Building a New House

[Firefighter Dan]

I'm building a house (I'm the owner builder) on five acres in Western Washington. I am looking for ANY advice the group would give to make my house media friendly. What are some of the things that you would like to have in your house now that could have easily been built in when constructed.

I am framed up and dried in. I have one central distribution box with Quad Shield RG6 home runs to each room. Drywall in about two weeks.

I am subscribed to a sat service up north to watch hockey, different TV series (Divinci), etc. I will have FTA in 5 rooms (one being a dedicated media room.) I have two children (16 and 14) and FTA will be via PC Card.

I would consider a 4'-6' dish if it can be "hidden."

I know I am crossing over to different forums - but my main interest is FTA.

 

[korsjs]

the fta guys can chime in on what you will need for fta, however there has been a few posts on pre wiriing scattered throughout the site.

 

[LER]

you might also want to consider adding Cat5e ethernet for computer use.

 

[sidekick]

I'd be interested in how the house construction is coming along, plans, who the builder is, etc. I have 5+ acres in Port Angeles near the Olympics and the Strait of Juan de Fuca that I plan on building on shortly.

 

[No Strings]

you might also want to consider adding Cat5e ethernet for computer use.

:up

Also use dual boxes that have phone and your CAT run broke out. You can get two phone lines down the CAT in addition to the Ethernet if you use 100Mb speeds.

If budget isn't a concern install a PBX.

Neal

 

[Firefighter Dan]

you might also want to consider adding Cat5e ethernet for computer use.

I have Cat6 strung at my son's insistance.

 

[digiblur]

I just did a job for a friend. I told him this was the last time I was wiring the house.

4 bedroom house. CAT5 and RG6 everywhere. Most bedrooms got three boxes on 3 out of 4 walls, each box contained one CAT5 and one RG6. The kitchen also received a CAT5/RG6 drop. Even the patio received a CAT5/RG6 box. Living room/media room got 5 RG6 and 2 CAT5 drops. Outside service - demarc recevied two CAT5's for POTS and future use, 1 RG6 for FTA, and 4 RG6's for other satellite usage. Custom designed distribution board with enough room for the future, all CAT5 punched down, all RG6's from the rooms punched down on the left(output), all outside RG6's punched down on the right with it's own dedicated and cleaned 20 AMPS of AC power.

A little extreme but.... like I said. I'm not going to wire the house again.

Here are some pics...all wiring done by yours truly. I shrunk the pictures down a bit for the nonbroadband users. I'll have the finished product up next month if you guys want. See if you can find the FTA labels in the pics.

 

[raydio]

Looks like the distribution is in the attic...too bad he did not provide its own closet downstairs! Beautiful job!

 

[LER]

I have Cat6 strung at my son's insistance.

that works. Just wanted to make sure there was Ethernet available.

LER

 

[cnacht]

If you want to distribute HDTV from a central location, you will have to run at least 4 coax. Three for component and one for audio, or at least 2 cat5(one may need to be shielded). Distributing HDMI would be more expensive to do, but there is always that copy right issue with component that we may need to worry about in the future. If I were to build, I would do both the 4 coax and 2 cat5 to where I may want an HDTV, plus run a conduit for future use. If you have an HD DVR, then you can watch what you recorded in HD on any TV in the house.
Chad

 

[digiblur]

Looks like the distribution is in the attic...too bad he did not provide its own closet downstairs! Beautiful job!

I tried to get him to put it behind plexiglass in the living room to show off but his wife said no. So I ended up putting it in the attic right next to the attic door with a light over it. It's out of the way, doesn't take up square footage, and very easy to get to.

 

[penguinsix]

I hate to mention this but you really should not staple or tack Cat5 cable, nor should you give it 90 degree bends (not sure if you did). You will lose throughput on the cable if bent or stapled. That is why you always see cable 'troughs' in many setups--the cable is left to hang relatively freely.

If it is not too late, I'd really recommend pvc conduit between your media center and at least each floor of the house. Go from your central node straight up to each floor, and then you can distribute to the floors in whatever manner you want.

The point of conduit is "you never know" what comes next. You may want to run some new wires through the pipes and it is a heck of a lot easier running through a pipe than through studs, drywall, etc.

 

[mystjet]

One additional suggestion. Don't try to use the "spare pairs" in a cat5/e cable for phone & computer. The ring voltage does a number on data transfers. Use separate runs for each.

I have two RG6 & two cat5e drops per box, and in general have at least one drop box per wall. This is likely extreme, but at least I won't have long extension cords going to wherever items get re-arranged to.

The idea of the large PVC conduit pipe is excellent. After my basic wiriing, it was a simple matter when I decided to add an additonal drop on the third floor (converted attic). All I used for this raceway was just the gray 2" PVC.

Jim

 

[Tron]

This is an interesting thread for someone who is preparing to pull down all of the sheetrock in their home (as I am, thanks to Katrina's flooding). I plan to run RG-6 quad throughout the entire house. There will be two drops to each room, and a plethora (not sure how many yet) to my studio which serves as the media "heart" of the building. Additionally, I'm planning to run Cat 6 (if I can find some) to each room and three-pair telephone cable to each room. I'll terminate using modular breakout boxes (the ones that allow you to mix ethernet, phone, and coax on the same wall plate).

The conduit idea is what I am considering for the internal wiring in my studio (lots of baseband analog video and SDI digital video via Belden 1694a, as well as RS-422 control cables)...

 

[Peter Iowa]

Good thread

This is a good thread and I am certainly not an expert, but maybe this will help slightly:

My current house is 110 years old and was redone somewhat inside before I bought; don't know how good wireless will be in future, but...

I ran one ethernet cable from first to second floor, so I think that's really important
as someone was talking about earlier, even if wireless gets used later...
As for MY tv, and it would be better if I didn't have wires all over the place...
(prewired for just one system)

I wanted FTA (one cable) and roof antenna (another into house) and DISH
cable from 3-sat (third cable) although DISH will be gotten rid of later this year;
and that's 3 for tv and they can't be combined well at all ... don't know
if I would wire for 3 separate cables through new house all the rooms though,
and then maybe have built in filters for phone line for hi-speed internet ...
gets really complicated...read in pc mag that filters can go bad and blow
out phones too.

 

[digiblur]

I hate to mention this but you really should not staple or tack Cat5 cable, nor should you give it 90 degree bends (not sure if you did). You will lose throughput on the cable if bent or stapled. That is why you always see cable 'troughs' in many setups--the cable is left to hang relatively freely.

If it is not too late, I'd really recommend pvc conduit between your media center and at least each floor of the house. Go from your central node straight up to each floor, and then you can distribute to the floors in whatever manner you want.

The point of conduit is "you never know" what comes next. You may want to run some new wires through the pipes and it is a heck of a lot easier running through a pipe than through studs, drywall, etc.

No 90 degree bends here...which I think is a bunch of hogwash as another friend was touting the same thing. I ran one cable like you are supposed to, I ran another with crazy bends, ran it near some electrical cables, and other no no's. He couldn't tell me which cable was which after running his tests from PC to PC. CAT5 100megabit is very forgiving in a real world situation, people get too caught up in all the specs that some guy up in a cubicle dreamed up for job security.

The staples are plastic staples just for stapling cables. That attic would have been a mess without staples.

 

[digiblur]

This is an interesting thread for someone who is preparing to pull down all of the sheetrock in their home (as I am, thanks to Katrina's flooding). I plan to run RG-6 quad throughout the entire house. There will be two drops to each room, and a plethora (not sure how many yet) to my studio which serves as the media "heart" of the building. Additionally, I'm planning to run Cat 6 (if I can find some) to each room and three-pair telephone cable to each room. I'll terminate using modular breakout boxes (the ones that allow you to mix ethernet, phone, and coax on the same wall plate).

The conduit idea is what I am considering for the internal wiring in my studio (lots of baseband analog video and SDI digital video via Belden 1694a, as well as RS-422 control cables)...

You'd be amazed at the amount of RG6 and CAT5 cabling jobs I've been getting due to sheetrock work. I've also been telling people about FTA in the meantime during the wiring process, lots are interested, especially when you say legal, free, and one time cost. Might have a free installs coming up and maybe some new faces in here.

 

[No Strings]

For component runs something along the lines of Belden 1522A might be a consideration.

Neal

 

[Tron]

You'd be amazed at the amount of RG6 and CAT5 cabling jobs I've been getting due to sheetrock work. I've also been telling people about FTA in the meantime during the wiring process, lots are interested, especially when you say legal, free, and one time cost. Might have a free installs coming up and maybe some new faces in here.

Well, if anything good came from Katrina and Rita, its the opportunity to upgrade home wiring while the walls are down. Prior to Katrina, I was going to run cables by dropping them down behind the walls. It will be considerably easier now...

 

[Sadoun]

Here is a cable you might want to consider :


Multimedia cable with 2 Category 5e voice and data cables combined w/2 satellite and digital 2.4GHz RG6/U quad sheild coaxial cables as well as 2 optical fiber cables. Used for residential voice, video and data cabling.