Survey: Pulling cable at home

[lizardking009]

How many people here own their own home and pulled Cat 5e/6?

Seems like most are looking at wireless. I can't be the only one who braved the attic with a drill and fiberglass rods and hunted a chase to the basement.

I ran 10 drops upstairs - we have 4 bedrooms plus a loft and two locations with a TV. Eventually, I want to put an IP phone somewhere up there. I ran another 10 drops on the ground floor, 6 in my office, 3 for the TV, and another for an IP phone in the kitchen. I ran all of it neatly to the basement to a 2 post rack with a Dell switch, which will eventually be upgraded to something PoE.

Everything looks good. There are no hanging wires, except in the unfinished basement.

 

[mason736]

I had the good fortune to be able to build a home this past summer, and ran all of the cabling myself. I worked with an AV company for some, but I ran Cat6 all throughout the house, with multiple pulls for each drop (backup). Wireless is good, but I still prefer to go wired where possible, and just use the mobile devices on wireless. All of my TVs, receivers, WD TV Live, Xbox(s), are all on a wired connection.

 

[mackle]

Wireless has it's place... But... I have gone from a residence where I had roof space and underfloor space to run cables, to an apartment where I have to rely on wireless (n) and it's a right PITA (especially transferring files from one device to another through a wireless AP).

I agree with mason736 - things like mobile devices are fine for wireless, but wired can get things done so much faster and reliably.

 

[PigLover]

Owned 5 homes over the last 25 years. All were existing homes when I moved in (didn't build any of them). Pulled cable in the walls to most every room in each of them. Once you learn a few simple methods it's not really that hard at all (the attack crawling part is a hassle and often uncomfortable but it's not really all that hard).

 

[Patrick]

Owned 5 homes over the last 25 years. All were existing homes when I moved in (didn't build any of them). Pulled cable in the walls to most every room in each of them. Once you learn a few simple methods it's not really that hard at all (the attack crawling part is a hassle and often uncomfortable but it's not really all that hard).

I still need to do this in mine. Has wires everywhere I would need except the garage. Of course this is 1990's era Cat 5 so I'm contemplating re-pulling new wire for 10gig Ethernet. The other strange bit is that it all terminates to a very small area that cannot fit a 10 gig switch.

 

[PigLover]

When you bought that house you asked your forums what you should do. Several of us recommended getting this done before you moved in. Shame on you for not taking our brilliant advice

 

[britinpdx]

I took on a significant remodel of my (large) home and whilst it was gutted I took the time to pull a significant amount of cable for distribution of networking, telephone, video, security, (thermal) zone control and audio. It's a large home (>5000 sq ft) with 4 levels (basement, 2 living levels, attic level). It's over 100ft end to end.

I walked though every room and looked at the layout and did a "what if" scenario to determine drop locations.

The most central location for home runs was an attic space. All networking, telephone, video and security drops terminated at this location (demarcation point). Audio distribution for "most used living spaces" (kitchen, dining,sitting areas) was home run to a kitchen location.

Two areas of the home were targeted as possible home theater areas, a bedroom and an attic space. Closet space in these locations were identified for local distribution, and multiple RG-6 and cat-5e runs went from these locations back to the demarc point. Each HT area had audio runs for 7.2 distribution, as well as HDMI and 6x RG-59 to the projector locations.

For locations where a TV may be located, I pulled 2x RG-6 Quad and 2x Cat5e. Some rooms only had a single potential location, some had two. Cat5e drops are handy at TV locations as I have multiple directv dvr's that are networked together as well as roku's for Netflix etc playback.
For locations where a phone may be located, I pulled 2x cat5e.
For locations where computers may be located, I pulled 2x cat5e.
For security sensor locations (doors, windows, motions, keypads etc) typically 1x cat5e although some runs were 2 wire.

For Thermal zone control the house is effectively split into 7 zones with 2 Heat pumps, and 2 master zone controllers. Cat-5e run between thermostat / remote sensors and zone controllers, 4 wire run from zone controller to zone damper, 8 wire run from zone controller to furnace/heat pump. Cat5e ran from each zone controller back to demarc for remote control over RS485.

For potential camera locations I ran RG-6 and 14awg 2 wire for power.

Audio distribution from the central kitchen location is via a HT receiver fed into a 6 zone Crown distribution amplifier. 4 Wire 14awg ran to each room to a local attenutation control, then 2x 2wire to L&R speakers. I didn't need a multi-zone audio system, so its a single zone and every room gets the same feed. Local attenuation control in the great room, dining room, kitchen, sitting area as well as 2 outside zones.

I pulled wire literally everywhere, even cat5e and RG-6 stubs to the garage. Fortunately I pulled 4x Cat5e down to the basement so I'm able to locate my server rack there with a local switch (HP 1810-24G v2) and use the 4x Cat5e to trunk back to the main switch (HP 1810-48G) in the demarc area, so I have adequate bandwidth for distribution.

I didn't pull any cable at all for lighting control. I implemented a type of switch that communicates over the power line, so that saved some time and effort.

All in all I think I ran about 12,000 ft of cat5e, 4000 ft of RG-6, probably 500ft of audio, and over 500ft of 2 or 4 wire for sensor/control applications. And on top of all of this I have several wireless access points throughput the house to support phones & laptops, especially for guests.

If I had to do it all over again I would still pull cable and still implement wireless as well. In hind sight I should probably have ran cat5e to all potential camera locations for PoE.

I don't have full automation control in place yet, but all of the hooks are in place. I just need the time to work on the software to glue it all together.

 

[caveat lector]

It tends to be much easier to wire an empty home, so that definitely should be done were reasonably possible. Because of the impossibly of knowing future needs with certainty, I would suggest not only pre-wiring, but considering the installation of conduit into and between rooms that someday may become server rooms, software development rooms, etc., so cabling can be easily expanded or updated, such as to fiber or whatever other new technology may be just beyond the current viewing ranges of our crystal balls.

 

[hagak]

I pulled my own cable in my 2 story house with finished basement (so 3 floors). My biggest issue was the run from the basement to the attic. I have my servers in the basement yet want to have network drops in all of the bedrooms on the top floor. I finally found an okay wall to pull through had to make 3 holes for pull access. Once I got the cable to the attic I could run the cable across to the header of the wall I want to drop to be in.

I ran CAT6 and RG6, the office room I ran 4 CAT6 to one wall and 2 CAT6 and 2RG6 to the other wall. The other "bedrooms" I just ran 2 CAT6 and 1 RG6. I did one drop to a walkin closet in the center of the house that I use for a wifi AP. The den got 2 CAT6 and 2 RG6 drops at the entertainment center (actually have a 8 port switch here since a number of network devices in the entertainment center however never more than 1 is really using the network at once). I ran 2 CAT6 to the garage as well. I did not run drops to the kitchen or the living room since those rooms would require a good deal of ceiling wall cuts and I really have never needed a hard connection in those rooms. Kitchen I could maybe need something, but we will never have a TV in there and at most maybe my music system m however wifi is more than enough for that.

Note this was an older 1970s home.

I also ran wire for security system items, keypad, smoke and motion detectors. I used wireless for door and window contacts because hard-wiring these after the fact is damn near impossible.

In the basement all non-security the wires go to a 26" low voltage box, that has a 24 port patch panel, 1x8 RG6 splitter, cable amp, 1x2 splitter for the cable modem before the 1x8. I also have my ISY home automation box in here. The patch cables leaves this panel out the side to a wall bracket to make it neat(basically a pretty plate to make a hole in the sheet rock) and goes in to the 26U server rack right next to it.

The security wires go to a security panel that is a few stub bays down from the network panel. Both panels have a dedicated 120V circuit routed to them with surge protected outlets inside. Everything metal is grounded correctly (ie, low voltage boxes are grounded to earth ground).

If someone wanted to place a small switch and router inside the network panel they could and not need the server rack next to it and it would still be a clean "home" install look. I however need more so I have the server rack.

 

[Patrick]

When you bought that house you asked your forums what you should do. Several of us recommended getting this done before you moved in. Shame on you for not taking our brilliant advice

Ha! Well I did buy the cable and tools. Time became and issue.

 

[scobar]

I ran 20+ drops in my current house. Back end is fed by 2x 24 port switches. Next house I am going to tone it down. Wireless has improved since I ran the wire.

 

[capn_pineapple]

I'm renting, and sadly the owner won't let me run any cabling. Needless to say, once I have my own place I'll be running 6a to all the rooms. with 10Gbe trunks to the rack.

Where I live it's illegal to run your own cable if it passes through a wall/roof/floor/crawlspace etc, and whilst I am accredited to do the work, it's best to get someone in the industry to check it off and do the testing (I don't own any of the gear for testing).

 

[dba]

I went wild with cable about ten years ago when I gutted the inside of my house for a big remodel. I ran "structured wiring" bundles (2x cat 5e, 2x coax, 2x fiber) to each room - two to some rooms - plus about 30 additional runs of cat5e, 24 speaker cable pairs, 12 microphone cables, 25 or so other low-voltage cables for control signals and various other purposes, and some 70 cables for the alarm and fire system. Pick just about any wall and you can bet there are a pair of Cat5e cables hiding behind the drywall just in case I need them - and quite a few times I have. All of the cables terminate in a wiring closet with a roll-out rack. The tightly-packed bundle of wire is about seven inches in diameter when it exits the ceiling to drop to the rack!

Now remember that this was ten years ago. It turns out that fiber is just about useless in the home, and coax nearly so. As of now, I mostly use wireless and the cat5e wires. Even when I want to run a video signal, I always seem to end up doing it over cat5.

If I were to do it again, I'd run cat6 wires (which didn't exist at that time) and I'd probably run even more than I did. The speaker wires have been awesome for whole-house audio, and I'd definitely do those again. I don't use all of the small control wires, but I do use a surprising number of them. I'd skip the coax and the fiber entirely.

The cable itself is so cheap that, if you are doing the work yourself, it makes sense to just go crazy while you have the walls opened up, just in case. One last bit of advice: Label both ends of every wire!

 

[mmmmmdonuts]

I am in the midst of running wires to all the rooms in my house I just bought. I got a 60's split level house some from the 2nd floor attic to the basement is a big PIA (where the switch is). I have 4x Cat6 and 2RG 6 to each bedroom to each bedroom but 1 at the moment and the same in the living room. Wireless is spotty in my house since I can see 15 other connections from surrounding areas. Once doing the first room the others have been quicker and easier. Just have been met with other projects before finishing this.