How not to be conned on ethernet throught the home?

Wow, this went places I didn't think it would. Would expect some of these responses in GD but not here lol

azazl187 said:
This is a crazy thread. You are basically telling us that you want to prevent something that is impossible to predict. Just get a few quotes from different companies. If the price is too rich do it yourself.

99 percent of contractors are honest people that are just doing a job to feed their families and it just costs what it costs. Cough up or gain some skills.
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Asking people for their experience pricing wise on this kind of thing just so I had a general idea of something I have never had to do before and then stating that you are in the industry following a harsh unnecessary post? Yes people are in many different skills, I have my own, learning a whole new skill for one simple instance isn't on most peoples plate, please try and enter the real world.

Also after moving into a new build 3 years ago my experience with contractors has been less than positive as were my neighbours. Maybe not in your inner circle but I would guess a lot of people don't share your views regarding contractors. If they can charge more than is necessary they tend to. Get a grip.

Thank you very much for all the advice, I will look into terminating myself which again I haven't done in 20+ years since I was at college. I will try and get a few quotes, also the contractor I have coming I actually found via TV aerial installation so hoping he is more reasonable.

Appreciate the helpful responses.
 
Richeh not a single person on here can tell you what's good and what's bad in terms of pricing simply because they have no idea on tones of factors that can influence a cost.

The only real way is to get 3 quotes before it gets done and a breakdown of what has been promised.
 
WJA96 said:
Nope. Charging a full day for a hour’s work isn‘t reasonable. And when it’s pensioners it’s not exactly taking the moral high ground. I’m not going to say they’re ripping off pensioners but £350 an hour for labour and doubling the cost of the hardware?
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I agree its not reasonable, but it is normal :(
 
Bouton Aide said:
Richeh not a single person on here can tell you what's good and what's bad in terms of pricing simply because they have no idea on tones of factors that can influence a cost.

The only real way is to get 3 quotes before it gets done and a breakdown of what has been promised.
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They certainly can't give me an exact price but anyone who has had it done based on my description in the OP could most certainly give an idea of how much it cost them?

I understand it varies place to place and sometimes considerably but if someone had posted 'Well I had it done in my 3 floor house after being complete and it cost X amount' at least that gives a general hint, I don't think my question/thread is entirely unreasonable as seen by the 'sane' amount of advice I have received.

But I think that guy just has issues tbh.
 
Richeh said:
They certainly can't give me an exact price but anyone who has had it done based on my description in the OP could most certainly give an idea of how much it cost them?
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no, not really. I did it for free at the cost of a box of cable when I did it for myself. I know people who have been quoted £600 for 5 rooms.

I know people who have been charged £100 per double point.

I also know people who have got 3 quotes and chosen the cheapest one then had to ask me to go fix the problems.

I also know people who have decided to do it themselves and screwed up so got someone in, they screwed it up so had to get someone else in.

About 5 years ago I know a company been charged £160 per double point of cat6.
 
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Bouton Aide said:
no, not really. I did it for free at the cost of a box of cable when I did it for myself. I know people who have been quoted £600 for 5 rooms.

I know people who have been charged £100 per double point.

I also know people who have got 3 quotes and chosen the cheapest one then had to ask me to go fix the problems.

I also know people who have decided to do it themselves and screwed up so got someone in, they screwed it up so had to get someone else in.

About 5 years ago I know a company been charged £160 per double point of cat6.
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And yet that advice is helpful, do you think its reasonable to be charge £100 per double point as I am assuming you are familiar with the process as you have done it yourself and been asked by other people to fix contractors mistakes? Yes, No? If yes what do you believe warrants the price - are their certain major difficulties in certain types of installations that if raised by said contractor I could understand?

I wasn't asking for specifics just ideas re price. And the response that 99% of contractors by the other guy just want to 'feed their families' and just charge a reasonable price I believe most people with any experience of contractors would disagree with.
 
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Richeh said:
And yet that advice is helpful, do you think its reasonable to be charge £100 per double point as I am assuming you are familiar with the process as you have done it yourself and been asked by other people to fix contractors mistakes? Yes, No? If yes what do you believe warrants the price - are their certain major difficulties in certain types of installations that if raised by said contractor I could understand?

I wasn't asking for specifics just ideas re price. And the response that 99% of contractors by the other guy just want to 'feed their families' and just charge a reasonable price I believe most people with any experience of contractors would disagree with.
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No I don't think it's reasonable not for the house but you going to get a varied response unless you get 3 quotes if you want to save money.

If it was me I would probably only pay £15 per single pull and punch down if the house isn't that big.

Do you already have a central place where it's all going too?
 
Richeh said:
learning a whole new skill for one simple instance isn't on most peoples plate, please try and enter the real world.

my experience with contractors has been less than positive as were my neighbours.
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I don't agree with your first point personally, but maybe I'm outside of the normal, I'll try and learn as much as I can within reason, home DIY, basic mechanics on the cars etc, literally because of your second point, because I agree I think most of them are complete ***** if I'm honest.
 
Have to get a few quotes to know if it’s a good price. Also have to judge the person who is doing the job. I’ve had people round and gone with the most expensive as he clearly knew more and asked me more questions about my actual need.
 
dLockers said:
Stick with what works then, rather than upgrade to an inferior product.
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WiFi6E is a phenomenal technology. It’s the first WiFi I’ve played with where you need 2.5GbE or faster to get the full benefit of it. In open plan rooms/lofts/offices it offers excellent coverage but it just can’t penetrate walls and floors like the 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals can.
 
WJA96 said:
WiFi6E is a phenomenal technology. It’s the first WiFi I’ve played with where you need 2.5GbE or faster to get the full benefit of it. In open plan rooms/lofts/offices it offers excellent coverage but it just can’t penetrate walls and floors like the 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals can.
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I don't doubt that, but making some point about needing ethernet backhaul in every room to take advantage of some standard that literally 99.9% of people do not need and is objectively worse on every metric people really care about, isn't an argument IMO.
 
dLockers said:
I don't doubt that, but making some point about needing ethernet backhaul in every room to take advantage of some standard that literally 99.9% of people do not need and is objectively worse on every metric people really care about, isn't an argument IMO.
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Well, given that my phone is literally ringing off the hook right now with people wanting rooms cabled up and WiFi6E in-room access points so I suspect we’re dealing with different demographics. I’ve got customers buying iPhone 14 Pro models with WiFi6E and new laptops and tablets with WiFi6E and they want those ludicrous data rates.

You may personally be happy with your 1GbE FTTP downloading to your phone at 250Mbps and a lot of other folks are not and want to see the full download speed.
 
You have a few choices:

Make a compromise as to where you want cables run.
Cover the whole house where you want the cables but be aware that chasing cables and then finishing the walls off afterwards. Will add a lot of cost.
Run the cables externally in some trunking which obviously can be ugly.
Or hope that there are some cable runs already in the walls that can be reused to minimise the disruption.
This may also not be possible but you could run them externally and then punch through the wall. But again that's quite expensive and extreme.

What you are paying for in my opinion is someone who has the tools to do it. But regardless of who does it, it's going to be a messy job.

Can you take some pictures of the finish of your walls? Or do you have a floor plan of your home that we can see?

I mean I think you could potentially be clever and run cables along some of the wooden frames and just do a hole at the top and add the bottom where the cable puller, But that also depends on how much insulation is in the plasterboard.

Consider yourself lucky that you don't have brick walls within your house as I do!
 
Richeh said:
...do you think its reasonable to be charge £100 per double point...
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Really depends on the route of the run and how much of a pain it is to do them between locations. But given it's a new build and three stories, if it's internal runs then it probably isn't too bad - it's roughly the going rate around here (south east).

But to reiterate what others have said, get a load of quotes and go from there. And if you're happy to terminate, it'll be faceplates and patch panel(s) any way, then @WJA96's suggestion of getting aerial fitters, and arguably electricians, to do the runs isn't a bad shout.

As always, double or more the runs you think you need to the rooms for future use and/or spares, can either terminate or leave them in cavities. And if possible, leave plenty of length on the ends in case of re-termination - i've been on a few sites (back in the day) where trades have bodged termination which has required shifting faceplates to get the length to re-terminate and certify the run, it's messy and a pain.
If you do go down the route of using a pro network installer then you can always ask about certification - it might be a bit superficial in a home but most should be able to do it and it's handy to have for documentation.
 
Useful thread, already getting ahead of myself but keen to know prices and effort needed to install ethernet cables (just started searching for a first house).

Sounds like Cat5E will be fine for our needs, possibly two runs per socket/room and might be worth learning how to terminate to save costs.

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Haggisman said:
The bulk of cost will be in the installation - for the sake of a few £ extra surely it would make sense to future proof with cat6?
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Agreed and thanks.
 
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Terminating yourself I wouldn't imagine will save you a great deal, the time consuming part is running the cable, especially if you have to chase walls and make good afterwards
 
MassiveJim said:
Terminating yourself I wouldn't imagine will save you a great deal, the time consuming part is running the cable, especially if you have to chase walls and make good afterwards
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Agreed but it's a bit like first fix electrics versus second fix... It'll save a day or so (depending on sockets of course) as he'll just leave cable hanging out of backboxes/not screwed o n.
 
tbh if your paying for cables to be run then you may as well let them terminate them. imo if the installer screws up terminating them he has to put it right, if you do ,you may end up paying again for rerun.
 
I can't help in terms of costs, but in a previous house I had it re-wired and got the electrician to run the network cables to where I wanted them, and then borrowed a kit to terminate each of the faceplates, so all it cost me was the cable and faceplates
To terminate the plates, as long as you follow the same guide for each location, it should be pretty straight forward - once I got the hang of how to get the strands to the correct point it was just a matter of the time it took, and as a small terraced house, there wasn't a huge number to do. And being such a small house, I just had a shelf in the corner of the living room where the line came into the house and I had each of the cable runs back to there, so there was a double faceplate for each bedroom and another one for the opposite side of the living room where my TV was with my console, and I just plugged a cable from the router to each of the 3 sockets that were being used

In our current house, again, we had it re-wired, so we got cables ran to all rooms apart from the kitchen with everything terminated in a cupboard under the stairs, but this time the electrician did it all as he also did network installation so knew what he was doing and had all the gear to test it as he was going

I wouldn't want to try and do everything now that we had done during the re-wire, and hopefully having multiple runs to each point will mean I have a backup if one fails for some reason
 
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