New house being built

[riveradd]

I am getting ready to build a new house and want to take advantage of networking the entire house. I want every bedroom, kitchen, living room and great room wired for the net. My question is, what would be the best way to do this. I want access for any and everyone in my household that needs the internet. I will be using the cable internet. I think using a router would be my best course of action. I am a novice when it comes to networking but from what I can gather, a star topology would work best for this configuration. Has anyone done this before? I have read that installing condiut while the walls are not up yet is a good idea. How do you prevent the confusion after installing everything? I have a friend that did this and now all he has is a group of cat 5 with RJ-45 connectors and no clue what goes where. I do not want that to happen to me. We have 3 computers and 2 laptops. I may go wireless with the laptops, not sure yet.
Anyway, I know this is kinda scattered questioning but any help would be useful. A breakdown would be great. thanks in advance.

 

[jimbopalmer]

I found the following threads on wiring one's home here in this forum, perhaps the ideas there will duplicate your concerns.

New house being built
Re-Wiring the whole house!!
Wiring Residential Home w/12ft cielings
Wiring my house with CAT-5
Home cabling, (phone)cat 5 question
Wiring up the house
I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[jbrusie]

If your friend can't find where wires go or what they go to tell him to put a toner in the RJ 45 and sniff it out with a sniffer in the wiring closet. When he thinks he has the port right, put in a wire tester to be sure. Ask your IT dept to borrow the equipment over night.

No matter what you do be sure to invest in a lable maker and lable everything when you pull the wires and mark them on the patch panel in the wiring closet. Also you will want to color code things...keep all digital one color and all anolog, ie phones, another color.

Just some ideas...
John

 

[lopes1211]

You can also power up 1 PC at a time and look for the link light on the router/switch to identify the cables. Conduit all over may be overkill. You may just want conduit to the hard to reach places. I have my router/switch in my basement. I thought I had wired everything in the house I could possibly need but I still added some after the house was built. The drop ceiling and unfinished areas in the basement allows me to add jacks when needed to the first floor above. I ran a conduit from the basement through the 1st and 2nd floor up to the attic. When adding to the second floor, I run cable through the conduit to the attic and feed the 2nd floor down through the walls. -CL

 

[commworker]

If you are going to run the wire before the drywall is in it is a snap, just drill holes through your studs and run the cables. There is no need to run conduit unless you will want to make changes in the future. You will need to run a star configuration with all cables homerunned back to your hub/router.

 

[mufka]

Have all of the wiring run back to a common patch panel that is properly labeled before the walls are closed up.

If I were doing it, I would wire the heck out of every room. I'm sure someday in the near future your dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave, oven, alarm clock, furnace, etc. will all be internet ready. Better to do it now.

 

[riveradd]

Thanks for all your of your input. This definitely puts me in the right direction. I think I will install the conduit only because one never knows when an upgrade will be required and since this is probably going to be my retirement home (no I'm not that old. I don't plan on building another home again) I will want an easier way to run wire without breaking through walls and such. I still think I need a little more of a personal knowledge base before I tackle this endeavor. Don't want the wife to look at me funny when things don't work, if you know what I mean. Thanks again to all who responded and if there are any more suggestions they would be appreciated.

 

[wires]

riveradd, I hope you took jimbopalmer's advice on looking at the previous threads.

Just in case you didn't here is my recycled rant from "new house being built" started 02/04/02:

<RANT>

>One of the greatest ideas I ever saw was
>a new home owner had run 1&quot; pvc tubing

So he spent a pile of money and had nothing but empty conduit? I have been known to put conduits in to difficult locations where we knew the needs would change. But to do the whole house? Seems a waste. I bet his wife was happy when they moved in and the phones and TV's didn't work because hubby &quot;couldn't figure out&quot; what wires to run.

It is not impossible to get additional wiring to most places in a finished house. Most people would be best served to do a correct pre-wire on their new house and be done with it. Just like the rest of the electrical.

</RANT>

If you don't think I know what I am talking about (5 years in high end home automation) read the posts from Daron Wilson (who is apparently in the biz). This is a quote from him:

>I believe the best approach is a good solid prewire
>(2 utp, 2 coax) to all general purpose outlets.
>If you expect to expand etc, run some conduit where
>you think you will be adding.