Wiring a new home with Cat5/6 opinions?

[pylon]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Finished the meeting and this is the result.

Standard was Cat5, I upgraded it to Cat 6, this cost $550 for the whole house. (5 Bedrooms, 2 Great rooms, Basement Rec room, Kitchen)

Took the advice and went with the 4 cable bundle in all rooms (2 Coax, 2 Cat6)

Patch panel was included. Sales dude seems surprised I knew what that was.

Had main theater room fully pre-wired for Dolby 7.1 in wall speakers. Parents wanted in ceiling, I convinced them to do in wall, as I plan to buy this house in 10 years and I am more an Audiophile.

2 Conduits on either side of house are included to the 2nd floor attic.

Access panels will be put in basement ceiling for main floor access.

Cat6 ports were put in 8 locations for perimeter security cameras.

And since they insist on having me stay over all the time, I opted to have a Cat6 port wired from the basement Bedroom I will use on occasion, out to the back yard so I can power my Telescope via remote using a cooled CCD camera which I am now forced to buy, since it will be damn cool to do my observing indoors, on a 50 inch HDTV. If I discover an asteroid, I will name it pylonCPwannamaker18995.

Damn I wish I had a techno fortress of my own like this. I can't wait to start blowing copius amounts of their cash on all the hardware to make this thing tick.

Meanwhile at my 865 square foot condo.........I just got a N router!

Thanks for all the help and suggestions guys.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by pylon

Parents wanted in ceiling, I convinced them to do in wall, as I plan to buy this house in 10 years and I am more an Audiophile.

Hahahaha awesome.

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

There are tools that you can clamp on to one end of the wire and follow it through the walls. I have a bigger one that we use to find the tracer wire on buried pipes but they make something smaller. Maybe you can rent one at Home Depot.

I wouldn't even know what to search for. Any idea what this is called?

[ken0042]

Would a Non-Contact Voltage Meter work? I'm just thinking if you had on wire connected to a "hot" A/C wire- theortically it shouldn't cause damage to the wire to be connected to 120 volts as the power would never get through.

I'm just spitballing here- my suggestion could just as easily start a fire for all I know.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Delgar

I wouldn't even know what to search for. Any idea what this is called?

Tone generator and probe.

http://www.flukenetworks.com/datacom...Tone-and-Probe

Home Depot et al usually have inexpensive ones. Clip the toner leads on one end and you can use the probe to figure out where things are, though the range isn't that far for the inexpensive ones. EDIT: By range I mean the distance of the probe to the wire before you hear the tone from the probe, the distance from the tone generator to the probe can be super long, I've used small cheap ones to figure out which pair of wires was which from the basement to off the ground floors of an office building.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by pylon

Thanks for all the advice guys. Finished the meeting and this is the result.

Standard was Cat5, I upgraded it to Cat 6, this cost $550 for the whole house. (5 Bedrooms, 2 Great rooms, Basement Rec room, Kitchen)

Was the base cable Cat5 or 5e?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by ken0042

my suggestion could just as easily start a fire for all I know.

Indeed.

[pylon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Was the base cable Cat5 or 5e?

Cat5.

[Violator]

nm

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by pylon

Cat5.

Cool - if it was a $500-600 difference from Cat5e to Cat6, I'd have said not to bother, but from 5 to 6 on its own is a worthwhile upgrde.

[Ace]

Bump...27 months since this discussion...looking to wire a home, anything new a person should think of.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Ace

Bump...27 months since this discussion...looking to wire a home, anything new a person should think of.

This thread has lots of advice from cupofjoe and it was fairly recent too.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=143026