Coax/CAT5 Wiring Setup
I'm having a new home built that is going to have a single cable in to the house, but did not want to pay the absolutely ridiculous costs the home center was charging to have cable and data ports run throughout my house pre-drywall. I've done enough DIY work on electronics in the past that I thought it would be a pretty easy project to tackle on my own, and I've worked with my rep for the builder to run my own lines in the house before they put up drywall, as long as it doesn't impede with their existing work or work that will need done once drywall is in. My home just got all of it's electrical wiring and junction boxes yesterday, and I was hoping to get a few questions answered that might help with this project: 1) When running coax or CAT5 cable, would there be any problems running my drops in the existing holes that have been drilled for the electrical wiring? 2) I am going to need a minimum of three television outlets (one provided as part of the build plan for my home) and a line for my cable modem, so I am going to require a splitter of some sort. What would be the best recommendation for splitter type/brand/etc.? 3) I know that I am going to need R6 cable (possibly R7 depending on the length of the run), but does anyone have a brand or recommendation for cable type, or is all R6 cable basically the same? 4) with the somewhat small amount of lines I'm going to need, would I need to worry about an amplifier of any sort? 5) Is there anything else that I should worry about or be on the lookout for? I'm a pretty handy DIY'er, and I've done minor wiring work before, but nothing of this breadth. Any help and/or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks, -o.r Good thinking. I did the same when my house was being built 14 years ago - only then it was phone lines tv cable. I can't answer your technical questions, but I will offer a bit of advice: Take digital pictures of where you run your cables before the walls go up. If you ever need to tear into a wall at a later point, you have an idea of where not to go... Nope, don't run your CAT5 or coax with the electrical cables, keep them separate. As to the coax, I use a two way splitter to split the signal to the modem and the TVs, then split the TV leg further as needed - split the signal going to the modem as little as possible. Amplified can be answered after the fact, see how it all works first. Even if you don't think you need cable or data lines to certain room....think very carefully what those rooms may eventually get used for. You can always terminate them if they aren't used. You should also carefully plan the placement of any ports. Make sure your significant other is involved. Sometimes you may have a picture in your mind of furniture placement and that's not how it works out. Better to put in a few extra connections now than to have to add them later or try to hide stuff under baseboards. Data and cable lines should be about 12 away from power lines or cross at 90 degree angles. Make sure you secure wiring as needed and keep it away from the front edge of the studs. I'm amazed the builder even agreed to let you do any work. Home run each data and coax cable to a central head end point and locate the router and coax splitters there. Telephone cables should also be run to that location. It's okay to daisy-chain the phone lines from one wall plate to another, but it is not good practice to daisy-chain coax -- and you cannot daisy-chain data cabling. The head end should be near the point of entry for cable, fiber, dsl (phone) or whatever you'll be using to connect to the outside world. Have the electrician put a 120 vac receptacle nearby. Use RG6/u quad shield cable for coax and Cat 6 for data. Phone can be Cat 3, 5, or 6. Purchase West Penn, Belden, or other name-brand cabling. The cheapo off-brand stuff you'll find online has been known to have manufacturing defects that you won't discover until it's too late. It's usually not an issue in residential installations, but max length on data cables is 300 feet. (328 feet counting the patch cables at both ends.) RG6 serves two masters: Cable modem and TV. As Mitch said, use a two-way splitter at the entrance. One of its outputs feeds the cable modem and the other feeds a larger splitter that in turn feeds the rest of the house's TV drops. An amplifier, if necessary, would be installed between the two-way splitter and the TV splitter. For digital cable, they don't use boosters. I had an issue with Cablevision back years ago because I had 5 digital boxes plus the cable modem. I was constantly having problems with the upstream path services (on demand and ppv, and the modem was constantly dropping sync) and I was told that they do not install boosters on digital, so they gave me a second drop from the pole. You might want to plan ahead for this possibility if the house is large enough, and bring two coax runs from the demarc point into your wiring closet. Also, I would suggest four additional coax from the outside to the closet in case you decide you want satellite down the road. That uses one, two, or four cables depending on the system. Coax is cheap, the charge for fishing cables down the road is not. Cat6 is way too expensive to waste on phone. Just use Cat5 or regular old phone line. But home run everything. Don't daisy chain the phone jacks. It just causes issues. Likewise, quad-shield coax is huge overkill for interior wiring unless you have a radio broadcast tower next door or the runs are in excess of 200ft each. Home Depot has standard RG6 for $40/500ft, and it works just fine for cable and satellite. Have the electrician put MANY receptacles in that wiring area - like 4 or even 8. It doesn't take long to accumulate a lot of devices in there (most of which use wall wart adapters), and you're going to end up daisy chaining power strips and cube taps. Trust me, it gets ugly fast.. If you are considering Fios, that has a battery backup/power supply that must be hardwired to the optical network terminal box on the outside of the house. Have Verizon run their cable before the drywall goes up otherwise they have to run it exposed on the exterior. Run a Cat6 data line to EVERY TV outlet. You may at some point down the road want to hook up an Xbox/PS3 or a media box like AppleTV or Roku. And as Gunguy said, definitely consider putting in additional ports in each room to facilitate 'rearrangement' down the road. You never know when a room layout is going to 'go stale' in your DW's mind.. LABEL EVERY SINGLE CABLE IN THE CLOSET, PERMANENTLY! If you do this wiring project properly, you will have many unused lines in there, and it'll be a lot less painful when you go to hook something up down the road if the label hasn't fallen off or faded. These are the type of labels I use: Terminate your data and phone lines on a patch panel. It just makes everything neater and easier to switch. My closet is in no condition to be shown in public right now but here's a pic of a simple setup. The black strips with the jacks are patch panels. The bare circuit board is a phone interface from Leviton. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you want it, as long as you know where everything goes. One last thing.. Buy yourself a good cable stripper and compression tool for the coax, and buy a decent punchdown tool for the data/phone jacks. Don't use twist-on coax ends and don't try to jam the wires into the data jacks with a screwdriver. Do it right with the right tools. For digital cable, they don't use boosters. They may not (Time Warner does), but I'm wondering how our customers would fare if that was really the case. One 400-bed hospital has 30+ amplifiers in the building. A 600-bed nursing home gives each resident the option of having a cable box for PPV and other premium services. Comcast may tell you not to install an amp without a return path because of the two-way communication that's necessary for their boxes. But to say there are no boosters is just wrong. An amp doesn't care whether the signal is digital or analog. All it does is amplify RF. As for RG6 quad shield, the price difference is minimal for the added benefit: Prevent ingress. Especially with the higher RF frequencies that are present in today's homes. I would use nothing less. Cat 6 for phone: Maybe it's because I deal with electrical contractors who buy it in bulk. Some have told me that Cat 5 is actually more expensive now because the manufacturers aren't selling as much. My point was, whatever you have lying around -- Cat 3, 5, 6 -- will work. I also disagree about having the electrician put multiple AC receps in the head end area. One is enough because you'll be using either a high-end power strip w/surge protection or preferably a UPS. Originally Posted by Rick Johnston They may not (Time Warner does), but I'm wondering how our customers would fare if that was really the case. One 400-bed hospital has 30+ amplifiers in the building. A 600-bed nursing home gives each resident the option of having a cable box for PPV and other premium services. Comcast may tell you not to install an amp without a return path because of the two-way communication that's necessary for their boxes. But to say there are no boosters is just wrong. An amp doesn't care whether the signal is digital or analog. All it does is amplify RF. I never said there are no boosters. I also never said I was told not to install an amp. I said I specifically told the Cablevision tech that I needed an amp, and their response was that they do not install boosters for digital service under any circumstance. Their protocol is to install additional drops, which is what they did. It's obviously not a cost thing, because a booster costs a lot less than the cable and labor to hang a new drop (which they paid for) so there must be a good reason for it.. Just saying. As for RG6 quad shield, the price difference is minimal for the added benefit: Prevent ingress. Especially with the higher RF frequencies that are present in today's homes. I would use nothing less. QS is nearly twice the price from my supplier, even more in big box stores. I used standard RG6 for my own wiring, and I have never had an issue, and I have plenty of radio and computer gear in the house. That's also what I use for my customers and have never had a callback for signal issues. I only use QS for a long run (over 100-150ft). Cat 6 for phone: Maybe it's because I deal with electrical contractors who buy it in bulk. Some have told me that Cat 5 is actually more expensive now because the manufacturers aren't selling as much. My point was, whatever you have lying around -- Cat 3, 5, 6 -- will work. Again, a 500ft box of Cat6 costs me a little less than a 1000ft box of Cat5. Cat5 will never be more expensive than 6 because there's 30% more copper in Cat6, plus it's got more plastic in it with the 'divider' and heavier jacket. I wouldn't waste Cat6 on phone. I also disagree about having the electrician put multiple AC receps in the head end area. One is enough because you'll be using either a high-end power strip w/surge protection or preferably a UPS. I still disagree, and would say two at the absolute minimum. Just because you don't know what you'll want to put in there down the road. My closet started simple 3 years ago - a router and a NAS. Now there's 15 wall warts (router, 4 network switches, Vonage box, Directv power injector and network adapter, a scanner providing a RadioReference feed, fax modem, weather station gateway, and a few other things), and three servers - all plugged into four UPS's and numerous power strips. Of course not everyone geeks out that bad, but there's nothing wrong with planning ahead just in case. I just did a house for a friend. I drilled all my own holes unless I was literally following the path of an existing low voltage device. General guidelines are for 12 separation between high and low voltage cables to prevent interference. If it had been my house everything would have been in conduit. I don't know if Cat6 is worthwhile over Cat5e. One can run gigabit up to 100m over both, and Cat6 is not really meant for 10g. If I were going to go with something over Cat5e, I'd go with Cat6A. In fact, that's what I'm planning on doing at home when I get around to my retrofit. This house was done in 5e because I had a remnant box to use up, so the cabling cost was nil. We firestopped all penetrations after getting the cable in, and stapled the cable to the studs. Typically we ran the low voltage in the next bay to just avoid interference as a problem and to make sure that there were no unhappy inspectors to find a reason to nitpick.
Related Posts:
Automatic transfer switch typical wiring example
Automatic transfer switch - typical wiring example?I'm going to buy a standby generator and in order to plan how much rewiring I need to do, I'm trying to understand how the automatic transfer swi...
Breaker and wiring for baseboard heaters
Breaker and wiring for baseboard heatersI am installing two electric baseboard heaters in my soon to be finished basement and need advise on what size breaker and wiring I need to use. The first u...
Converting from honeywell pc8900 wiring to conventional
Converting from Honeywell PC8900 wiring to conventionalHey all, I am currently trying to determine remove a Honeywell Perfect Climate thermostat system. The thermostat unit casing is cracked and I...
Adding central airthermosta wiring
adding central air/thermosta wiringI have a question I would like to ask. I was given a central air unit when a friend upgraded. I want to do all the work myself except leak checking and charging...
220 v wiring
220 V WiringHi there, I have a electric range that is connected from a 50A breaker in the electric panel. I am separating my range into a gas cooktop and a wall oven. So, this means that I will re...
