Low-voltage wiring in new construction
 

What’s everybody’s thought on low-voltage wiring i.e. CAT6 and RG6 or the latest variation?

We are building homes from $2.5M to $5M and the president of the company wants to go totally wireless, to save a few bucks.

We will run a smurf pipe from the service interface to a panel located in the house. The modem/router would have to be located in the panel. Depending where the panel is, it may affect signal.

The cost to run a phone or cable wire is $75 each or $150 for a dual jack.

My thought is, we need to run a dual jack to the owners bedroom, over the fireplace, the screen porch and any kind of media/flex room at a minimum. Four drops for $600.

Besides the prez being a tight wad, what is the consensus for running low-voltage wiring? Give me good reasons to counter his mandate.

People want options.

Rule of thumb we've used, if it doesn't move it's hard wired. Wireless is still pretty solid and has improved with mesh networks that have become mainstream, but it's still not bullet proof when it comes to interference and LOS.

Seems a pretty cheap investment that you could use as a value-add at that price point.

Speed and not always reliable. I have friends in the computer industry (large offices settings) and they ALWAYS hardwire and when they remodeled their homes, they hard wire to the hub and run hard wire to important locations like TV and such.

^^^ Good points.

25 years ago, structured wiring was the thing. We ran cable and phone to the thermostats, the power meter can, everywhere, etc. It was going to be the next thing. Of course, now we have Bluetooth and no need for wires.

The homes we are building will be a second/third homes or retirees homes. Some of them may not be tech savvy and want to be wired. Also, some may want a landline.

I wonder how good the signal is going to be from the router/modem in a panel somewhere in the house, to a TV outside on the porch, etc.

If they remote work at all, a hardline is required.

Your boss is probably looking at it as a service add on later.

Nah. We would never go back and add it after the fact.

We’ve been financially on the rocks for a year and he’s pinching every penny, plus micromanaging everything we do. I understand that to a point, but it’s getting ****ing annoying.

These are all spec homes under construction. Hopefully, if somebody was to build with us, they would allow them to run the low voltage…

If it was my house, and you asked me, I'd want wires, especially if it's an expensive home. Wires are generally better than wireless because the impact of interference, especially with modern cabling, is practically nil. And the odds of drops, bandwidth issues, etc... are also going to be practically nil.

If the homes are multilevel, there's another issue, wifi is normally intended to spread primarily horizontally so other floors may get crap signals. Plus you never know when that one room in the house is going to have a crap signal and that's going to be a bedroom, office, etc... that needs a signal.

We toured a new $2.25 million dollar home in the old neighborhood that we lived in near downtown Houston during their open house. It was the biggest, nicest, most expensive home in the neighborhood. It was outfitted with lots of high end appliances and had tons of smart features. It also had an upstairs closet with an 8" hole in the floor, and a cabinet the size of a small refrigerator full of gear and 50 cables running into the cabinet. The closet was essentially unusable as a closet, which also made the room unusable. That would have killed the deal for me.

Nah, not required. I'm in IT and have WFH (including Zoom calls, screen sharing, etc...) for years and am still doing it 50% of the time (for however long that lasts). My computer is on wifi and my Internet connection is 5G T-mobile home Internet, and it's rock solid. But if it was convenient to be hard wired, I probably would be.

I put a bunch in. Waste of $.
The only stuff that gets used is speaker wires for the inwalls and hdmi for the TVs to receivers.

Everything else is wireless.

My coworker and I were thinking about wired speakers on the exterior, and thought wireless / Bluetooth speakers, would do the trick.

I hate to lose, so I want good arguments!

Security system with cameras/monitors in different rooms, interconnected smoke alarms, LAN for that basement server, intercom for honeypie to yell every 20 minutes, not having it all projected into the neighborhood air traffic.

It's easy to install conduit while there are no walls.

At the very least sufficient cat5/6 to provide multiple access points and allow full coverage/overlap with the wireless, so jacks also near a power outlet

Also would add jacks for fixed location items where sensible - TVs, printer stand, etc

A spool of cable is cheap and trivial to run when nothing is in the way ... I dont understand why ethernet wiring didnt become a standard thing in home construction 20 years ago ....

A no-brainer for me ... I agree with the Steves!

And sooo freakin' "big picture" cheap to "do right" too...

signed...

Steve III

edited: I want wired speakers inside too... but not outside of the house... options ...
you can't bi-amp and bi-wire wif wireless crap ;)

Are you talking for power or Ethernet?

I wired my house during construction with RG6 (coax) Cat5, and put in full wireless. There are times when you need each so I was glad I did it.

Security protocols of where you work. I need an ethernet cable.

If I were spending that much on a house it would have lots of low voltage. I would have it for both networking and light management. The good light management stuff has environmental sensors in them as well so you have built in fire sensors, temp, motion, daylight harvesting and a bunch of other handy crap.

But it would be a deal breaker if there were no network cabling at least at that price point.

Cybersecurity only comes from hard wires

adding any low voltage cabling is cheap and easy until the sheetrock goes up. If it was me, I'd want some wires for today, tomorrow and yesterday.

If the house was less than 1000sq/ft, maybe not. anything more, I'd demand some copper.

We stopped running most LV wires in new homes. Now we do power for cameras, pipes from basement to attic and to the service entry (if not the basement), and a cat 5 run from the service entry to a service area on the second floor (typically laundry room) for a wifi router or range extender.

Why only Cat5?