Cable/Phone/Computer wiring to second floor

16 years ago

Quick question about distributing cable TV, computer network, and phone cables to my second floor. I currently have a distrubtion panel in my basement which takes the incoming cable (and broadband) and phone lines, and I've distrubuted them from there to the ground floor rooms. Our kitchen walls are open, so I've used this opportunity to run 1.25" PVC up to the currently unfinished third floor (balloon framing in old houses makes that fairly easy), and the plans are to distribute the cable/computer/phone lines to the four second-floor rooms from the top down via the unfinished third floor. The question is, should I run four cable/phone/computer lines from the distribution panel in the basement all the way to each room, or should I put another panel in the third floor, run just one of each cable/phone/computer lines to that panel, then run the wires to the four rooms via the third-floor panel?

Thanks in advance.

Comments (3)

steve_o
16 years ago
I would do a home-run installation, all the way back to the basement panel. Splitting a signal from one wire to as many terminations as you're likely to need is not a good idea. Since it's just about as easy to get four wires up there as one, I'd go home-run.
sniffdog
16 years ago
hatman

I would definately recommend home runs for the cable if you can do it easily - and I would suggest running two cables per room if you ever plan on using satellite for TV. For the data, you could get away with one Cat 5e and put a hub or router on the second floor. You can also do the same thing with voice - run one line to a voice distribution panel upstairs - and then run feeders off of that.

One thing I would be careful with - 1.25" doesn't sound big enough to me to run 4 cables, 4 data, and 4 voice lines. It is going to be hard to pull all of those wires through unless you use a structured wire - but given the number of rooms you have - you will need more than 1 structured cable. It might be hard to pull all of that cable at once - and you won't get it all through if you try doing them sequentially. I would recommend adding one or two more conduit runs.

I just got done wiring my house. I ran 3/4" conduit from the basement to each 2nd floor room so that I can home run a structured multi-media cable to each room. The structured cable has two RG6 and two Cat 5e and is 1/2" in diameter. If you did 4 + 4 + 4 - that is getting close to 1.25" just for the cable and you will need some wiggle room to pull it.
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KTKelly
16 years ago
I would strongly recommend running a minimum of 2 RG6 and 4 Cat5e for each location on the second floor.

2 RG6 for possible dual tuner sat (or other usage like CCTV).

1 Cat5e for telco.

1 cat5e for ethernet (ALL conductors used for high bandwidth).

2 cat5e for HDTV audio/video distribution.

That 1.25" PVC is definitely not large enough.