With you guys that do Residential work.
Apart from the standard Electrical wiring and fit-off.
Do you guys "up-sell" yourselves to the customer?.
By that I mean, do you ever talk your customer into having you install coaxial cabling to points in the walls, covered by a blank plate after the Drywall has been fitted?.
Also, how about Audio cabling?, you'll be thanked later when the people want a Home theatre system installed with Surround speakers and the RCA connectors you'll have to install!
Cat-5e or Cat-6 wire is the go these days!.
In a new house, the time to do it is when there are no linings.
BTW, with Coaxial cabling, don't make the mistake of a few installers over here,
you can't daisy-chain coax sockets, the signal losses are too great at the end of the line, you need 60dB to get a decent picture.
All coax lines go from the sockets, up to a common point in the Crawl space and are split with an F-connector splitter.
Cat 5e or Cat 6, is the future of home automation protocols.
Get this, Fisher And Paykel here in NZ are rolling out the first lot of Interactive Appliances, which means that your fridge will have a fault code diagnosed via the Internet, it needs to be connected somehow.
Are you guys keen to take on this new technology?.

The CAT 6 to the refrigerator might be a bit of a tough sell ! We do residential remodeling and gladly offer to pull the extra cables in during construction. For the coax, we usually pull home runs to the main cable company box outside near the main service. I'm always confused where to pull the CAT cabling to though. Do you pull it to the main phone block, to a central location and set a new phone block, to the place where they are going to set up their main computer for networking?
Pat

I usually mention that I can install CAT5e, CAT3 and RG-6 while I'm there but I don't pressure my customers. I offer it as an upgrade. This includes the wallplates and interface box if needed. And ALWAYS I run individual runs for each location.

Blessings,
Mark Randazzo

Just came back from another contractors shop, he wanted to sell me intergrated boxes he purchased, cable, phone, and lan, all in one box, take all this junk, you are welcome to it. It appears the phone installer, his own back board and rack, the cable installer runs his own cables, and the lan system never seems to be in the right place.
One home we worked in last month, had an intergrated box on the wall in the basement, just sitting there, coax cables going to each room, Dish installers came in and ran their own wires, phone installers ran from the outside protector, and the guy's Lan system came from his office area not the basement, He asked if we could please remove the box, he wanted to put a storage cabinet in that spot.
I guess the time for smart homes, is still a bit in the future.

No cat 6 to the fridge. If you want to communicate with your fridge, do it face-to-face.

I pre-wire new homes for telephone and coax. I work with the local Dishnet guy on all of the new homes I do. I also install computer networks in new homes. Sometimes I just run all the cat5 and punch them down in a patch panel and sometimes I set up the whole thing. It all depends on what the customer wants. I don't run cat3 for anything anymore. All cat5. Blue for the computer and yellow for phones. My current custom home wants RG6 ran for the Dish and another RG6 for CATV. They'll use CATV for cable modem and Dish for TV. Every phone/computer/RG6 location gets a steel box with conduit to the crawl or attic so there will alwas be access for future upgrade/reconfiguration.

For residential, I really think that wireless networking is a better choice than physically wired networks.

Fred,
The problem we find with pre-wire is, the outlet never seems to be where the customer wants it, and even if you use EMT for future pulls, the location will change. One of our customers had a pre-wire job, and we spent two days installing communications outlets, where they were needed, I think the worst of that job, was when the owner wanted us to remove the existing outlets, and patch.

LK, that job sounds like a shocker!.
But Guys, I'm not on the bandwagon of the Automated House thing.
Just a few Cat5e wires thrown in at the pre-line stage, can work wonders later on.
BTW, the idea behind the Appliances being connected via the Net, is for quicker Faults diagnosis, which means the repairman is at your house for a shorter time, as in he already knows what is wrong with the appliance before he gets there.
Even high-end lighting installations use a system based on Cat5e wiring for the controls.
You will never be able to get all of the outlets in the right place, but at the same time, isn't that the case with recepts as well?.
If that is the case, why are there never any Plans?.
People over here would sooner move into a house that has cabling for Sky TV(Dish), LAN, ADSL, phone lines and Audio in each room, it increases the re-sale value of the house.
Sure, the positions may not be to everyones liking, but it's there isn't it?.

Always sell the package! Every job Resi, or Commercial. Easy money, as long as you know whatt to do with it! Our customers want toys, and I'll sell it to them.

For resi...
2-3ea. Cat 5e, or 6
2ea RG-6Q
(At all pionts! Terminated, and labled in a panel or on a board.)

As well as...
Automation
Intercom
Whole house sound
Media distribution
Satalite
Commercial Phone system

Everthing except a network hub/switch, and NICs! (You buy a hub, we'll plug it in, and that's it! Digging around in someones computer is like putting your hand in the underwear drawer, figurively. People get really particular about it.)


[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 08-31-2004).]

I have to laugh at people who have to have the latest cat5e or 6. It's all hype folks, gotta have that speed. For what? Unless you are heavy into extensive local data transfer even cat3 will work just fine for data. Even high speed DSL or broadband internet doesn't even begin to come close to the old 10 baseT capacity. Now we are using 100 baseT with cat5e. It's like doing a 400 amp service for every house.

CAT6 to a refrigerator?

-Hal

hbiss

I disagree...

The collision/cancel rates are too high on cat-3 for some things like video or MP3 transfer. (over a distance of 100' to the hub, then out to whatever devise.)

I even run 5E MPC riser for doorbells now! 'Cause once they move in and see what thier neighbor has, they too will want the $5k+ German video intercom! And I'll sell it to them. Another 10+ cents a foot, for the opprotunity make a $1000.

Same with phone systems.

Well, I'm not advocating that we use cat3 for data. I just was trying to make a point.

You are right about streaming video and audio and I did mention that. But in the vast majority of instances, especially in residential networks, this stuff is downloaded via DSL or broadband and stored on the machine it's played on. The network isn't used for anything faster than internet, print sharing and file transfers so there is no need to waste money on "cutting edge" networking technology.

Yeah, I know about those multi-million dollar homes with networks that rival a fortune 500 company...

-Hal

Hal,
I agree that cat3 on a 10BaseT network is sufficient for most people for browsing the internet and exchanging small files. I always laugh when I read posts on forums recommending cat5 cable or better needs to be installed from the MPOE to the DSL modem. Since Mark (e57) and I both work in Silicon Valley are customers are the people that invented much of the technology now in use. They don’t mind spending money for high performance home networks and do make use of them. I don’t think any of my customers are now using anything less than 100BaseT networks and many of them are now using gigabit. Multimode fiber is also frequently installed. If you are willing to pay $2,000,000 for a ¼ acre empty lot I’ll install any type of network wiring you want.

Curt

LK, I only do custom homes, when I do homes, and I haven't had a problem with the customer wanting the locations changed repeatedly. If that's the case, cost for changes should be made known up front. Sign the change order and move on.

Here in Austria I can't remember seeing Cat 3 for sale anywhere and Cat 5 is dirt cheap, so it's installed everywhere.
Standard phone wire is 2 pair, non-twisted, no shielding whatsoever. Color coding yellow, brown, green black. Yellow and brown are used for line 1, green was originally intended to be ground but is now often used for the second line if there is one (not too common, PABXes are much more common than 2 physical lines, especially with the loads of cell phones we have around now).
Cat6 to the refrigerator... where on erath would I hook that up? My refrigerator is early 90ies, the seconadry one 1960ies...
I think those ideas of the automated home are pretty ridiculous.

Cat5 is available worldwide because it complies with the ethernet standard used by all PCs. I wouldn't say it's dirt cheap. Here you can pay nearly $250/1000feet for plenum rated cable. That's why we use CAT3 for voice wiring plus the lack of a tight twist makes for faster termination.

I think the telephone technology is a bit more advanced here in the US. Non-twisted pair voice wiring has been outlawed to eliminate crosstalk in multi-pair cables.

What do you mean by "PABXes are much more common than 2 physical lines, especially with the loads of cell phones we have around now"?

I assume you mean that people use their cell phones as their second (or maybe only) line? What do PABX's have to do with it?

-Hal

Dirt cheap is compared to what it used to cost.

Sorry, I somehow mixed up extensions with 2 physical lines
Seems like I wasn't really awake or too concentrated when I wrote that...
Well, the untwisted cable is only used for in-house phone wiring, and I don't know any recent phone installations, all i have seen is about 10 years and older, back when we only had one phone company that was owned by the government.

I have not did a home in years but don't you think that the best thing to do is run E.M.T or E.N.T to a box in the wall?
That way you can do anything you whant

I agree Big Guy. I've been saying that for years. The only way to make this stuff future proof is to make it so it can be easily replaced.

The big BUT here is the future of wireless. I suspect in a few years time network wiring in homes at least will be a thing of the past.

-Hal

Our main supply house stopped carrying Cat3 and 5, only stock 5e and 6 in CMR or Plenum. And the 5e CMR cost has gone to $50 A ROLL! (Plenum $75) They got a deal somewhere... 6 is up there though! (Granted this is not certification grade wire...)


Oh, and about "future proofing" with EMT, it had better be a 3/4 or 1"

You still have to follow fill for this stuff too! Otherwise you have a really hard pull in front of you.

Fred,
"Sign the change order and move on."

That would be fine if we did the pre-wire job, but we get called in after the job was installed, by some pre-wire company, and the owner wants to know why he has to pay twice, to get what he wants.
Most owners, will tell us none of these outlets are where we need them, So that is why I question the value of pre-wire, If you have a custom job, that you are doing for a customer, then you can present the plans and have them signed off, Then if they want to relocate an outlet, you can issue a change order.
Custom wire makes sense, Pre-wire for the sake of offering a pre-wired wired home, usually ends up requiring changes.

Don't know what wire that is. Brand name 5e riser is about $65/1000ft (roll) Plenum is almost 3 times that and that's from multiple suppliers, not necessarily local. No, I wouldn't expect an electrical supply house to stock CAT3 or the telephone stuff.

The answer to the "the jack is never in the right place" problem is to put jacks throughout a room. You don't need to do as many as electrical but put one on each major wall in each room unless you can say for certain a phone or computer will never be there. We do this in commercial because you never know where desks will wind up. They all go back to a cross connect and a patch panel (for the network jacks) and each are activated as necessary and can easily be changed later.

Yes, I know this is going to add to the cost but too bad. If we didn't have a code to dictate where and how many electrical receptacles need to be installed, the homeowner would only want one or two in each room. You can't leave it up to them. If they have a definite plan then fine but add others on top of what they want. Cheaper to do it during construction and they will thank you later.

-Hal

do i do the whole job?

sure , i can contract for just about anything

and hey, with the 'net one can learn all the buzz words overnight


~S~