As part of a remodel we are completely re-wiring our house (removing old knob & tube throughout and bringing in new 100-200AMP service). Since everything will be open I want to also add cat6 & coax to all rooms in the house (three bedrooms, an office, and the kitchen). I'm trying to decide on the best location to have all of this cabling terminate- I'm thinking it should all end up near the part of the wall in the garage where current Cable & phone service enters the house as that is where our main router is. Is that generally the way most people do it? Are there any other smart places to have all of this cabling end up? Anything else to consider while we have this opportunity? I've never had a house hardwired for networking/TV before...

 

There is no right way or wrong way. You will be getting a lot of opinions here.

When we prewire a new house..... the cabling terminations usually end up in the garage or the basement. Be sure to run spares to areas where you may need service in the future. If you terminate in a different place then where the services are located.... be sure to run interconnecting cables. Several cat. and several coaxes.

Here's a biggie..... when a house is gutted or is being built new.... we run one or two conduits from the attic to the basement inside the wall for future use. You can use 1-1/2" or 2" PVC. Be sure to cap both ends for inspection.

You can also run smurf tubing. It comes in different diameters. You can run one from your garage network location to the basement. Another to the attic. That comes in sizes from 3/4" to around 2".

Ideally you could run a tube to each location but that can get a little costly.
Once a conduit system is on place.... future expansions are much easier to accomplish.

 

I did it to my house 12 years ago. It was a new construction house and did it before they drywalled. Its not that hard to do. And its also not that expensive to do if you are the doing the work. Some would say why, now that we have so much wireless. Its a valid point, however my kid tells me his Xbox is just a little faster than his friends that are WiFi. Wife also noticed the faster direct connect speeds (she has her own computer consulting business out of our house) she also does not need to worry about WiFi security since its all hard wired.

Lots of info on the net that will give you best practices, such as do not run electrical & data cables side-by-side on long runs. I separated mine by 1 stud bay & crossed each other at 90 degree angles. I have a 2 story house with a basement, the Central Station is located in the basement near where the cable & phone enters the house. Its all mounted on a big plywood board on the wall with a shelf that holds the router, modem, & power strip.

I ran two Cat 6 and 1 coax to each location. If I did it again, probably don't need two Cats except maybe office computer location & if you might run multiple devices at the same location. However it is a lot easier to run an extra cable now, than later. Map out the house & the most logical locations. A little 2' wall area, or below a window in a bedroom is probably not the best locations, however a desk area in the kitchen or even the island where you might place a laptop is a good spot.

Buy good cable, hardware & keystone wall plates. I liked Belkin for my cable and Leviton for the keystone wall plates. You can buy most all online or go to a cable supplier, it will be cheaper than the big box stores. As you already know if you are re-wiring your house, you will go thru more cable than you think. All added up, I used about 4,000' of cable. Buy the cable in 1,000' rolls, mount it on a quick throw-together rack, then you tape the ends of the different cables together & pull them all at the same time. You will need to buy a crimper & punchdown tool, but they are not expensive.

I agree with the other post about running conduit. I ran two separate runs from the basement to the attic. Not had to use them yet 12 years later, but its there just in case & was easy to do with open walls.

Good luck on your project. I too re-wired an older K&T house of mine, that was 25 years ago now. Mike

 

Great ideas guys- thank you!

When you put in conduit for future use- do you generally plumb it with with a pull through string or something?

Really appreciate the responses and they encouragement!

 

Actually you have to be EXTREMELY careful when buying cable online. The stuff that's "cheaper than the big box stores" is usually CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum) counterfeits from China. It is an aluminum wire with a microns-thick coating of copper. It is labeled "Cat5e" or "Cat6" but it does not conform to the standard in any shape way or manner (the standard specifically requires solid copper conductors). The stuff is utter garbage, and the sellers are committing fraud. It breaks when you pull it because the conductors are fraudulently gauged (supposed to be #23 or 24, it's usually #25 or 26), it has a larger bend radius, and the terminations loosen (because aluminum is much softer than copper) and oxidize (it may work now but it WILL start giving you problems down the road), and the coils in the box are usually poorly wound so it will end up tangling up on you when you try to pull it out.. It is also NOT UL listed, nor does it carry the required CMR rating for running through walls and penetrating levels.

It will usually come in a nondescript box like this (with either no brand name or some weird brand you've never heard of) and have absolutely no mention of it being CCA anywhere:




When you factor in shipping, it's usually a wash to just go buy it at Home Depot. DO NOT buy any off-brands. ONLY buy listed/rated brands like Carol, Southwire, Superior Essex, Black Box, Belkin, etc.

Now that being said, most RG6 cable today is CCS (Copper Clad Steel). Solid copper coaxial is rare and very expensive these days. The center conductor is a steel wire with a coating of copper. This is fine (but CCA is NOT, steel is a LOT stronger than aluminum) - again as long as you buy a listed/rated/reputable brand tested to 3GHz. Make sure you use the blue Keystone barrels - those are also tested to 3GHz and will not cause problems with satellite installs. Invest in a quality stripper and compression tool, and use compression fittings. Do not mess with crimps or twist-ons.

 

A bit of a tangent, but as long as your thinking about ethernet and coax,
something I'm seeing more and more in new construction are USB charging outlets.

Looking a bit further, the new US Power Delivery standards call for combined data
and power, basically 100 watt, gigabit usb ports.
Of course, 4th gen USB wiring could end up being a "betamax" technology, but it's worth a thought.

 

Do you have internet over phone or cable? I installed cat6a a couple years ago. I used a lszh plenum rated cable and just pulled it through the ceiling. I brought it to each room but only terminated where I needed hardwired Ethernet (mostly security stuff). Almost everything is wifi nowadays. Are you planning to have a central patch panel or a couple different switches.

Keep in mind if you are planning on any poe devices there is a max distance between the injector/switch and the device. If you're having this done by others make sure they use good jacks and ask that they perform and show you bandwidth tests. Bad terminations can make expensive cable perform worse than a cheap cable well put together.

 

Just because things have wifi capability doesn't mean you should use it. Any media streaming device like smart tvs, amazon fires, etc, especially game consoles should be wired if possible. Wifi should be a last resort, not an excuse for laziness.

 

Our internet is fiber to the house- the service is gigabit and we regularly achieve 950Mbit transfer speeds on machines that are hard-wired. We do a lot of work from home- VNC of hires screens with heavy graphics/animation so the speed is important. We also try to keep all devices (roku, sonos, whatever) using physical connections. WiFi is really only used in our house for one Arlo camera and cellphones/guests.

Thanks for the tips on avoiding copper clad cat6!

 

In a past house I ran cat5 and coax to every room, terminated to patch panels and keystone jacks and stuff to make it "professional" like wire loops. But I've really come to the fact that most of this is wasted expense in a residential home as a good portion of it was never used.

In my own house I have Cat5e to a set of shelves in a corner of the basement. I was much more targeted in the install. I ran a couple lines of Cat5e to the room we use as an office, 4 or 5 to the entertainment center in the living room, and a few to strategic locations on the ceiling and to the eves for POE Wifi access points and an IP camera that can see the driveway. I haven't bothered with the patch panels, just crimp male rj-45 plugs on whichever line I need to use and plug it straight to the router. I didn't even run coax at all as we have Roku boxes on the UTP lines. Moral of the story is that it's easy to get carried away and waste money in this area. Even cat6 is an unneeded expense as 5e is more than adequate for the residential-grade gigabit devices. Perfectly installed cat6 can theoretically carry 10gig ethernet, but there are no commodity devices that support it. I suppose if you want to future-proof, skip cat6 and go right to cat7. Note that 6 and 7 are much more picky about quality of terminations and that the jacks must carry the 6 or 7 rating.

 

Taz420.

That's true but unless you have that stuff in every room it doesn't make much sense to run the cbales everywhere. it was different in the days when everyone had desktops and wifi sucked. These days of the three people in my home none of us use desktops and our laptops don't even have rj45 ports

 

Cat 7e is the latest and greatest. Might want to keep an eye toward the future and check out that type of cable.

 

First of all there's no such thing as Cat 7e, it's 7a. Installing it in a house would be complete overkill and a waste of a lot of money. Not to mention it is a pain in the ass to work with and requires all special (expensive) tools and jacks for termination (it does not use RJ45, it's a new style called GG45) - just to give you bandwidth that you won't need in a house for at least a decade. If none of the runs will be more than 120', just use Cat6. Even 6a is overkill (and again requires special termination tools and practices due to the shielding) because 6 can handle 10GbE up to 37m.

 

It makes perfect sense, because even if you don't have them now, you might have them later. And just because you're happy using chromebooks, doesn't mean he is. Wifi still sucks, because it is a radio signal on the two most crowded bands in the spectrum. Most still runs on 2.4GHz - fire up a microwave and watch it crawl. 5GHz isn't as crowded, but higher frequencies have worse performance through walls, floors, and other obstructions - especially metal like ductwork. That means you need multiple access points to make up for the shortcomings, which need... You guessed it - WIRES!

So since he's got the walls open, cable is cheap, so there's absolutely nothing wrong with running it everywhere he thinks he may need it.

 

Do you people EVEN LOOK before correcting someone? Try searching for Cat 7e first!!! (Duh!)

Below is cat 7e wire. I have it run in my house and the connectors which come with it work just fine in my router and Ethernet devices. I purchased cat 7e cables with the connectors already installed.

Cat 5 DOES NOT WORK for streaming TV for me due to the length of my runs! Cat 7e works great.

We will have FASTER speeds in the future.

https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Ethe...eywords=cat+7e

 

First of all, I don't have to look. I'm a network tech, and I know for a FACT that there is NO SUCH THING AS CAT7e. There is CAT7 and CAT7A. That's it. Just like there is NO SUCH THING as "CAT6e", just 6 and 6a. ("DUH!")

Second of all, what you linked to is CAT7. It is NOT CAT7a which is the "latest and greatest", it is not this fictional "CAT7e" you claim exists, it is CAT7. CAT7 (as well as CAT6a) are STP (shielded Twisted Pair) cables. See the metal on the outside? It's called shielding. If the cable is not properly terminated with METAL JACKS and the shield properly attached and grounded, it becomes an antenna that causes more problems than if you had just used an unshielded cable in the first place.

THIS is a CAT7a plug (GG45). Notice the pins on the bottom (clip side)? Yeah. Just because some idiot seller on Amazon calls something "CAT7e" doesn't make it so. It just means the seller is an idiot and you blindly take it as gospel ("DUH!")



Third, it's absolutely LAUGHABLE to claim that CAT5e won't support your streaming TV "due to the length of my runs". CAT5e will support 1Gbps up to 100m (328') So you're telling me that you not only have runs OVER 328' long in your house, but you have a streaming service that uses the full 1000Mbps?? Last I checked, Netflix uses about 5Mbps for 1080p HD and up to 25Mbps for 4k. Long runs of (properly installed/terminated) CAT5e can handle that without breaking a sweat.

 

Click on the link. Is says cat 7e.

I did not say cat 5e, I said cat 5. There is a difference!

And I am not here to argue, that is all I have to say, the end!

 

Yes. I know what it says. And the reason it says that is the person who created the listing is an ignorant moron. There is no "CAT7e". Period. End of story. Here is a list of all the standards for you to educate yourself with.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_11801 Notice the term "7e" does not appear anywhere...

Well excuse the hell out of me. I know there's a difference, but considering old-school CAT5 has been obsolete for almost 20 years and hasn't even been manufactured in almost as long, I thought you were talking about 5e (although even CAT5 can easily handle streaming video over its maximum distance, it's just not certified as such, so you're still full of it). However now I realize I shouldn't give that much credit to someone who argues there is actually something called 7e, citing an Amazon listing as "proof"...

Good. Go play with your dolls. Adults talking. Now back to the OP...

 

You are right.... the end.

We NEED to stick with the originals posters questions. This thread is filled with so much static no one can follow it !!!