ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Do you do the whole job?

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).]