Best practices before running ethernet through your house

[dulcificum]

What do you wish you'd thought of?
What would you do differently?
Easy ways to avoid pulling floorboards or chasing walls?
Socket location in retrospect?
CAT7 good enough?
How long cables to buy (not sure exactly how long the runs will end up but don't want to go too long on 10GBase-T)?

Give me your wisdom please

 

[dulcificum]

Anything above CAT 6a is overkill, for runs of up to 55M CAT 6 would suffice.

Oh I do get that. But for the sake of £1 I'm happy to overspec (and if it one day means not having to pull cable again then it's £1 well spent.

 

[dulcificum]

If you're cabling a house you'll be buying bulk cable (solid core) on a reel or in a box. You won't be buying cables of a specific length.

If you're just tacking a few cables around the skirting boards then buying premade cables could make sense.

You really don't need (or really want) anything 'better' than Cat6. There's a reason that Cat5e is still so common.

I need to have cable chucked across the staircase and along skirting board for the next few months until I can get the tools needed to do it properly so I will be reusing my existing cables which I need to buy at roughly the right length. I can always reterminate them later.

 

[dulcificum]

Cat6 is a lot easier to terminate than Cat6a, if you're going to buy shielded cable and then just ignore the shielding you could possibly end up with poorer performance than Cat6.

If you're doing overkill for the future then pull in 20mm flexible conduit so you can just replace the cables in the future if something else comes along.

In order of things I'd rather do to get cables in (ignoring surface runs or just kicking things under carpets):

• Not do it at all
• Fish down existing capping from loft into an existing box (maybe pulling out a useless telephone cable at the same time), this is very dependent on how your house was constructed as some cables will be clipped and then just plastered in. Obviously this only works if the capping has low voltage cabling in already - e.g. you can convert a TV outlet into a TV and network, but you can't have mains power in the same box
• Drill into the top of a stud wall and drop a cable down from a loft, cutting a section of plasterboard out to get past a noggin (if the wall is timber, if it's a really new build it might be metal framing)
• Lift carpet to get into a floor to come up or down into a stud wall
• Drill through an external wall to route cables between floors on the outside of a building, hiding conduits behind downpipes where possible
• Cut a plasterboard ceiling open to run cables up into a stud wall
• Chase cables into solid walls and redecorate
• Lift up a tile, lino or wood floor to run cables up or down into a stud wall

Hang on is that ascending order or descending order?

I guess first thing is to find where stud walls are. I'm a complete noob at this.

Are there elegant solutions to running under carpet without creating a "bump"?

Is 20mm conduit enough for 2-3 runs?

And I always thought the issue with external runs was access and weatherproofing. What's best practice for this?

 

[dulcificum]

I wish I’d REALLY thought about how I wanted my network to be part of my home. How many network cameras I NEEDED, and to allow for external access points because the Tesla needs one to phone home to Google HQ every night.



I would put a power socket near every network socket. Mount additional network sockets in places that I might want Sonos speakers, get Openreach in to move the incoming internet connection to where the network Cabinet is and build a soundproof enclosure round it so I can’t hear the hard drives clicking away. And everywhere I put a socket I’d double up what I had planned.




Unfortunately that’s just how it is if you don’t want to run everything externally.



I would definitely add at least one socket and power outlet in a ceiling/wall corner to get a wired Sonos speaker in every room. And the CCS vertical entry RJ45 boxes mean you won’t keep banging the cables as you walk past them. Get a modular patch panel so it’s easy to add additional points without having to access the patch panel itself to punch down. The CCS tool-free keystones are fabulous in my experience.



As the cable standards go up the cables get thicker and harder to work with. I cannot imagine any scenario in a home (even a home business) where CAT6 wouldn’t be good enough. If you want to go better, just bite the bullet and put in optical fibres.



Buy a 305m box of external grade CAT6 and then another one if you run out.

Thanks for this, very useful

No need to cameras in the next 50 years I can think of.

Instead of a power socket near every network socket why not just put the network sockets where the power already is?

I'm an audiophile so won't be going near Sonos but ceiling is a good idea. Doing corners of every room sounds like it will make the project 10x more complicated though!

Why the hate for CAT7? What do I lose using this instead of CAT6?

 

[dulcificum]

Any credibility.

Okay fair point. CAT6 it is.

 

[dulcificum]

This is turning out to be rather a bigger job than I thought! So before I buy a 24 port switch for a three bed house and drop £2k on this, what's best practices for running cables under carpet and along skirting boards?

 

[dulcificum]

Huh? £150 for cable. £250-ish for keystones and a patch panel (and a 6u bracket mount) and £350 for a really good 24 port PoE switch. How are getting £2,000?

I think it's going to be more than 150 for cable. Four runs to each room plus six in living room. And then two or three servers. 10 GbE switch. Labour and parts to chase cables into walls to get up and down stairs, repair plaster, pull up and refit carpet, etc.

 

[dulcificum]

Cables can be clipped or stapled to skirting boards, or small trunking can be used. The D-Line trucking is less industrial looking and easier to blend in.

If you have carpets you can often hide a cable down the edge so it sits in the gap between the gripper rods and the skirting.

I wouldn't run cables under carpet, there's usually going to be a better option available. You can get flat cables but they're mostly junk. Any cable under a carpet will eventually start to show through with traffic.

Thanks, all good to know. But is that cable trunking really >£4/2m?

 

[dulcificum]

I bought some trunking from ScrewFix and it turned out real great, going from downstairs to upstairs, I have a few photos of the work :

Looks good. Any elegant ways to cross landings or whole rooms?

I bought some trunking from ScrewFix and it turned out real great, going from downstairs to upstairs, I have a few photos of the work :

Looks good. Any tips for crossing landings or rooms elegantly? Can't make our much from your photos.

 

[dulcificum]

If you’re not doing it yourself, then sure, £2K will cover it. From your posts it seemed to me that you were going to do it yourself. Just get a specialist in (HiFi installers usually have reasonably priced install teams) and they’ll sort it out for you.

By the sounds of it I'll need to rent enough tools to make it worth paying the extra £1k to subcon it out.