House re-wire - should I get a LAN installed too?

Five_Star

Five_Star

Five_Star

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Me and the wife have bought a new house that needs a fair amount of building work doing, including a full re-wire of the house electrics.

This leads me to the question, should I get a home network installed at the same time? I work professionally in an IT department and have been involved with several large scale commercial network installations and upgrades so I know the level of work needed and some of the difficulties involved, but don’t have any real experience of home networks or home automation stuff.

Points against having one installed are the way wireless is developing, should I just save the money? I’ll be running wireless for iPhone, laptop and web radio anyway so why not got 100 % wireless?

Another negative is that while I know professional network installers are fast and know what they are doing, whats the chance of our electrician knowing the ins and out of LAN installation?

On the plus side we have a large under stairs cupboard that could hold a patch panel and a tower server no problem. Alternatives to a pure data LAN are to install extra cat 5 for routing TV from the living room to the bedrooms, possibly also running control lines for IP security cameras and x10 home automation as well as running a home PBX and IP phones?

I guess what I’m asking is, what should I get put in while the house is a building site and has anybody any experience of this?
Cheers
 
If I was in your sitution, I certainly would wire in a network. Having just moved in to a new flat, i have just set up our network. I wanted to run Cat6 (if you do go ahead with kitting the house out then use cat6 or cat5e at the very least to provide some future proofness). But due to it being a rented property with wood floors, I was unable to route the cables neatly, so i did it mostly with wireless. It all works nicely, but having wired if you can would be better. Its faster, more stable and more secure.

To start with you would only need to fit the cables and socket panels and you could leave much of the other stuff for later. If your not confident your sparky can do it, im sure you could get network fitter or even AV installers to do it for a small cost.

Keep us update if you do go ahead with it.:)
 
I would take the oppotunity to get cables run out as well.

We find most electrical installers will run CAT5 cables out these days. Some will terminate but we often do that.
 
Ah, I had completely forgotten about provisioning speaker cable. There seems so much to do with all the work going on, thanks for reminding me.

I do like the reliability of a hardwired LAN, it would give flexibility in the future. Some electricians offer to install LAN although I’m not sure of their workmanship quality and I doubt that professional installers we’ve used on site would do residential jobs. I’ll be avoiding cat 6. It’s expensive (both cable and face plates), needs to be installed carefully and has limitations on bend radius etc.
One idea I’ve been thinking of but would no doubt increase cost is to bury trunking in the walls first then pull through cables myself after the major work of channelling the walls and re-plastering is done.
I’ve never heard of an AV installer, I’ll have to have a Google on that one. I’ll be interested to see if there are any up here in the north east.

I’ll certainly keep people updated with what happens, I understand I’m not allowed to cross post this in Home Cinema & Hi-Fi as I suspect they’ll be more home AV people in there.
Thanks for the help so far
 
Get two LANs done - always useful to have a backup or you could use on solely for a digital AV LAN.
 
I recently bought a new house and the first thing i asked for while is was still under construction, was the inclusion of CAT5 cables to the lounge, bedroom and what would be my computer room, also had speaker cables routed for my surround system. I too have an under stairs cupboard were i have my router and main phone line point.

So glad i did as the wireless signal of my router is not great upstairs, so having a hard wire point means i get full speed transfers over the network :)

The only issue i had was that they Just fitted the cables where i asked, they did not terminate them or fit face plates, i had to work out which cable was which and then add the relevant connectors, no big deal though, just there were four cat5 cables loose under the stairs so i had to test each one with the ends in each room to find which was which LOL.
 
Thanks for the input UKDTweak, I hope you only paid to have the cable installed, not terminated as well. That is rather amateur of them not to label each cable for you but I guess four isn't too hard to track down.

I guess I'll have to get some more quotes for the entire job as it’s the electrics thats the most important to get right. I'm probably going to supply the cable and fixtures myself to reduce costs.
 
Five_Star said:
I’ve never heard of an AV installer, I’ll have to have a Google on that one. I’ll be interested to see if there are any up here in the north east.
Click to expand...

I can't say who as they will be classed as competitors now that ocuk sells NAD kit, but there is at least 1 in central Newcastle. :)
 
Well we have been in the new house now for several months and still not got the bill, in fact we have yet to get the snag list sorted LOL.

Anyway, go for it, the only regret i have is not having ports in more rooms, the one in the bedroom should have been the master room, but the wife decided to use the other bedroom as our master, so no network in there bar wireless which is a bit flakey upstaris as i said.
 
Get a few main sockets fitted into the wall also, when you do buy Chord poweramps you'll want them plugged into the wall, not with a multi-way mains block
 
I'm really glad I didn't rely on wireless round the house. It's a lot easier installing cable while there's building work going on. When we moved into and extended our current house I installed an alarm and at the same time put at least 2 cat5 and 2 coax (for satellite and tv distribution) into each room, more in some rooms. I worked on the principle that the cable is cheap (or, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!), and that I only wanted to take floorboards up and make a mess with knocking holes in joists, walls and replastering the once. It all comes back to 'node zero' (aka airing cupboard) where only the cables in use are terminated. That's where my router, switch and tv distribution are.
A couple thoughts (some of which I should probably have thought a bit more about at the time - I know what you mean about there being too many things to think about):
- TV over cat 5 isn't cheap. You'll presumably want your satellite / freeview decoders in the rooms with the TVs (so the remotes work!), so will need coax to them anyway (minimum 2 for sky+/HD, 1 terrestrial antenna downlead, plus any return for distribution). Also, how would you remote control what channel to watch from the bedroom, etc.? Slingboxes might be an answer here if watching on a PC/HTPC.
- put sockets wherever TVs, desks, internet-enabled fridges (etc.) are likely to go
- Use high quality satellite cable (CT100?) and avoid joins or small radii.
- Get alarm cables for PIRs, door switches, keypads in at the same time
- CCTV cameras normally need power too
- If you can, put ducting behind the fireplace etc. for cables. I'm not convinced that putting trunking in and feeding cables later would work; you still need floorboards up, holes in joints, ...
- Think about having a separate non-RCD circuits for fridge/freezer and alarm/security system.
- If you're thinking about home automation, I expect there's a whole load of new cables to think about to light switches etc. Can't help on this one.
- Take photos of where any spare cables may be (e.g. buried in ceilings)
- You can get modular face plates to combine RJ45, coax and speaker termianls. If they are not terminated just put a blanking plate over and paint it room colour.
- How hot is your under stairs cupboard going to get with a server and other stuff on 24/7? Might not be the place to keep the wine.

On your question of who does it, it probably comes down to money and risk. If you're prepared to spec it all then the builder could probably put all the cables in OK if given rules like labelling, bend radii and how much cable to leave for termination. It depends whether you're prepared to take the risk of cables being damaged or in the wrong place when you start setting it up.

I can't think of anything else at the moment - hope the above isn't all too obvious.

BRs
 
Thank you Wonko, its all very helpful. I’ve been working on the ‘basic’ electrical spec all weekend of where the sockets etc will go, having non RCD for fridge freezer etc. Getting a separate non RCD circuit for both the office (computers) and main TV room. Wife thinks we don’t need a data point in the Kitchen, I’ll have to reminder her about the IP fridge freezer!

I should really use sketchup to show you guys how the house is going to look or how it could look. The wife says its ok to have the TV on the chimney breast and luckily the chimney is next to the under stairs cupboard so a large conduit could be installed for cable routing. The ‘cupboard’ is about 2m x 2m its really quite large but its in the middle of the house so venting or cooling could be difficult.

It really is difficult standing in an empty room thinking about where all the furniture is going to go and where things might go in future or expand into.

I’ve called a few companies over the weekend with regards to home automation, should be getting called back next week with more info and possible quotes. It seems a lot of electricians now know about data cat 5 for computers and IP phones so I’d be happy letting some of the people I’ve spoken too install and terminate for me.

As for multi room TV I have started thinking about using the main chimney as a full height conduit to the loft for HDMI sharing via the loft to bedrooms / office upstairs.
I assume in this setup I would also need coax for remote control sharing?

Cheers
 
Sounds like you've got a fun project on your hands.
Are you sure that the tv would not be too high up on the chimney breast though? They look great in magazines but might give you a stiff neck if you actually want to watch it. And if you use the chimney for cables then you won't be having a fire in the lounge...
Re remote controls, it can certainly be done using tv link gadgets over coax but there are probably other ways too. Letsautomate.com is a site I've looked at before that might give a few clues.
Not trying to complicate things for you of course :).
 
Re: TV point, We're removing the fireplace, I know people say they are a focal point of the room, but that was back in the 19th Century. They are pointless today unless you like looking at them as the house is heated perfectly by the central heating, so no problems about getting the TV at eye level.

What I would really like it so remove the chimney breast but thats a massive structural change. Had thought about building up a false wall to recess the TV into, possibly with a sliding cover to hide it away when not in use but that will have to wait for now.

This thread really has gone off topic now we're talking about buildings and room design. I'll have to start a home renovation thread, probably in Home Cinema & HiFi
 
Our house is CAT 6 all over, we run it outside across most the rooms (3 storey house). Think it cost around £60 or so, was really cheap. (got a long piece of CAT6 on ebay for really cheap)
 
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