Any suggestions on how to cable a new home as subtly as possible?

[peterb]

A lot depends on the age of the house and how much decorating you intend to do!

I would also advise against a loft (unless it is designed as a living space. A cupboard under the stairs might be more suitable.

As for running cables, under floor boards is ideal, but involves pulling up the floor borads. Ideally run the cables in flexible (plastic) conduit if you think you might add more later (but better to plan ahead and install twicce as much as you think you might need.

hard miniature trunking can be used for surface cables, or you can chase out channels in the plaster and 9again using trunking) hide the wires that way.

Or you could remove skirting boards and run cables behind then in the gap between the plaster and the floor boards, and replace the skirting boards afterwards.

As a last resort,you could cable tack the cables to the top of the skirting borad - only really discrete for a singel cable though.

Finqally there are the temp or semi-permanent options - laying cables under the carpet round the edge of a room.

Which method(s) you use reallky depends on the time you are prepared to spend, and the layout and construction of the house.

[Zak33]

just a suggestion.. but lofts get MONSTER hot in summer.. MONSTER.

Servers don't like monster hot.

Just a thought.

[Woodchuck2000]

Thanks all, some great suggestions there!

I might try to squeeze the rack under the stairs in that case, if I can work out an easy route to run cables to the bedrooms. That said, the server is only a little Atom 230 so it doesn't get too hot. It lives in a 2U case so plenty of ventilation compared to its size.

I guess I need to check the construction of the upstairs walls. I guess it'd be ideal to drop the cables inside the walls, but if not I think I'll probably put the smallest trunking I can find down the edge of the door frames.

I'll try to post a few pics once I've worked everything out - thanks again for all of the suggestions.

[killie99]

For running up the edge of a doorframe this stuff is ideal, very unobtrusive but you can only get a couple of wires in it.

[handscombmp]

I was talking to the sparky today at my house build (must post pics at some point) and he's currently at the point of running all my cables so that includes etherent, tv etc and what he says is that if he's adding something like this in later on he will try and use cables routes that already exist.

So he'd run an etherent cables down the along the by the tv ariel.

That sounds possible.