Re: pre-wire home - best practices?

[RickH <passport@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 1, 8:18=A0pm, st...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm just starting to wire a new home and was wondering if there is a
> document covering best practices. I'm going to install audio distribution,=

> home automation (insteon at this point), home theatre, security cameras,
> multiple computer network spots etc.
>
> I've considered making dual runs of Cat6 to most locations as that seems
> most flexible but the baluns are certainly expensive. An alarm installer
> suggested running 3 RG59 cables to the HT projector and 14 gauge speaker
> wire to all speaker runs.
>
> Any thoughts would be appreciated or pointers to handy documents.
>
> Thanks.


I home ran to 2 separate boxes/plates in each room....  Box one was
low on a wall where I would be likely to need TV hookup and also near
an outlet.  Box two was near the entrance light switch area at switch
height.  The switch box got 2 runs of cat 5e to it.  The low boxes got
2 runs of RG6 (quad shield), and 2 more runs of cat 5e (voice/data),
these days I would probably do one run of cat5e and 2 runs of cat6 to
this box, (if your phone company indicates they can bring fiber to
your door then do fiber too, otherwise dont bother with fiber).  I
also home ran a speaker feed to this low box, then from there branched
out to the wall speakers.  This allows the wall speakers to be
assigned to a local stereo or switched to get fed from the central
speaker amp at the low box.  As for using boxes vs mud plates, if its
an interior wall forget the box, just use a mud plate, if it's
exterior then use a deep box with a mud plate.  I also ran a security
pair to every window and door.  And I ran a combo power/rg59 cable to
higher wall locations where I wanted CCTV cameras (dont use rg59 for
anything else though use rg6qs).  For motion sensors just run some
cat5 to stretegic high wall locations.  For voice I daisy chained
within each room, but as mentioned I home ran to the low boxes first.
If I had to do it all over again I would have run some more 1.5 inch
plastic corrugated conduit to the areas where you know you will have a
lot of stereo equipment, because that field changes fast and you might
want to pull new cable there later.  For all vertical drops in a 2
story home, find a wall that has the straightest drop all the way from
basement to attic.  This is usually the wall with the staircase.  You
dont want to have to deal with a bend in that pipe.  For switch boxes
make sure your electrician uses real switch boxes and not just deep
outlet boxes.  The mud rings for outlet boxes have rounded inside
corners that WILL NOT accomodate Insteon devices without grinding them
out, a major headache.  I'm talking steel conduit and jboxes because
it's Chicago, your area probably allows Romex which I believe use
square cornered plastic boxes.  Select a home run closet in the
basement or central location.  Use standard 19 inch keystone blank
panels on a rack instead of those engineered systems like Leviton
has.  All those engineered systems are way too tight to get your wire
into easily.  You can get any jack imaginable as a keystone snap in
and just drop all your wire behind the rack.  Do your labeling as you
go to save much time later tracing wires.  You probably will not have
to terminate everything until you move in, depending on your inspector
and local municipal requirements.  Any holes in wall plates have to be
fire caulked after the wire is pulled through the hole.