Any more comments anyone?
I just spent the past week doing the structured wiring for my new house. This included phone, internet, cable, audio, IR, security, and cameras. I must say the guide helped a great deal and I appreciate the effort that we put into it.
As I was doing my wiring, here are the things that I would do differently next time. I think some of these were covered in your document, some are not...
- Figure out how much wire you need prior to starting your project. Or at least find a local distributor that has the type of wire you want. Home Depot and Lowes in my area don't have CAT6, and Quad Shield RG6 is rare. I was shocked how quickly I went through a 1000' spool of wire. I thought 1 spool would be enough, but I recently ordered my 4th.
- Don't mess with Cat 5e wire...Cat 6 is MUCH easier to run. I read this before starting my project, but dismissed it and went with the cheaper CAT5e wiring for my phone system. I quickly came to realize that the money savings was not worth it.
- Buy multiple boxes of wire so you can have multiple runs of the same type of wire at the same time. In other words, rather than buying a 1000 foot spool of wire, buy two 500 foot spools.
- Don't buy wire that is not in a spool. Some of the security wire I purchased was not on a spool or in a box and quickly got tangled up to the point where I couldn't use it.
- For Audio wire, use 4 conductor from the keypad/volume control to your distribution panel and two conductor from the volume control to the speakers. This way, you don't have to run two runs of 2-conductor wire to the distribution point.
