sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information What cables are expected in a new home today?

https://channelislandsdata.com/570.htm

has all the answers.

Cat5e is the minimum grade recommended. Cat3 is considered obsolete. Two Cat5e's and two RG6 coax to every wall of every room except the kitchen and baths is recommended. Cat 3 RJ11 or 14 jacks are considered obsolete. Use all 8p8c Cat5e jacks. This allows future flexibilty.

All wires to be home runs. No tiewraps, no sharp bends, no splices, no staples.

Copper is expensive. Speaker wires introduce loss, noise, hum, unbalance, etc. Large, hot amplifiers are required to get the sound to each room. The newest method for speakers is NOT to run speaker wires. You run a Cat5 from the media center (often just a closet where the receiver and/or disc player is) to every location where you would expect to have a volume control. Then from those v/c locations you run the last few feet of speaker wire. See, for example:

https://www.russound.com/abus.htm

Must agree with Aurthur regarding the 'distributed amplification systems' available today. We've put in several system's in the last year or so, and the customers are quite happy. If you can't swing the hardware right now, get enough info to prewire, and buy the equipment when the money falls out of the sky. If you go the wire now and buy later, look at several brands/systems and try to plan for the widest choice. Possibly, contacting the manufacturers and asking what their future wiring needs/plans are might be useful, IF you have time. John C. (Not Garand)

Thanks all around here! I'm off to a good start now and will become a fisher of walls before all is said and done! No speaker cable but lots of CATV and Cat5 to each room in home run style.

Best regards,
Scott

PS if I find any ductwork here I'm gonna use it!

looks like I may be a little late..but i always add a cat5e run to each location where a TV will be located...you can get a video balun for pretty much any format these days so it is nice to have if ever needed, you can also use this if you ever want to add an IR receiver or something of that nature

I will readily agree with AnthonyH, and we all agree with the 570 recommendations I linked above.

The best reason for running two Cat5's and two RG6 coaxs to every wall, is that furniture gets moved about when wifey-poo doesn't want the bed HERE, and the desk THERE, she wants them somewhere ELSE. The phone needs to be by the bed, the computer and fax line need to be on the side wall, and the TV needs to be opposite the bed. Then they all get changed around, and the smart installer looks like a hero when no walls need to ripped open to accommodate the wiring changes.

Running the 4 wires everywhere seems redundant, until the "Honey, you know what...I think the bed would look better..." syndrome kicks in.

In addition, many satellite TV services (of which I am thankfully ignorant) need TWO coax runs, and a dial tone for downloading the authorization codes for Pay-per-View or something. There's nothing like having to run a 25 foot line cord for temporary dialtone from the other side of the master bedroom across the deep pile rug just so His Lordship can watch two guys beat each other up on Showtime Boxing.

--Posted by EV607797 --
Running CAT5E from each room to where the modem will
be located is an excellent idea. Don't run it to the outside where the phone line comes in...
-----------------------

HAHA! Sorry to bring back an older post, but NOW I understand why most of you folks are against using Cat5e for telephone wire in a private dwelling type residential install!!

In my area it is very uncommon for home runs to go outside, I can only recall seeing that setup twice; ours terminate at a central point inside the home. There are two proper scenarios that I can think of; either NID on the outside of the house with an entrance wire terminating on a 66 block or with a drop terminating inside on a protector, then to a 66 block.

I like to see Cat5e phone lines solely because once those walls are finished, it makes it MUCH cheaper (and prettier in many cases) to have lines to change over to data jacks from telephones or vice versa.

Of course, having both cables is definitely better, only half as good as conduit...but when the home builder hires sparky to pull the cables, I'm just happy if 1) The cables are home runs; 2) They pairs actually still work after the pull.