felixrosbergen
Senior Member
ok, as some of you might now i have taken the approach to have conduits up to the attic or down to the basement in the walls rather than actual cable. This was done since the house is built by a developer and i could not do any pre-wire myself. If i had to put an LV contractor to run all the wires i wanted it would have cost a fortune. Also this method gave me more time to think through what i really want AND i can change it when needed (e.g. if there is ever such a think as 'fiber to the tv' i am ready for it).
The moment of truth has arrived and i've stared running some cables. So far so good. I had previously bench tested with 2R6QS+3 cat5e through a 3/4" conduit and this worked in practice as well. I did a few runs of that as well as 1RG6Qs+2cat5+1cat6. This fits through 3/4" flexible conduits just fit. Since the conduits go up to the attic or down to the basement they're all relatively shorts (<10') so you can just push the bundles through without the need for a pull string.
All this ofcourse only works if you have access below the ground floor (i.e. basement/crawspace) and an attic.
The ground floor has insulation on the bottom of it which is held up between the floor joists by short metal rods. This is pretty easy to remove i can run the cables in the basement ceiling and put the insulation back up. It's easy BUT it's a lot of work, up and down the stepladder a gazillion times.
I was contemplating the method of mounting the wire bundles. I stared with velcro wraps that i nail to the joist. This allows me to add wires to the bundles at a later time. This velcro is not cheap and this gets expensive fast. I also have some jars of cable clips (plastic things with a nail) for coax and cat5/6. I've havent fully decided whats best yet. For main trunks i think i'll continue the velcro method so i can add to the bundles easilly. For runs of only 2 or 3 cables I'll just individually nail them down. But i don't know what to do yet with longer runs of bundles of 4 to 6 wires or so. In the attic i may put hooks into the roof trusses,but in the basement ceiling this woudl interfere with the insulation.
I have mounted a 4'x'6' piece of plywood next to the electrical panel in the basement. I used pressure treated 2x4's and shot them into the concrete with a Hilti gun borrowed from a friend, worked like a charm (but remember to put earplugs in when using these). The ELK 42" Leviton can will go on this board as well as 6U Middle Atlantic wall mount rack (HPM). Into this rack I have a 48 port Leviton Quickport panel. Each cable will get it's own keystones and the keystones will go into this panel. This will allow me to organize/group the cables as i wish.
My strategy is to have everything to ends in a jack in a room somewhere in the house be terminated onto these panels. There will be no phone/RJ11 provisiosn since RJ11 fits inside a RJ45 jack anyway. So if i want a phone somewhere in a room I plug the RJ11 into the wall RJ45 jack and in the wiring room use Cat5 with RJ45 to connect it to the phone distro board. Using this method a cat5 or cat6 run with RJ45 keystones on each end can be used for anything and can quickly and easlly be changed. None of the cat5/6 runs there will be designated for a specific purpose. I have counted how many i need to where and when the time comes i just activate as needed by plugging them in.
Everything that is hardwired througout the house (ceiling speakes, Elk keypads, door/window switches, motion sensors, etc) will all get hardwired directly to where they need to go in the wiring room. No 66 or 110 blocks for the security wiring or anything like that. My thoughts are that this stuff is not going to change often so why cause myself more work and introduce more potentials for error into the chain.
I have a Rhino 3000 coming and i will be labelling everything consitently using a labelling scheme i proposed in this thread:
http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=11917
I will post pics of the fnished house and automation control center soon.
The moment of truth has arrived and i've stared running some cables. So far so good. I had previously bench tested with 2R6QS+3 cat5e through a 3/4" conduit and this worked in practice as well. I did a few runs of that as well as 1RG6Qs+2cat5+1cat6. This fits through 3/4" flexible conduits just fit. Since the conduits go up to the attic or down to the basement they're all relatively shorts (<10') so you can just push the bundles through without the need for a pull string.
All this ofcourse only works if you have access below the ground floor (i.e. basement/crawspace) and an attic.
The ground floor has insulation on the bottom of it which is held up between the floor joists by short metal rods. This is pretty easy to remove i can run the cables in the basement ceiling and put the insulation back up. It's easy BUT it's a lot of work, up and down the stepladder a gazillion times.
I was contemplating the method of mounting the wire bundles. I stared with velcro wraps that i nail to the joist. This allows me to add wires to the bundles at a later time. This velcro is not cheap and this gets expensive fast. I also have some jars of cable clips (plastic things with a nail) for coax and cat5/6. I've havent fully decided whats best yet. For main trunks i think i'll continue the velcro method so i can add to the bundles easilly. For runs of only 2 or 3 cables I'll just individually nail them down. But i don't know what to do yet with longer runs of bundles of 4 to 6 wires or so. In the attic i may put hooks into the roof trusses,but in the basement ceiling this woudl interfere with the insulation.
I have mounted a 4'x'6' piece of plywood next to the electrical panel in the basement. I used pressure treated 2x4's and shot them into the concrete with a Hilti gun borrowed from a friend, worked like a charm (but remember to put earplugs in when using these). The ELK 42" Leviton can will go on this board as well as 6U Middle Atlantic wall mount rack (HPM). Into this rack I have a 48 port Leviton Quickport panel. Each cable will get it's own keystones and the keystones will go into this panel. This will allow me to organize/group the cables as i wish.
My strategy is to have everything to ends in a jack in a room somewhere in the house be terminated onto these panels. There will be no phone/RJ11 provisiosn since RJ11 fits inside a RJ45 jack anyway. So if i want a phone somewhere in a room I plug the RJ11 into the wall RJ45 jack and in the wiring room use Cat5 with RJ45 to connect it to the phone distro board. Using this method a cat5 or cat6 run with RJ45 keystones on each end can be used for anything and can quickly and easlly be changed. None of the cat5/6 runs there will be designated for a specific purpose. I have counted how many i need to where and when the time comes i just activate as needed by plugging them in.
Everything that is hardwired througout the house (ceiling speakes, Elk keypads, door/window switches, motion sensors, etc) will all get hardwired directly to where they need to go in the wiring room. No 66 or 110 blocks for the security wiring or anything like that. My thoughts are that this stuff is not going to change often so why cause myself more work and introduce more potentials for error into the chain.
I have a Rhino 3000 coming and i will be labelling everything consitently using a labelling scheme i proposed in this thread:
http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=11917
I will post pics of the fnished house and automation control center soon.
how do you like it?
