands of feet of bulk Munster Cable I have run but I hate that stuff. The jacket grabs when it should slide smoothly (like other brands) and tears really easily when it catches (unlike other brands), wants to twist into small coils, the insulation is too soft and it usually takes up too much space for what it is. The RCA ends are too tight and most of the installers I know have had at least one RCA shield come out on someone's equipment because of it. Munster Cable is a marketing company, just like roughly 90% of the other cable companies. I prefer dealing with the actual cable maker, not a bunch of marketing dorks who come up with words for how their cables sound that are nothing but BS. I heard someone call the sound coming through a particular cable "chocolaty". WTF???? It's not dessert or cereal and I'm not trying to hit the 'Brown Note'.If you want a real eye-opener, go to a high-end audio dealer and ask about interconnects. Audio Quest has some that are $4900 and I think they're 6' long. I'm surprised the FTC hasn't gone after these dirtbags. I just bought a set of XLR interconnects for a customer and after he said he was OK with $400/pr, I told him what I could get, he told me to go ahead and when they showed up I wasn't very impressed at all. They're not even shielded! I can get other brands for a lot less and I doubt that a measurable difference can be found and unless the room's acoustics are really good, it's a great system and the person who hears the difference knows what to listen for, I doubt that a major difference will be heard. Having said all of that, I won't disagree that cables can make a big difference when comparing cheap ones to good ones but the hype in audio/video is disgusting. I can't, in good conscience, sell things I don't believe in. Sure, I'll make more money but I'm not gonna lie or sell $20 in parts when the stated results aren't going to be there. I avoid high-end audiopiles like the plague. When people hear some little, minute thing that bothers or delights them, I usually tell them to listen to the music, not the equipment. I really, really like a great sounding system but when it's bought to impress others, it's time to get a life. I really enjoy the ones who say that they want their system to sound "just like the studio".I'm sure HDMI is involved in the DRM drama but is it, after all, a software driven process and HDMI is more of a computer looking connector so people will usually not be too inclined to mess with something like that. As a connector, I think it's crap.Too bulky and heavy, they stress the jack when they're horizontal, fall out when they're hanging (no retainer like DVI), don't always work the first time and can't be replaced in the field. When I install something, I don't want to go back unless the customer wants to add/change something, discuss something, learn about how things work or they invite me. Going back because of a bad/unplugged cable is a waste of time and money.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Coax has been going to be obsolete in five years for about 15 years now.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
"Coax has been going to be obsolete in five years for about 15 years now."Good point. I wonder what's next to be deemed "that's all we can do with it and we expect it to be replaced by xxxxxx soon".
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I'm in the process of finishing up a project of running (2) quad shield coax and (2) Cat5e cables...(one for phone and one for computer networking) to multiple locations in my house. Do a web search on "structured wiring" and you should find some info, there are a few books available specific to this. I found http://www.swhowto.com to have some good info.
I decided to go with Channel Vision equipment and Levinton wall plates and connectors for the cables. I purchased from http://www.hometech.com. There are several other choices for brands of equipment and online sellers.
I'm on a budget and only need more TV and phone locations so my set-up is very basic and not elaborate with cabling for security system, surveillance cameras, whole house audio systems, etc. I have found some info on the internet saying a "properly designed" home structured wiring system can increase your home's values by 2-3% (not sure how correct that is however). DIY will save you a whole lot of money from what I've researched. Hiring a professional can cost thousands depending on the complexity of the system and if it is being installed before or after the walls are finished.
FYI while you are pulling cable you might want to consider pulling extra coax or Cat5e/Cat6 cables for possible future needs. I ran the extra Cat5e cable for computer networking, thinking "I will never use it, but can use it as a selling point when I sell the house". Well now I have 2 computers in the house and wanting to network them, so I guess one never knows what future needs could be. If you have the ability now to run conduits with pull strings then you can save the cost of running extra cabling which you may or may not ever use. I sometimes wish I could have, but would have required a whole lot more holes in the walls and basement ceiling and decided it was not worth all the extra headache of drywall repairs.
First of all. . .thanks to everyone that responded. I have not checked back in the last couple of days, so sorry for not responding.The house in question is a about 1400 square feet and with basement and garage. Over the last couple of days, I have been looking at some of the resources that many of you have provided as well as a couple of google searches.I've not made up my mind as to whether this house will remain a rental or whether to sell, but wanted to use this opportunity to get it wired right.All the old Coaxial and phone wire is out, so I've got a new canvas sort of speak.Here were my thoughts for proceeding, and I'd like to get a reality check to see if my plans are good to go.Homeruns to bedrooms, living room, kitchen and basement. I would pull 2 sets of CAT5/CAT6 (one for phone and the other for networking) and the appropriate coaxial for video. At this point I only plan on hooking up the phone and coaxial. The 2nd set of CAT5/CAT6 for networking I'll leave in the box and let the future owners/renters set-up when they need it. I have the perfect place in the garage (a few feet away from the sub-panel) for a distribution center that is also pretty close to the demarcation point.Thoughts? Is this a good way to start?Tark
consider running 2 coax cables to locations where TV/entertainment centers will be. My DirecTV Tivo system requires 2 coax hook-ups if you want the ability to record on one channel while watching a show on another channel or to record two shows at the same time on different channels. Not sure about HD TV and it's requirements.
To add to the post after yours, if you run two coax and two Cat5e, consider using bundled cabling. It's made by a variety of companies and instead of pulling from four rolls or boxes (with the corresponding PITA factors of tangling and friction when pulling it), four cables= 1 pull. Belden has one called Banana Peel, Genesis has theirs and there are others that I haven't actually used. The coax and Cat5e each have two different colors so you can use all of the black coax for primary feed and white for secondary, and blue Cat5e for phone or network and white or grey for network. No marking, no confusion, piece of cake. Just remember to leave enough at each end in case the locations need to change slightly.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Tark
DanH has given you a lot of good info. Even though wireless seems to be the up-n-coming tech you still have to worry about security issues.
I have cat5 and a wireless router. I much prefer the cat5 connections as they give me the most bandwidth. Wireless has some limitations on placement of the router. Also, you may get interference from outside sources. As long as your wall are already open I would go with homeruns of cat5.
One other thought, since you stated there was a messy installation of existing phone lines, you can remove the old lines and replace with cat5. Then homerun those back to the POTS connection block. I did this is in a remodel a few years back and have not regretted it.
Just my 2 cents ....
Just don't try to run ethernet and POTS in the same cable. It'll work, but not well (especially when the phone rings).
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
DanHMy bad ....;>)You're correct....
Running cable is relatively easy, try to keep it from an area that freezes. Terminating the data cables is important. For a video presentation on terminating cable go to http://www.leviton.com, select "voice & data", then"learning" to access videos for download. Good luck.