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Thread: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

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    ALT0153™ Rob_B's Avatar
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    Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    We'll be moving soon and it's a do-er up-er so there's a lot fo work going to be happening (!) I'm used to using wifi/powerline adapters and wondered if it's worth wiring up at least some sections of the house while I have chance?
    It's not massive so wifi will probably work fine, I don't have a NAS but might consider one, so I'm not NEEDING to do this but a few metres of trunking and wiring (Cat 6A?) could be a decent cheapish future proofing excercise ?

    Any thoughts?

    Cheers,

    Rob

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Do it.
    You may need it in the future and/or it will just make your life easier in the meantime.

    It won't be quite as insane as all Linus's home tech-renovation stuff, but it'll be fun and cool.
    Remember to make absolutely everything RGB, as well... and post photos!!
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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Do all the cabling,etc before you have to put all the furniture in. If not it will be more of a PITA.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    Do all the cabling,etc before you have to put all the furniture in. If not it will be more of a PITA.
    We'll be having some new partition walls put up so I'm thinking of running it all through those (where I can anyway)

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob_B View Post
    We'll be having some new partition walls put up so I'm thinking of running it all through those (where I can anyway)
    I would get the fastest cabling you can afford - having the walls cabled properly will definitely increase the value of the house IMHO.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Don't bother with PLA's, just get some decent cabling in and some Wifi6 mesh kit.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Any good guides people would recommend?
    All I can think of is cat6a and some faceplates

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    People always seem to recommend cat6 for residential, which in my opinion is bonkers. 2.5GbE/5GbE will work on cat5e. You're unlikely to have very long runs in a house in the UK, so even 10GbE would probably work on it. You also probably aren't going to run big bundles of cables together, which would be a justification for cat6/cat6a.
    Just use a legit supplier, not suspiciously cheap dodgy amazon/ebay listings, which might have fake (aluminium) catX cable. If you really wanted to future proof, do fibre at the same time, but that can get a bit complicated.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob_B View Post
    .... and wondered if it's worth wiring up at least some sections of the house while I have chance? ....
    Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes again.

    In case I'm not being clear .... <bleep> YES.

    PROVIDING the house isn't short-term and/or rental. Especially in the latter case, that's a much bigger question and, obviously, get permission first.

    But if it's your house and you plan on being there a while, it is SOOOOO much easier when it doesn't involve moving furniture, lifting carpets and/or redecorating if drilling holes causes any damage. The cost of at least sticking cable runs in isn't huge - if you're up to doing the connectors, at least buy a big reel and run the stuff everywhere. Mark up both ends, of course, but you don't necessarily even need to even all the connectors quite yet. One big reel is seriously cheaper than buyng loads of fixed length pre-terminated cables. 100m would do most houses, with a fair bit left over.

    Which cable? Well, tricker, IMHO. Money no object, I'd go fibre, or maybe Cat8. Yes, a bit OTT for now BUT, you're gonna be there how long? What will broadband speeds be in 5 years, 25 years? What will we be running over the LAN by then? All our phones? Videophones maybe. HDMI4 or 5 to monitors everywhere?

    My point is it isn't much more expensive to do Cat6A, even Cat8 (7 is a bit weird, be careful with that), or even fibre though the latter gets quite a bit dearer (currently) when you start adding transceivers and switches.

    I fairly recently did it the hard way, NOT when we were doing carpets etc anyway. It made so much more of the job being a pain in the butt. I very nearly went fibre but in the end, did a mix of 6A and Cat8 mainly because I am planning on running both video over it, a couple of video editing machines, NAS's and, of course, streaming my own audio and video storage everywhere.

    Right now, I use switches with a 10G backbone, and 2.5G per port from switch to computers (desktop, laptop and servers), but 1G to old stuff like TVs. Yes, for anyone wondering, the switches DO have 10G ports too, it isn't just cabling.

    But, if you put in capable cabling NOW, you could stick to 1G switches etc for now, and decide on 2.5, 5G or even 10G if and when needed. But by 'eck, it's nice when shiftng bulk data .... like full backups to the NAS.

    Powerline is an okay solution, most of the time. Probably. But it does depend on the age, condition and layout of your mains. Much better, IMHO, to get your LAN independent of mains if you can.

    I also have Wifi6 Mesh (Asus routers) but, again IMHO, you are better off in almost all ways not bothering and going straight to wired, if you can. If you can't, then Wifi6 is pretty good and a good Mesh can work well. But the optimum, by far (IMHO) is wired, every single time. Do it while it's relatively easy, and minimum faffing. Most of my stuff has been migrated off wifi since I put the uprated wired LAN in, and I find it much more reliable. Much harder to hack, too.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    DO IT!!!

    I wish I did before I had the new floors put down

    There was easily accessible channels in the concrete where the central heating pipes ran that I wish I utilised for ethernet when I had the floors up
    At the time I considered it, but there was no real need....

    I didn't know how badly I wish I had done it until I got Sky Q and the constant fighting between it's 5Ghz WiFi network and my routers 5Ghz WiFi network meant that they both worked badly
    I ran homeplug devices for a while until even they annoyed me and finally did some after the fact (not quite hidden) cable runs that have solved the problem but will have to chased in when I do the next round of renovations

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Well it seems like everyone agrees

    I think for the price I'll go with Cat6A, any suggestions on good places to buy as of N journalism just go with ebay. So maybe a couple of 10/15metre cables and a few faceplates?
    I'll look to get switch etc further down the line

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Make sure you run more than you need, any single runs double up on and stuff like that, if you have a cable go, for whatever reason, mice/rats like a certain colour cable, something to do with the colouring in the cable, not that I'm saying you have a rodent issue, but its a damned sight easier to take a faceplate off and have a spare cable coiled up than it is to run a new one.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Anywhere that links to a datasheet for the cable is likely to be fine (comms-express, cablemonkey, RS etc). The second result on amazon for "cat6 100m" is a scam, "ikbc 100 Meter Ethernet Network Bulk Cable 100m Waterproof Direct Burial Cable| CAT6, AWG23, CCA, UTP Colour White" - spot the CCA in the title.

    Anyway, be aware cat6a has a bigger bend radius than catr6, which is bigger than cat5e. If you're talking about 15m runs, cat5e will be fine. If it was more like 30m, you're getting to about the limit for 10GbE, so cat6/cat6a would make sense. Pretty sure cat6a is where you want to be sure a big bundle of cables in a 100m run will work at 10GbE. It's not a problem putting in cat6a or cat6, it's just a waste of money, and more difficult to run, and more likely to kink. That said, if there's a few runs going to a patch panel, you'd probably want cat6/6a patch cables from the patch panel to the switch, to reduce crosstalk.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob_B View Post
    and a few faceplates?
    The one thing I wish I had done when installing my cabling was opting for double port faceplates, so you have two cables feeding in. Would have been useful to do, adding a second cable afterwards is just more expense.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    ok, so we bought a right doer-upper. We spanked everything on the deposit so had to move in and save to get work done. I can say that trying to rewire or even just install some LAN after moving in is a right PITA. You end up with a slidey puzzle of storing furniture and boxes in each room in turn and everything gets dusty and the work costs you 2-3x what it would if you gave the sparky an empty house to rewire in one go.

    Aim to rent for a month at least, if not two. Get all the wall paper stripped, rewiring, new plugs, new mainboard, LAN, plumbing alterations and new rads, boiler, carpets replaced/shampooed whatever. Make your list and move once the chaos is done. Don't do what we did if you can possibly afford it. While the floors are up install acoustic mineral wool into the intermediate floors and get the loft insulation up to regs too (or do what I did and improve it as best you can while still getting boards down over it onto the joists - even that made a massive difference getting rid of the old itchy filth and putting in proper Knauff between the joists)

    I am still installing LAN as a DIY project (couldn't afford to pay sparky, and I was given a drum of cable which helped). It's fine, just juggling it with wider DIY and the baby is not simple. Fun learning experience and well within a DIYer. I would not do my own electrics though. You can do first fix (running cables) ok if you know the circuit requirements, but you need them to do all 2nd fix and wire the mainboard. TBH best just get them to do the lot.

    Specify they must use wall chasers and not just kango your walls blind. Trust me the latter does not give as good an outcome. Also consider specifying all cabling in conduit (even if concealed in wall) for easier future alterations.

    A standard plug socket will house 2No RJ45 end modules, and a dual socket will house 4No. I use the LPT modules as they are smaller so are easier to fit in the backbox and manouvre the faceplate into position. Cablemonkey is brilliant for cable. Not cheapest, but reliable quality. Recommend the orange 6a LSOH and BC2a fire compliant varieties for no smoke risk. They do U/FTP and F/FTP either are fine, the latter is best if you can afford it. Don't use STP or patch cable for permanent wiring. That stuff is for bendy user cabling with crimp fixing onto standard male RJ45 terminals. The solid stuff is what you put into permanent wall female sockets.

    Whoever does the install make sure they follow the guidance on min bend radii for the cables.

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    Re: Moving house - Good time to get it ready for tech?

    Quote Originally Posted by ik9000 View Post
    ok, so we bought a right doer-upper. We spanked everything on the deposit so had to move in and save to get work done. I can say that trying to rewire or even just install some LAN after moving in is a right PITA. You end up with a slidey puzzle of storing furniture and boxes in each room in turn and everything gets dusty and the work costs you 2-3x what it would if you gave the sparky an empty house to rewire in one go.

    Aim to rent for a month at least, if not two. Get all the wall paper stripped, rewiring, new plugs, new mainboard, LAN, plumbing alterations and new rads, boiler, carpets replaced/shampooed whatever. Make your list and move once the chaos is done. Don't do what we did if you can possibly afford it. While the floors are up install acoustic mineral wool into the intermediate floors and get the loft insulation up to regs too (or do what I did and improve it as best you can while still getting boards down over it onto the joists - even that made a massive difference getting rid of the old itchy filth and putting in proper Knauff between the joists)

    I am still installing LAN as a DIY project (couldn't afford to pay sparky, and I was given a drum of cable which helped). It's fine, just juggling it with wider DIY and the baby is not simple. Fun learning experience and well within a DIYer. I would not do my own electrics though. You can do first fix (running cables) ok if you know the circuit requirements, but you need them to do all 2nd fix and wire the mainboard. TBH best just get them to do the lot.

    Specify they must use wall chasers and not just kango your walls blind. Trust me the latter does not give as good an outcome. Also consider specifying all cabling in conduit (even if concealed in wall) for easier future alterations.

    A standard plug socket will house 2No RJ45 end modules, and a dual socket will house 4No. I use the LPT modules as they are smaller so are easier to fit in the backbox and manouvre the faceplate into position. Cablemonkey is brilliant for cable. Not cheapest, but reliable quality. Recommend the orange 6a LSOH and BC2a fire compliant varieties for no smoke risk. They do U/FTP and F/FTP either are fine, the latter is best if you can afford it. Don't use STP or patch cable for permanent wiring. That stuff is for bendy user cabling with crimp fixing onto standard male RJ45 terminals. The solid stuff is what you put into permanent wall female sockets.

    Whoever does the install make sure they follow the guidance on min bend radii for the cables.
    Are you me?

    You've just described my last 12 months

    New house, no money, new baby and trying to get DIY done whilst working, looking after kids and being a grown up

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