Building a house. Don't want AV guy to know I'm a noob. Help please.
June 23, 2013 12:07 PM Subscribe
I have some pretty basic questions that I'd rather ask someone other than the man with the power to charge me out the wazoo if he senses I am clueless. They pertain to wiring the house for cable and phone and internet, and they are as follows:
1. If I want the house to get cable TV, what is the minimum required - some sort of connection from the house to the street?
2. Same with landline phone.
3. How do those cable wall jacks work? With modern-day cable setups (cable modem), do those jacks still have utility?
4. Same with phone jacks in the wall - say I go with a VOIP phone service, can those phone jacks still be functional?
Ultimately, I think my main priorities are: 1) to keep my options open regarding types of phone service and types of TV service, and 2) to be able to set things up so I don't have to open up walls in the future, or run cables along the floor from room to room.
Are these questions just so dumb they can't be answered?
Thanks!
1. If I want the house to get cable TV, what is the minimum required - some sort of connection from the house to the street?
2. Same with landline phone.
3. How do those cable wall jacks work? With modern-day cable setups (cable modem), do those jacks still have utility?
4. Same with phone jacks in the wall - say I go with a VOIP phone service, can those phone jacks still be functional?
Ultimately, I think my main priorities are: 1) to keep my options open regarding types of phone service and types of TV service, and 2) to be able to set things up so I don't have to open up walls in the future, or run cables along the floor from room to room.
Are these questions just so dumb they can't be answered?
Thanks!
The cable company needs to get cable from the street to your house. If you have a landline phone, the phone company will need to do the same.
You still need cable jacks. The cable modem plugs in to that, as will any cable boxes or TVs you have. If you have VOIP phone service, you can make it work with the phone jacks you have, but it's not a requirement (e.g. you could just plug a cordless phone directly into the VOIP adapter).
If you're building new, the best thing to put phone and cable jacks everywhere that you might want them (it's relatively cheap and easy when the walls are open), and run those all to one central location. Then run the cable and phone service from the street to that location. You'll put your cable modem and router in there, and if you use VOIP service you can also put that there, and distribute it to all your phone jacks. It's a pretty simple setup, and any AV contractor worth hiring will have done it tons of times.
posted by primethyme at 12:32 PM on June 23, 2013
You still need cable jacks. The cable modem plugs in to that, as will any cable boxes or TVs you have. If you have VOIP phone service, you can make it work with the phone jacks you have, but it's not a requirement (e.g. you could just plug a cordless phone directly into the VOIP adapter).
If you're building new, the best thing to put phone and cable jacks everywhere that you might want them (it's relatively cheap and easy when the walls are open), and run those all to one central location. Then run the cable and phone service from the street to that location. You'll put your cable modem and router in there, and if you use VOIP service you can also put that there, and distribute it to all your phone jacks. It's a pretty simple setup, and any AV contractor worth hiring will have done it tons of times.
posted by primethyme at 12:32 PM on June 23, 2013
1 and 2 should be pretty much in the hands of the respective utilities and not whoever wires up your home. They'll have a preferred place for the box, do the wiring from the street, and will want to run the primary cables. What's in your hands is how to distribute it from there, and if you want CAT6/HDMI runs, and conduit behind the walls to make it easier to retrofit later, that's what you should be talking about.
So, there's no harm in talking to the main phone/cable providers in advance about where they'd want to put their boxes based upon where their existing lines run.
A local POTS loop can be used for VOIP, but you'll want it disconnected from the phone box first, otherwise the voltage will fry things. You still can't do new build without a twisted pair circuit for old-school phones, and you might as well have it wired in a way that makes it easy to plug into one jack from the VOIP box and have a signal at other jacks. (Basically, see if you can have a wiring closet as part of the design.)
posted by holgate at 12:36 PM on June 23, 2013
So, there's no harm in talking to the main phone/cable providers in advance about where they'd want to put their boxes based upon where their existing lines run.
A local POTS loop can be used for VOIP, but you'll want it disconnected from the phone box first, otherwise the voltage will fry things. You still can't do new build without a twisted pair circuit for old-school phones, and you might as well have it wired in a way that makes it easy to plug into one jack from the VOIP box and have a signal at other jacks. (Basically, see if you can have a wiring closet as part of the design.)
posted by holgate at 12:36 PM on June 23, 2013
Response by poster: Thanks! Holgate and primethyme, I memail-ed you with brief followups if you don't mind expounding.
posted by malhouse at 12:46 PM on June 23, 2013
posted by malhouse at 12:46 PM on June 23, 2013
Best answer: I'm an AV guy. First off, congratulations for hiring a specialist instead of just having an electrician do it (our crew gets a lot of frustration, amusement and revenue out of tearing out and re-doing botched jobs by electricians.)
1. Yep, the cable company will provide a line from the street (their lines) to the outside of your house, where your lines begin. The point where their lines meet your lines is called the "point of demarcation" or "demarc" for short; these are terms that will make you seem to know something.
2. Yes, landline is pretty much the same.
3. That jack is probably just fine. Your guy can tell you if the cable behind it is of decent quality or should be re-run. If it is "RG-6" of any sort you can use it for a cable modem or modern digital cable box, if it's "RG-59" it's a little skimpy for modern needs and should probably be replaced. New coax runs should be done with "quad shield RG-6" cable, if your guy isn't using that he's clueless and/or cheaping out on you. Similarly new phone/network wiring should be done with "CAT6" rather than "CAT5e," though existing CAT5e will be generally ok to use with today's stuff.
4. VOIP phone service can hook into your POTS ("plain old telephone service" - seriously) wiring and allow use of the old jacks and phones. If your cable and phone service come in from the street to the same place inside the house switching from VOIP to traditional phone can be as easy as calling the provider and moving two wires from one connection to another.
As to your questions about keeping your options open and thinking ahead so you don't have to open walls in the future, first I'd like to congratulate you again on your foresight. The details of such futureproofing will depend very much on the house, its composition and availability of crawlspaces. If your house has a raised foundation or an attic crawl that connects all the rooms you're in pretty good shape. I wouldn't bother with conduit, but I would recommend running extra wiring and getting 2 CAT6 and 2 coax drops in each location where you might ever conceivably want a TV or desk. These should run back to a large wall box installed in a closet or garage location that is fairly central. You can then run lines from your demarcs to this box and distribute all your signals from there. Depending on the difficulty of that run it might be a good idea to use a conduit for this so you can easily pull new lines from here to the outside wall or wherever the utility pole connects to the house. Maybe you'll get fiber someday!
If you don't have a contiguous crawl that connects all the rooms of the house, you will want to run ample conduit to any discontiguous areas while the walls are open. If there's no crawl space at all for some rooms the conduit should go all the way to the wall plates, but if there's a separate crawl space you need only connect it via conduit to the main crawl (and LABEL IT WELL so that future workers know it's there. Note its existence inside your distribution box as well so future contractors can know what they're dealing with.)
posted by contraption at 12:50 PM on June 23, 2013 [4 favorites]
1. Yep, the cable company will provide a line from the street (their lines) to the outside of your house, where your lines begin. The point where their lines meet your lines is called the "point of demarcation" or "demarc" for short; these are terms that will make you seem to know something.
2. Yes, landline is pretty much the same.
3. That jack is probably just fine. Your guy can tell you if the cable behind it is of decent quality or should be re-run. If it is "RG-6" of any sort you can use it for a cable modem or modern digital cable box, if it's "RG-59" it's a little skimpy for modern needs and should probably be replaced. New coax runs should be done with "quad shield RG-6" cable, if your guy isn't using that he's clueless and/or cheaping out on you. Similarly new phone/network wiring should be done with "CAT6" rather than "CAT5e," though existing CAT5e will be generally ok to use with today's stuff.
4. VOIP phone service can hook into your POTS ("plain old telephone service" - seriously) wiring and allow use of the old jacks and phones. If your cable and phone service come in from the street to the same place inside the house switching from VOIP to traditional phone can be as easy as calling the provider and moving two wires from one connection to another.
As to your questions about keeping your options open and thinking ahead so you don't have to open walls in the future, first I'd like to congratulate you again on your foresight. The details of such futureproofing will depend very much on the house, its composition and availability of crawlspaces. If your house has a raised foundation or an attic crawl that connects all the rooms you're in pretty good shape. I wouldn't bother with conduit, but I would recommend running extra wiring and getting 2 CAT6 and 2 coax drops in each location where you might ever conceivably want a TV or desk. These should run back to a large wall box installed in a closet or garage location that is fairly central. You can then run lines from your demarcs to this box and distribute all your signals from there. Depending on the difficulty of that run it might be a good idea to use a conduit for this so you can easily pull new lines from here to the outside wall or wherever the utility pole connects to the house. Maybe you'll get fiber someday!
If you don't have a contiguous crawl that connects all the rooms of the house, you will want to run ample conduit to any discontiguous areas while the walls are open. If there's no crawl space at all for some rooms the conduit should go all the way to the wall plates, but if there's a separate crawl space you need only connect it via conduit to the main crawl (and LABEL IT WELL so that future workers know it's there. Note its existence inside your distribution box as well so future contractors can know what they're dealing with.)
posted by contraption at 12:50 PM on June 23, 2013 [4 favorites]
(Also note that "CAT6" is pronounced like "cat six.")
posted by SemiSophos at 5:36 PM on June 23, 2013
posted by SemiSophos at 5:36 PM on June 23, 2013
If you do run everything into a central location (for modem, voip, etc) make sure you have a good (probably dedicated) electrical outlet (ie on its own breaker) to power the gear, and a good sized UPS to run everything continuously, as well as some ventilation to keep that closet/room at a reasonable temp.
(Edit to add: also make sure it isn't in the basement surrounded by cinderblock, or else you'll be asking about how to make your wifi connection better/get better signal, etc)
posted by k5.user at 7:55 AM on June 24, 2013
(Edit to add: also make sure it isn't in the basement surrounded by cinderblock, or else you'll be asking about how to make your wifi connection better/get better signal, etc)
posted by k5.user at 7:55 AM on June 24, 2013
Ah yes, you should make sure to have a couple CAT6 runs to the attic or closets to support enough wifi access points to cover your whole house (you'll need more than you used to if you want to use the current 5 GHz 802.11n standard, which gives you speed at the expense of range. You can also just stick with the 2.4 GHz standards, they're plenty fast enough for most people.) Also, get some spare cabling run to the roof/attic for a future satellite dish if you think you or a future owner might ever want one. I'd recommend two coax and a CAT6 for good measure.
posted by contraption at 10:38 AM on June 24, 2013
posted by contraption at 10:38 AM on June 24, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by empath at 12:30 PM on June 23, 2013