Preparing the Structured Wiring Home Run
OK, so after a lot of research and planning I've finally started the structured wiring installation. Actually, by 'getting started' I really just mean the prep work. I've found even that takes quite a bit of work...
The Challenge
My goal for the weekend was to get everything in place for pulling the bundled cable throughout the house. This meant creating a path for the major cable runs--combination of cable trays in the basement and a PVC raceway from the basement to the attic. I also had to install the media center panel where all the networking hardware will reside:
The good news was that this ended up being a reasonable weekend project...
The Work
I started with the distribution panel. It's pretty simple, actually, consisting of the box itself and a cover. I'd also bought an AC power source designed to afix to the bottom of the box.
The panel can be installed either surface or flush mounted (i.e., set between studs in a wall). Our basement isn't finished, so surface mounting was the only option. Much of what I've read suggests anyway, though, because of the easy future access it allows to cables and such. It won't be real attractive but it's located in the shop so that wasn't a concern.
Next I prepared the horizontal cable trays where the cable coming out of the panel will lie. I'd located the panel close to the center beam of the house. This will make for a practical and fairly concealed location for all the cable--it runs the full length of the center beam and allows cable to "exit" to outlets by running out between the floor joists. This also happens to be where our heating pipes run, so the cable trays will serve to keep the cable a safe distance from the heat source.
Next I installed the vertical raceway to get cable up to the attic. I did this with 3" PVC. This required making some circular cuts through the first and second floor. These were made with a 3 1/4" bi-metal holesaw, which I picked up at Lowes:
It goes up through the back of a closet we're modifying to house our laundry chute. As you can see in the photos below, I needed a few PVC elbow joints to handle corners and to accomodate the slope of the roof up to the attic. Hopefully these corners won't be too severe when pulling the cable through.
I'll admit that a 3" raceway is a bit of overkill. In fact, I had to add 1" strips to the rafters upstairs so that the drywall will clear the pipe. My rationale was that it just seemed to provide more flexibility to go large. That and the wiring is pretty huge (3/4") and it seemed the extra space should make pulling the cable easier.
What's Next
So now everything is ready to pull the actual cable! Which is great because it just arrived in the mail...all 500 feet of it!
Stay tuned!
Materials Used
- Cordless drill
- Lenox 3 1/4" hole saw (w/ pilot drill)
- 3" PVC (including coupling and elbow joints)
- Cable trays (Search Google)
- Leviton SMC-280 Media Center (Search Google)
- Leviton AC Power Surge Protective Module (Search Google)
(6)
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Comments
Hey, we are totally in sync - I just installed a central wiring panel in our basement and have been wiring up a few outlets. We have a big steel I-beam in the basement that functions very nicely as a cable raceway (probably shields pretty well too!). I'm not running PVC though, just drilling 3/4" holes and pulling bundled cable directly. With a 3 story house I'd be running a LOT of PVC; I am sacrificing later flexibility, but I think I can live with that.
This weekend I put the cable modem and a router on a little shelf below the panel, so now I have a truly central location for telephone, computer network, and CATV (even though we haven't watched tv for like 3+ months!)
I'm waiting to do most of the wiring until after the plumber, heating guy, and electrician are done with their work, but it was fun getting started. Most fun of all was ripping out 90 years and hundreds of feet of old telephone wiring, most of which wasn't connected to anything (our place was a boarding house at one point).
Posted by: Nick | August 23, 2004 11:57 AM
Is it hard to do all this? My 1912 house is still running off 2 fuse boxes. I really want to update the wiring...but my husband is afraid. Heck, we had the electrician out a few weeks ago, and to move a 220 outlet from one side of a room to another, he wanted $2,200-. Yikes!
Posted by: Ms Erickson | August 24, 2004 9:59 AM
Wiring telephones, cable, and computer cables is easy and safe. Electrical work is a little harder because (a) it can be dangerous if you don't follow basic safety procedures and (b) there are codes that have to be adhered to (telephone and other low-voltage wiring is essentially unregulated).
$2200 seems like a lot to move an outlet, but it depends on what is included in that and what is required to do it. It might be that the electrical inspector will require, for example, that your fuse box be upgraded to a modern breaker panel if the electrician is going to touch anything (and this upgrade could definitely cost $2200).
I'd suggest picking up a copy of Black and Decker's "Complete Guide to Home Wiring." This book explains how to do a wide variety of electrical wiring, and gives a good basic introduction to the concepts of electrical wiring for the complete newbie; even if you aren't actually going to do the work yourself, it can make the planning process and talking to electricians a lot easier, less scary, and more productive.
Posted by: Nick | August 24, 2004 11:34 AM
I am just wondering about this structured wiring thing. Are you doing this because of some fear of wireless communication? Besides the CATV, I think everything is now available wireless and at a much cheaper cost than wired. I think they are even making wireless speakers these days. Wireless telephones have a huge range and do not have to be connected to a telephone cable at all times.
Just wondering if there are considerations for not pursuing wireless.
Posted by: Jeff | August 25, 2004 11:23 AM
I do have cordless phones, and a wireless router for my computer network. But, there are many reasons to run cables as well:
1. Wireless computer networking doesn't penetrate walls and floors that well. I get okay reception one room away from the router, marginal one floor away, and none two floors away.
2. Wireless computer networking doesn't support the same bandwidth that Cat 5e does. I'm running 100 megabit ethernet over my network cables, and I could even do 1 gigabit. 54 megabit is the best you can do right now with wireless (and that is assuming ideal conditions - lots of walls and floors, or even the temperature and relative humidity of the air will reduce that). For streaming music or video, or other large files across your local network, Cat 5e is better. Also, there is the security issue.
3. You still have to plug the cordless phone into the wall somewhere. It is nice to have options for where you plug it in. You also have to plug your wireless router into the wall somewhere - again, nice to have options for where you put it.
4. Interference between wireless computer network and cordless phones. I bought some 2.4 Ghz cordless phones with multiple handsets, thinking I could place the handsets wherever I wanted without having to plug all of them into the wall, which is true in theory. But, 2.4 Ghz is the same frequency used by wireless computer networks - the phones sounded terrible because of interference! I returned them and bought a 900 Mhz phone that has to be plugged into the wall.
Posted by: Nick | August 25, 2004 1:50 PM
Nick's answers have pretty well covered my thinking as well. In our case, we do a fair amount of digital media editing, so the networking speed is important. We do have a wireless network, but apart from being slow it also has many dead spots around the house.
Posted by: Aaron | August 29, 2004 6:56 AM