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zagyzebra_gw

wiring a new house for phone/net/tv

zagyzebra
12 years ago

How do people generally wire brand new homes for cable, internet and landline phones -- wireless internet throughout the house, tvs in three rooms and cordless landline phones in two rooms? Does the cable company do it? Or does a private technician? If so, what kind of a technician? Does anyone know how much it generally costs to rewire, say, a two-bedroom two-story home?

My home was destroyed in a fire and I have to bring it down to its studs. I'm trying to project all the costs associated with this fire, and it occurred to me that I'll have to rewire the house for communications, too. Unfortunately, this item wasn't included in the construction estimate.

Comments (8)

  • mike_kaiser_gw
    12 years ago

    Typically cable, Ethernet, and other "low voltage" wiring would be part of the electrical contractor's bid but almost anyone qualified could do it. As part of the designed phase you would decide which rooms would get what. If I had the walls open I'd run COAX and CAT5e (or CAT6) to every room likely to get a computer and/or television.

    The wiring would typically use a "star" configuration where the individual cable radiate from a central point. That's usually a basement or storage closet where network equipment can be housed.

  • vanvolkin2
    11 years ago

    I would not bother wiring every room for a landline phone - they are obsolete. I am building now and we are putting one landline jack in the kitchen, one in the master on the second floor, and one in the basement. Everyone these days uses cell phones and/or cordless land lines.

    The computer wiring is much more important to today's home owner.

  • tigerbangs
    11 years ago

    You might want to consider 'structured wiring' which combines coaxial cable for TV, CAT-6 for computer networking, and conventional phone wiring into one easy-to-use and run bundle. This formula is being followed in a lot of new home construction, and accounts for just about every contingency

    Here is a link that might be useful: Discussion of structured wiring

  • tim45z10
    11 years ago

    Doesnt ATTuverse require a phone line?

  • Xclusive
    11 years ago

    Here is a guide to everything and then some you wanted to know about wiring a house. Even if you dont want to take it as far as automation, the basics are discussed as well. We are building and I just finished pulling low voltage wires in my house. I did pull wires for phone/data/tv, whole house audio, surround sound, etc. Hope it helps as much as it helped me.

    http://ourhomebuildtn.blogspot.com/

    Here is a link that might be useful: Wiring Your New House 101 - Cocoontech.com

  • Plant.Killer
    11 years ago

    In 45 years I have seen many changes in communications. What you want in 20 years does not exist yet. But the pipe will be usable.

    I will never have my dream house, but what I wanted would have 1/2" conduit runs from every room to a central point. After that, cat-5e cable or cat-9 in 2020, cable, or even fiber to the room -- no problem.

  • rdmusc
    11 years ago

    If it were me, I would definitely run Cat6 to every room where you may want to stream Netflix or Hulu+ or something like that or have a computer. Wireless lan does not do these services justice. If you are a computer geek and/or like to work with video which are huge files, then you would want to hook up those with Cat 6, a router with wireless capability, and a dedicated network storage device like Synology model DS112, available from Amazon.com or Newegg . You will still have to purchase a hard drive to make it function. If you still want to use land line phone, kitchen and bedroom would suffice with cordless phone set for roaming.

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