Wiring Best Practices

Hey all, does anyone have any pictures (like 'in-process' photos) of their wiring jobs on new construction? I've looked at about every photo on here but haven't really gotten a clear idea of how I should plan my routes. I am building a ranch home, finished walkout. I will have all the time I need to pre-wire (tons of cat6, rg6, and alarms ensor wiring up the yin-yang)... I want to see if anyone has any photos of how they routed their wiring from the basement to the main floor. What are the best practices? Should I take the path of least resistance or try to keep my wiring to the outside of the house? What about traversing from the basement to the main floor? Come up at one point for all wiring and branch out? Or just come up under each location? Thanks in advance!!

You can look at my thread on AVSforum, but it will be hard to tell how it is all run. I had the same questions, but when it got down to actually making the wire runs, each one was accomplished in the best way for the given situation. Some went up and over, some went down and over, etc. In my central closet, there are wires arriving from both the ceiling and floor. I am in the process of terminating wires now. We are moving in this week. The project is very much a work in progress. The pics in the thread are before I have gotten anything even close to organized. I will post more pics as I get cable management more complete.

I've got 12-15k feet of cat5e in the house and wish there was more in some areas. Doesn't include speaker wire, security, minicoax (rg59).

AVS thread

Yep...mine varied depending on where the wire was coming from. You can't really tell what the best way to run wire is until you actaully see the framing sometimes. For example, I thought I was going to run all of my wire through the 1st floor ceiling to the wiring closet, but it turned out to be much easier to run it under the first floor. Like Ace, I have wire coming in from the floor and the ceiling in my wiring closet.

I tried to keep all of my wires in "trunk" lines. I then nailed PVC in the crotches of the engineered joists so that the wires wouldn't get caught. It worked pretty good. The best thing that I learned was to take a 4" conduit for a turn. I cut out the back of it. After a pull, the group of wires were "popped" out of the conduit so that it was clean for the next pull. Drilling out the holes PRIOR to the pull makes it easier also, because it's less handling than having to come back later, drill the hole, and then feed the cable.

I wish that I had set all the sensors BEFORE insulation, because some wires got pulled back and they are a bitch to fish out with insulation and drywall.

There are few pictures in my showcase of the wiring but PM if you want more.

You did say best practices, so I'm loath to post this....but here are some pics and story of our house wiring adventure.

AceCannon said:

You can look at my thread on AVSforum, but it will be hard to tell how it is all run. I had the same questions, but when it got down to actually making the wire runs, each one was accomplished in the best way for the given situation. Some went up and over, some went down and over, etc. In my central closet, there are wires arriving from both the ceiling and floor. I am in the process of terminating wires now. We are moving in this week. The project is very much a work in progress. The pics in the thread are before I have gotten anything even close to organized. I will post more pics as I get cable management more complete.

I've got 12-15k feet of cat5e in the house and wish there was more in some areas. Doesn't include speaker wire, security, minicoax (rg59).

AVS thread

Click to expand...

Hah! I wish the builder of my house had put something in the attic like you did to walk around on. I had to go up there and build catwalks to get around because I needed both hands and feet to "monkeybar" around up there. I'm still not done, but now I have to wait until fall unless I want to slow cook myself.

beelzerob said:

You did say best practices, so I'm loath to post this....but here are some pics and story of our house wiring adventure.

Click to expand...

That's one of my favorite CT posts!

I especially like this quote from that thread where you were describing the drain after yet another long day of pulling wire:

Jan 6: I'm tired. Just beat. It's been 7 DAYS STRAIGHT of doing this. We're not done....but we're close enough now that when I die of exhaustion tonight, my wife's next husband will be pretty pleased!

Click to expand...

Hehe...ah yes, I remember thinking that.

Man, I STILL get shivers of dread thinking about that time a year and a half ago....cold, dark, and endless work. Gah. It was NOT a labor of love! But man am I glad we did it.

signal15 said:

Hah! I wish the builder of my house had put something in the attic like you did to walk around on. I had to go up there and build catwalks to get around because I needed both hands and feet to "monkeybar" around up there. I'm still not done, but now I have to wait until fall unless I want to slow cook myself.

Click to expand...

We made sure to buy a bunch of 2 X 4's and stick them up in the attic before the drywall went on. Then we nailed them in various places so I could relatively easily walk around. The framers had their own walkways, but they were likely to disappear when the blown-in insulation came, so we built our walkway high enough to still be visible. Unfortunately, we got lazy towards the end and just left some of the 2 X 4's up there without nailing them in...BOY was that hard to go up later and clamp them to truss' and nail them in, without stepping through the insulation/ceiling.

beelzerob said:

signal15 said:

Hah! I wish the builder of my house had put something in the attic like you did to walk around on. I had to go up there and build catwalks to get around because I needed both hands and feet to "monkeybar" around up there. I'm still not done, but now I have to wait until fall unless I want to slow cook myself.

Click to expand...

We made sure to buy a bunch of 2 X 4's and stick them up in the attic before the drywall went on. Then we nailed them in various places so I could relatively easily walk around. The framers had their own walkways, but they were likely to disappear when the blown-in insulation came, so we built our walkway high enough to still be visible. Unfortunately, we got lazy towards the end and just left some of the 2 X 4's up there without nailing them in...BOY was that hard to go up later and clamp them to truss' and nail them in, without stepping through the insulation/ceiling.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm putting mine in all by myself, and I end up tacking in one end of each 2x4, and then laying over a 45 degree truss support to support the other end and screw it in. Then I'm laying down 2 foot by 8 foot sheets of plywood for walkways on it. I have about another 50 feet to do so I can get to the other side of the attic. If someone invented an affordable attic catwalk system that you could easily put in, they'd make a fortune.

Plywood?? oooo, don't we have the fancy attic walkway system going!!

My paths are all just 2 X 4's....mainly because I didn't want to create any areas they'd have trouble shooting the insulation into. So when I'm working up there, I've got one foot on a 2 X 4, and I'm jammed up against a truss to keep steady.... Painful, but it's worked fine so far as I've installed 2 extra ceiling outlets, a TV antenna, and temp sensors up there.