With 7+ years of experience as an engineer working with voice, data, radio and telephony systems, I have a unique perspective on home wiring. If you are having a new home built, or remodeling your current home, you might want to consider this post. Homebuilders who want to market to the younger generations who are increasingly "wired" should also take note. Now before I proceed, I should speak to those of you who are thinking that wires are obsolete. It is true that everything I am about to discuss can be done without wires. Computer networks, telephones, speakers for your home theater system, just about everything in your home except for one phone jack and your cable TV lines can be done wirelessly. But there are benefits to wiring your home. I will first tell you what I want in my future home (when I get around to buying one, I currently live rent free and don't complain about the lack of wiring).
First, you want to consider what systems you will have in your house. Computers, telephones, fax machines, in home audio systems, home theater systems, perhaps an alarm system, your thermostat, maybe an intercom, the possibilities are almost limitless. And of course, you can't wire for everything. If you are having a new home built and piping is cheap I would recommend putting in pipes for every system that you currently think you may want. In my case, all bedrooms get one pipe for computer, telephone and tv (combined on one faceplate) as well as two to the ceiling for whole-house audio speakers and one to the door for both the volume controls for the speakers and an intercom. Common rooms (living room, dining room, family room, den, library, game room, whatever you have) get the same, but with extra data/phone/tv jacks around the room whereever I may one day need them if I reposition all my furniture (don't have a need for a computer or tv in the living room today? Wire for it anyway just in case you change your mind in 10 years). The kitchen and bathrooms are special cases. My kitchen gets several data/phone/tv jacks in the upper cabinets around the room for future use (under-cabinet tv, drop down telephone, recepie computer, etc). Also, one set behind the fridge because some newer refridgerators have a network connection to reorder your groceries for you and a TV built in to watch while you cook; and one behind the stove because who knows when they will come out with a stove that you can monitor from your network. Plus jacks in the ceiling for future network cameras so you can walk away from your stove and leave a monitor on in the other room to watch for smoke. Of course, in-ceiling speakers and a volume control/intercom location by the door are necessary. The bathrooms get special treatment too. For right now, just the speakers and volume/intercom locations. But for future use I'll leave two pipes burried in the wall, one opposite the toilet and one in the shower (don't forget to leave empty pipes to your breaker panel too for future power). In the future, if I get bored and want a really complicated project I could open the wall up and build in a shelf (behind plexiglass and sealed water tight) that holds a TV (the shower one would be able to pick up any channel, the one in front of the toilet would show whatever is on the main TV so that you can run to the bathroom during a movie without stopping it and making everyone wait). I would also run alarm pipes to each window, door, and each room for motion detectors. Future alarm systems are already available that, if wired right, can show you on a panel where an intrusion is taking place, call you if you aren't home, call the police automatically (without a service to charge a monitoring fee), and even turn on video cameras in the rooms where the alarm is going off. I would put up boxes for cameras outside (you can get systems for about $1,500 now with 16 day/night cameras and a single recording machine that stores a month of footage from all cameras on one digital drive). One more consideration is speakers for your home theater. In the room with the big tv, you may want pipes from behind the tv to various points around the room (think big, we are up to 8 speaker systems with 7.1 out and who knows what will come next) or you might go with in-wall speakers that turn drywall into a speaker surface for a truely concealed system that has great sound (don't forget that in wall speakers are easiest to install before the walls are finished, so consider buying these and wiring them before the house is done even if you wont be powering them for a while).
Don't forget the electricity, any place that you leave a computer hook-up (or tv or phone) you should have an electrical outlet. For home theater systems, or multiple computer locations, you should consider a quadruplex outlet on a dedicated 20 amp circuit.
Speaking on don't forgets, what about outside your house? You may one day want to put a laptop computer station outside, so anywhere you will have a table and chairs (or may have one in the future) you should put a data/phone/tv box and electrical outlet. How about holiday lighting or just landscape lighting? Putting an electrical outlet by every tree will save unsightly cords later on. And if you want to do low voltage landscape lighting (which is brighter than solar), consider putting in an electrical outlet by your controls and running pipes in series all over the yard with boxes at the start of every row of lighting. Remember, you don't want to tear up your yard later. And think about a sprinkler system while you are putting in all these pipes.
Now let's look at wiring. If money is a concern, and it always is if you aren't hiring someone to do this all for you, then only wire what you need and leave blank covers on the other boxes. It is still good to have them because in the future you can simply change the cover and run some wire to have a new location. All your boxes should go to one location and you should have a wire management system (such as an equipment rack with patch panels for data/phone/tv cables and 66 blocks on the wall for speakers). And I recommend never running a single cable for the tv/phone/data blocks (consider 3 or 4 CAT-5e cables and 2 co-aux cables to give an extra of each type for future use). If you later need another cable, you often can't just pull it in and may end up pulling out your old wires just to pull in a whole new set. It makes sense to put in more cables than you need now, while it is easy, just like putting in extra boxes if you are having a new house built because it is easier to do now than later.
Don't forget to think about home automation, such as a thermostat box because you may upgrade to a network based thermostat at some point; or a box in the laundry room, basement or garage for an alarm point that alerts you to water leaks. There is a company called SmartHome that can give you some ideas for future automation technologies that you may encounter.
As for what to do with the wiring? That's the subject of another post. But I did promise to tell you why wiring your house is a great idea. First is your telephones. Make sure that your home has at least one wired phone, and that the wiring for that phone isn't power dependant (no amplifiers or so forth) because that gives you an emergency phone for when the power is out. Also, wired phone locations near exterior walls mean you can place wireless bases in locations that are reachable from the outside, future phone systems will allow for multiple bases and multiple phones to create your own cell phone system within your house, the phones will hand off to the best base that they can find. Next is your data network, you need this to be wired for security purposes. Even if today's hackers aren't a big threat to you, who knows what tomorrow will bring. Having at least the pipes in place to give you the option of wiring in the future will mean peace of mind in case you get attacked. TV, of course, has to be wired. Alarm systems should be wired because the wireless versions are more easily hacked. Cameras and speakers should be wired for optimal quality and to avoid people picking up your signals. And you should also keep in mind that as more people go wireless the interference will increase and one day it may be that you can't use your wireless devices without getting into a power increasing war with your neighbours that would be both expensive and hazardous to your health. So all things considered, wiring is the way to go!
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