Wiring a new home used to mean running home electrical wiring and home telephone wiring. A modern home needs more than just electrical wiring and telephone outlets on every wall. New home wiring also includes home networking, video distribution, home theater and whole house audio wiring.
When building a new home it is important to lay the proper communication and entertainment infrastructure with category-rated cabling that meet todays needs, while laying the groundwork for the whole house media system of the future.
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Home Electrical Wiring Home electrical wiring is still the most important utility. Can you imagine life without it for even a second? The good news here is that home builders and electrical contractors are building homes with electical outlets every 6 feet throughout the home. More than just coverage, the recommendations for home electrical wiring are:
A properly designed whole house surge protection network
with transient voltage surge supression devices (TVSS) at the service entrance and point-of-use TVSS devices located strategically throughout the home behind PCs and entrtainment centers, in home theaters and at major applicances.
Home Telephone Wiring Home telephone wiring used to be done in a "daisy chain" layout where the telephone cable was run in series from one telephone outlet to another. This approach is no longer practiced. Proper structured wiring principles require running Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable from the central panel to each telephone outlet. The phone company usually terminates phone connections on a demarc box outside the house. All of the wiring beyond this point is usually the responsibility of the Homeowner.
New home telephone wiring recommendation are:
A telephone distribution panel within the structured wiring panel that allows for the selection and configuration of telephone lines to each room.
Use of Category 5e cable with 4 pairs (twisted) of "solid" copper cable for all telephone wiring.
One Cat5e cable needs to be run from the demarc outside the house to the structured wiring panel inside the house.
A 4-pair Cat5e cable from the structured wiring panel to each telephone outlet
A is recommended. This allows for upto 4 lines per telephone location.
Home Data Wiring Local Area Network (LAN) found in offices are now an absolute necessity in a modern home. A wired home data network is more secure and reliable and faster than wireless data networks. A home data network allows high-speed internet connection sharing and printer sharing. Home Networking recommendations for a new home are:
Use Category 5 enhanced or Category 6 cables with home runs from the structured wiring panel to two locations in each room.
Install the Router + Internet Gateway in one of the rooms and connect one of the outputs back to the structured wiring panel.
Install a 4/8 port ethernet switch for further distribution of the data network throughout the house.
Whole House Video Distribution Your video source could be a HDTV signal from an Antenna, a Satellite service, Cable TV service or video feed from security cameras. The Cable used for residential video application is RG6 Coaxial Cable Coaxial cable is called "coaxial" because it includes one physical channel that carries the signal surrounded by another concentric physical channel, both running along the same axis. The two channels are seperated by a layer of insulation and there is additional insulation around the outer concentric physical layer.
To allow for viewing of any video source in any room, the recommendation for new home video wiring are:
Run RG6 coax cable from all video sources to the central located structured wiring panel.
Run two RG6 cables to each TV location.
Ensure availability of Telephone and Internet at the Video locations for pay-per-view or other future services.
If you are planning to install a flat panel TV on wall, install wallplates at appropriate height from the floor.
