Wiring house for CAT6

[zoob]

Hi Guys,

My new house closing is approaching very quickly, and I have a couple questions about wiring it up.
I'm wondering approximately how much people charge for the installation each drop?
It is a new build, however I bought it after all of the walls/etc went up so I did not get the option of adding a conduit or running cables.

I'd like to run CAT6 with at least 2 drops to every room. There is a nice section in the basement beside the furnace/hwt that I have planned for my servers/networking equipment/etc. The planned office is directly above (on the 2nd storey) the area in the basement.

In my opinion the easiest method would be to run an outdoor conduit vertically, then running horizontal conduits to get to the family room & possibly the MBR and an additional bed room. Alternatively, the conduit could run straight up into the attic where it could then drop down inside walls for each of the bed rooms, but I'm not sure how it would be able to drop down to the same level as an electrical outlet.

Has anyone done something like this in the past? Any issues with vapor barriers when drilling through the wall to get to the outside? Rogers did this to my parent's house to install a cable line and there were no issues there.

FYI the house is wired up for cable TV in basically every room, but the outside walls are all insulated and I would imagine it would be very difficult to pull CAT6 to replace the coaxial cable.

Thanks!

[KaptCrunch]

ooops that a big pain with dry already up, if were me i'd watch the progess of home built and wait for electrical, plumbing to start then come in with my box of cat6 on weekend with hard hat and boots and wire it myself, if somebody say something your the home owner. oh and shilded twised pairs cable

the other way is run wires in heating ducts or from attic, some have used Ethernet over AC lines a thread in networking talks about it

vapour barrier broken when plastic opened

note only outside wall and seal hole around cable after to keep water out

[Squeetard]

Don't waste your money. go Wireless.

[KaptCrunch]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

Don't waste your money. go Wireless.

with a repeater on each floor level

[Eldonko]

Yeah wiring a finished house is a nightmare. When I finished my basement I had everything torn out and was able to wire both upstairs and the basement with cat6 but I cant imagine trying to do that with finished walls. You can def hire someone to do it but it wont be cheap in comparison to wireless.

[chrisk]

How about homeplug networking? That way you can just use the power plugs to get wired networking to whatever part of the house you want. You could even use it to get a wireless router to a difficult part of the house.

[QuickDeath]

there is another option you can do they make 8 and 9 foot drill bits start and the bottom level and then drill up and the co to the top level and drill down that way you get a whole all the way threw, i have a buddy how does alarm installs and they use the long drill bits all the time, there is also a whole at the bottom of the bit you can tie a sting there and then tie th sting to the cat 6 line and drop the bit all the way to the basement

[zoob]

Hmm thanks for the feedback guys. I'm going to test my WifiN speeds first, simply because I already have a ton of equipment (2.4 GHz WifiN->ethernet bridge, 2.4/5.0 dual band WifiN router, 2.4/5GHz WifiN USB adapter), but I'm not going to expect much.

I'd like to avoid WifiN for all but my laptops, as I have a large storage array that I want to keep accessible at maximum speed (gigabit). I use an SSD in my computers and rely on the array for all of my bulk data (image raws and video).

The issues I've found with wifi:
- No wake-on-lan (I love this feature on my HTPC)
- Other users steal my wifis reducing my throughput (very noticeable, as my tenant in my current house can suck up all available bandwidth)
- 5 GHz signal is reduced simply by closing a door, and 2.4 GHz is saturated (this is in a 2 br bungalow, and may be different when I move to my new house)
- For unknown reasons, it can be fine pullilng 15 MB/sec one day, and the next barely push 3, everything in my own home remaining constant

I'd like to give powerline a try, but I've read that having it on a different breaker can drastically reduce throughput (WD Livewire Powerline Networking Kit | silentpcreview.com)

Has anybody run a conduit on the side of their house to pull cables? I'm thinking this will be cheaper/easier than running it internally. It will be facing my neighbour's house anyway so it's not going to be much of an eyesore. Otherwise, I suppose I'll have to hire someone with one of those big honkin drill bits and hope they don't kill my house (and that they are properly insured :))

[stoanee]

Is drywall painted? If not you could set a skilsaw at just shy of drywall thickness and cut a 1 foot wide slot around to where you want your cable to run. Remove drywall carefully then cut vapor barrier in centre of slot so you can fold back and tape over when you are done. You could then easily drop cable down to a box. PITA but, drywall repair seems to me to be a lot easier than drilling holes all over the place. Too bad you didn't get in there first.

[jtktam]

no matter what people tell you.. wireless / powerline will never be as fast as running gigabit / 10gb ethernet :)

and technically you don't own the home til you close.. so doesn't matter if you say you are the home owner.. most builders are cool if you arrange ahead of time, but if you don't, they might cut or rip out the wires you have installed.. and you won't find out til after they close up the walls :)

for all the 1st floor spots, just run the wires in the basement and punch up

for all the 2nd floor spots, just run the wires in the attic and punch down

always do "home runs" .. that means from each drop run it all the back to your server / switch location

-joe