Cabling up a house

BigEejit

My sister is in the process of building her house and has asked me if I had any ideas ... I told her it would be a good idea to get network cable put in at the same time as the electrician is putting in wiring for sockets ... She can then use one cat5 cable for network and another for phone.
So this means she needs stuff, but money is running low: where can I get a 100meter roll of cat5 cheap... where can I get nice looking 2 port sockets cheap to put in the rooms getting networked, the plan is to have:
[TV outlet socket][2 plug Mains sockets][2 port network socket]

The other question was whether it is cheaper to put down telephone cable or more cat5 for the phone sockets?

If anyone has done this at home could the let us know the pitfalls / problems / mistakes that can occur....

Cheers,
Justin

shabbyroad

for now you only need to put in the cable - the RJ45 sockets can come later.
I've done this in my own home and can offer the following advice :

for every single wall box (typical size of a single electrical socket) you should put two cat-5 cables.

have the sparks label each of the cat-5 cables ..... trust me on this one
:rolleyes:
I found out that one the hard way

the wallboxes where the cat-5 cables appear can be left with blank faceplates for now, you can add the rj45 sockets later as you need them. (it's easy to do so no need to pay someone to do it - lots of online tutorials)

bring all of the cat-5 to a single location in the house
bring an external cat-5 cable from the outside phone connection (usually on the side of the house) to this central location (so you can easily route your 'phone around the house later

BigEejit

I've been looking all morning :rolleyes: and www.chip.ie seem to be the best for cost (cat 5e utp 1000ft for euro 58.68 incl. vat) ... I found somewhere else that solid core cable is the way to go so I'll have to give them a ring because they dont specify .. they also sell faceplates cheaply .. I'll have to give them a shout about them as well because details are lacking ...and finally they have rj-45 connectors for 29c ...

Peats has a rj-45/rj-11 crimping/cable stripping tool for 22 euro incl vat if I cant borrow one from somewhere ...

Anyone know any place cheaper? ...

PS Shabbyroad ... way ahead of ya ... she has had a special nook put in under the stairs with mains and a conduit to where the phone line will come to the house ... everything (comms wise) will end up there .. depending on number of puters she may get a cheap hub :eek: or switch

Occidental

BigEejit,

PM me and I should be able to sort out the CAT5 for you.

spongebob

run cat 5 and tv co-ax down the same chasings, run lekky down its own chasings

make sure u have cat5/tv BOTH sides of the fireplace in the sittingroom and in 1 or 2 beds and the dining/kitchen too.

run all of em up to one point in the attic

get a power socket up at that point too

M

air

Any word back on the what type of cable chip.ie are selling?
IE Solid or stranded conductors?

rob1891

You should make sure the cable you put down is top notch, gigabit standard which would be cat 5e methinks. Oooh the fun you could have once those gb nics stop costing a fortune. Streaming this and that and running X sessions aross the network!

Yeah, so think ahead. Putting the cable down cost far more than the bits of wire. If you ever wanted to upgrade to gigabit, or whatever is beyond ... research that, maybe you should lay some fiber!! (plus I am thinking the difference between 5 and 5e is like 0.000c )

rob

De Rebel

justin

MCI Electrical up on Forge Hill (Off Pouladuff Road) sell this stuff. You will get cable and RJ45 plugs. The cable is a bit cheaper than CHIP. Not sure if they sell the crimping tools.

The rest of the advice above is all good.

bricks

I've have CAT5 run all around the house at home.
I use all 4 pairs and hook, i.e. 1 cat5 cable per 2 port socket.
Takes 2 pairs for a 10/100Net connection and 1 pair for a phone line. Also remember that you can use an RJ-45 socket for a phone outlet.

deepspeed

I thought it was 2 pairs for a 10MBps conn and 4 pairs for 100MBps??

Can someone confirm??

rob1891

10Mb and 100Mb both use 4 wires 1000Mb uses all 8, man, what are you going to do when you want gigabit ethernet in your house!! Ha, junk your phone, voice over IP

Reading up on cabling, I am pathetic! CAT 6e is what you want! It should be able to do 10Gb, whenever that comes out

oooooh :eek:


edit:

hmmm, I see how you get two 100/10 lines out of the one cable, but how do you add the pair for the telephone ... you only have 4 pairs ...

longword

Originally posted by deepspeed
I thought it was 2 pairs for a 10MBps conn and 4 pairs for 100MBps??

Can someone confirm??

10BaseT and 100BaseTX use only two pairs. 100BaseT4, much less common than 100BaseTX, uses four pairs but it can run over the lower quality CAT3 cable rather than CAT5. 1000BaseT also uses four pairs.

Urban Weigl

Better skip copper and go straight for fibre.

Seriously though, cat 5 should be fine (IMHO). Although we have wired our house with cat 6, I can not envisage 10 gigabit ethernet being useful anytime soon.

longword

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
I can not envisage 10 gigabit ethernet being useful anytime soon.

But! But! You can only get one or two uncompressed HDTV streams down 10GigE!

BigEejit

Heh .. fiber around the house ... I would have done it if it was my house .. If only there were a pcmcia fiber card for me laptop...:D
Hmm .. you can get 2 fiber gigabit hba's for STG£70 on Ebay, of course if there are more than 2 pc's then you will need a switch that will set you back $500 ...:(

The chasing is underway with a low voltage run and a mains run seperated by 9 inches .. low voltage includes cat 5e cable, second cat 5e for phone and coax for the tv ... I know that phone cable is way cheaper than cat 5e but there is at least 2/3 of the 1000ft roll going to be left over if she didnt put down the second cable ....

I've not had any luck finding out if the cable chip sells is solid or stranded ... But if MCI Electrical has it cheaper like De Rebel says I might get it there instead ... I also have to PM Occidental .... aggg too many options :eek:

The only thing left to sort out is a nice single socket with a rj11 and a rj45 port on it ... I know that you can quite easily make up a cable for phones so you can use them with rj45, but I know my sister will want to have the whole system plug and play (i.e. bring a new phone in from the shop and plug it in there and then).....

spongebob

you can plug an rj11 plug into an rj45 socket so you needn't worry about that....thats how me own house is done, the socket on the right ...of the 2 in each single faceplate..... is the phone.

you consideration now is the backboxes at the bottom of the chasing b4 the plasterers come in.

the lekky chasing will go to a double backbox with a double faceplate and 2 x 3 pin sockets.....bog standard.

the low voltage chasing (exactly how I did it) will go to a TWIN backbox....eg you must be able to put 2 single faceplates into it so it needs 4 screwholes and not 2. Twin backboxes are a TAD bigger than Double backboxes and I would advise you to go for full depth chasings and not the low profile ones you can get away with for lekky.

In this scenario, the TWIN will have

1 x Single RJ45 faceplate with 2 modules inserted giving u 2 points .

1 X Single CO-AX faceplate which can service 1 or 2 co-ax points as you wish.

down to the electrical wholesaler u go again.

M

BigEejit

you can plug an rj11 plug into an rj45 socket so you needn't worry about that....thats how me own house is done, the socket on the right ...of the 2 in each single faceplate..... is the phone.

Gasp! ... I thought that plugging a RJ11 into a RJ45 would make $hite of the two outside "pins" in the RJ45 socket!! ... that will certainly make life easier ...

the low voltage chasing (exactly how I did it) will go to a TWIN backbox....

A twin backbox is whats being used alright ... dont know if its full depth chasings or not .. I'm guessing that they arent .. I saw the tool that the spark had .. its like an angle grinder with two blades, a little over an inch apart ... just runs it down the wall and comes along after with a hammer and chisel and knocks out the "center" piece .. used a normal grinder to cut out the shape of the backboxes ... I must have a chat with him .. but he is not a happy camper because he had to lower all the light switches in the house because of new planning laws (all houses in Cork / Kerry must be wheelchair accessible and wheelchair usable, doors must be wide enough and someone sitting in a wheelchair must be able to reach a light switch witout much trouble) he was fair pis$ed off to be rechasing for that ..

megavolt

Anyone have any ideas on how to take in one phone line and split it into about 6 rooms. I was thinking of going into maplin, getting some copper striped circuit board and soldering 6 telephone leads onto it, then feeding them into the patch panel under the stairs. This would probably work, but would I have enough power to make all the phones ring?

sax0000

Originally posted by megavolt
Anyone have any ideas on how to take in one phone line and split it into about 6 rooms. I was thinking of going into maplin, getting some copper striped circuit board and soldering 6 telephone leads onto it, then feeding them into the patch panel under the stairs. This would probably work, but would I have enough power to make all the phones ring?

You'll know when you try. There are a lot of variables - the phones you are using, the loop length, etc.

Have you thought of getting a home PABX or a DECT system?

Putting lots of phones on the same line won't help your chances of establishing a dial-up connection to your ISP - not to mind getting DSL if that is on your todo list.

sax0000

BigEejit

Anyone have any ideas on how to take in one phone line and split it into about 6 rooms. I was thinking of going into maplin, getting some copper striped circuit board and soldering 6 telephone leads onto it, then feeding them into the patch panel under the stairs. This would probably work, but would I have enough power to make all the phones ring?

I think that you would run into trouble there ... phones have a REN number ... should be printed on them somewhere (or written on the documentation that came with them ... you still have that right? :eek:) .. most phones are REN = 1 ..but some things like answering machines commonly have a ren of 2 ... the max REN you are allowed in a house is 4 I believe ... after that some phones wont ring because the voltage will not be high enough .. if everyone picks up at the same time some or all may not work .. best plan is to get a small cheap PABX from maplin (I havent looked around but the last time that I did maplin were the cheapest for the low end pabx's)...