New Home Construction Wiring Question

[ThePinHigh]

Hello, I have a question regarding ideas for my wiring configuration.  My builder installs COAX to all rooms of the house of my choosing, 5 bedrooms, study, game room, living room, and media room.  I would like to add 2 Cat5 to the game, living room, and media room for Xbox and or computer options so they can be hard wired instead of wireless.,  The builder can install the Cat5 for a price of course.  For future proofing my house and to ensure I have the best set up for Uverse I would like some ideas.  I would like to get it right while I have the opportunity.  

COAX to all rooms for tv and 2 Cat5 to living room, game room, and media room for Xbox and computers.  For Uverse I would have tv, internet, and voice.  Also, do I need a phone line for the voice at the RG?

Your thoughts, comments, and suggestions are appreciated. 

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

ThePinHigh - From a future proof perspective probably the best method is conduit to all the jacks so anything can be pulled through in the future.

If it were me, I would really try hard to pay for a cat5 for a computer and one for TV everywhere I might put a TV or computer. Because there are many jacks, the network will need a switch on each network.

COAX is good because everyone is familiar with COAX, but it too has outlet quantity limits.

I think a switch to distribute cat5 is a better choice than splitters on COAX (for U-verse).

Of course, you need tel jacks, but, this is the only case I like wireless over wired.

Tough to decide all these things that add up to over budget, but stuff you cannot see is the most important place to spend the money. If you can see it, you can change it later.

[oufanindallas]

I was going to have my builder add Cat5e to all the rooms, but for the price they wanted, my father-in-law and I can get up in the attic and run the cabling and save a ton of money.  For 3 additional drops was going to be over $500 total and the house was still at the framing stage and no sheetrock had been hung.  Yeah, no thanks.

[ThePinHigh]

Wow, that is expensive for 3 drops, my cat5 drops are $57 each.

Thank you both for your responses to my original post.

Here is what I have decided to do-  Run 1 COAX drop to all 8 rooms and run 2 cat5 drops to the living room, game room, and media room.  I know the Xbox and computers will be in those rooms and I will have the option to go wired if I choose.  I will have the phone line dropped in the living room because I believe that is where the RG will be set.

If anyone else has any ideas or suggestions please let me know.

Thanks.

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

ThePinHigh -
Re: I will have the phone line dropped in the living room because I believe that is where the RG will be set.

I believe the RG is best fed from the NID via cat5. Coax is second choice, but introduces complexity of feeding TVs via a diplexer. Cat3 Tel cable is only used with strong signal.

Do you have any idea how far you are from the VRAD. If you are over 3000 ft you will have pair bonding with the RG in the NID, called INID on the side of the house & the TVs will be fed COAX from the INID.

Also, will you have POTS or U-voice for tel? POTS tel distribution is fed from the NID or INID and U-voice from the RG or INID.

And, you thought it was goimg to be simple.

[ThePinHigh]

Since I will have 1 COAX and 2 Cat5 at the 2 possible RG locations should I even bother putting a telephone line at a location?

[aviewer ACE - Wizard]

There are so many unknowns & you are trying to make sure to keep your options open.

I think there are two possible scenarios for a tel cable at any location -

1) A telephone (other end is a distribution block or a dial tone source [RG or NID])

2) You have U-verse voice with an RG & you want to distribute the dial tone from the RG to another or more phones the house.


There are cases when the RG is fed cat3 (previous post said with strong signal). Another reason is because it is there. So, for RG feed if the cat5 is "there" it would be first choice over cat3.

[ThePinHigh]

Great thank you very much AGAIN!

For the phone line I will leave it in the kitchen and use wireless handsets for other locations. 

I also have 3 pluglink adpaters to use for wired connections if I really need it in the other rooms where I dont run the cat5.

I should be good then with the 8 COAX and 6 cat5 drops, allot to consider I'm better off now thean COAX everywhere.

Thank you!

[jimgfitzgerald]

I would definitely run coax to every room.  You never know when you might want to dump U-Verse and go with cable tv.  Make them all home runs from a central distribution closet or the side of the house with no splitters.  I would put the RG in the room with your printer and desktop computer and maybe an extra receiver for a Slingbox, etc.  Two cat 5's from the distribution closet to every room would be a good idea.

[ThePinHigh]

Thank you Jim.

[jgold47]

I think what you really want is to either a) run conduit as mentioned (but I think that gets into fire issues in residential), or, create an area in the house, basement, attic, whatever, and run all your ethernet runs to this central location.  I would use cat6 + cabling or do a run of 6 and a run of 5 side by side. bring everythign to the central locaton, get a big switch and viola, you have a wired house thats future proof.  you can run your computer traffic at gigE on the 6 and use the 5 for everything else.  Run co-ax as well I suppose if you ever decided to boot u-verse. 

I wish we had done this when we had the house apart.  as it stands I have a single ethernet drop on each floor, fed from the RG and each foor has its own switch to feed everything.  

Its pretty amazing, to go from having a cable modem connected to a wireless router directly to my pc, to now have:

3 Blu ray players

3 STB's

wired audio reciever (internet audio)

xbox

desktop cpu

apple TV

networked printer

hardline for second laptop

Actually running on two separate networks 1 for computers (running off a wireless N router) and 1 for everything else including the STB's to keep traffic apart till it hits the RG. 

12 wired devices

and lets see

2 iphones

2 ipads

2 work laptops

wii

blackbery

so 20 devices with an ip address. 

wild. 

[FormerWillyb]

My house is 22 years old and has only old coax.  It is also a two-story, so retrofitting cables is difficult, unless one is willing to have cables outside the house.

If I were starting from scratch, I would definitely have Cat 5e in every room from some obvious central location where I could have a router, switch, and gateway.  And from there I would also have phone,coax, and added Cat 5e to the external demarc.  If there are obvious TV locations, I'd consider HDMI cabling from the central point as well.  None of that is cheap.

I have spent way too much time, effort and money on (1) the AT&T/Cisco Wireless STB--which has never worked and after a year is finally going back to Ma Bell, (2) I/O Gear(r) Wireless HDMI--$200 and only 720p although advertised as up to 1080p, and retrofit Cat 5e (but only upstairs).