Home electrical upgrade suggestions

[Anonymous No.790259]

I am going to be buying my first house soon, and will probably have to upgrade the whole electrical system. If I have to do that, it would be a good idea to add on some other things, like data lines.

I am thinking that adding CAT6 cables. Should I use those, or run fiber optic? What are some concerns about doing that? Anything else people usually add? If I have to tear holes in my walls, I want to make sure that I future-proof as much as possible.

[Harry's Run Guy No.790287]

>>790259

First things first. If your home doesn't have it, Arc Fault breakers. If a circuit shorts, it'll kill it before it can get any heat built up. That is the number one thing to do if you are doing anything to your electrical system.

I just rewired my house, going from aluminum to copper. Last year I put in a new panel for 200A service and put those in before I went for the complete rewire. I decided the easiest way to do the network was to run one CAT 6 to the attic and split them off in two spots.

[Anonymous No.790292]

>>790287
But there are some severe distance limitations with CAT6. It would be really nice to run everything (the house is a 3 story house) to the basement. I don't think that I would be able to get gigabit speeds in the on the third floor. What about running fiber and using that as a sort of backbone, and use CAT6 on each floor?

[Anonymous No.790298]

I've seen (in home improvement shows) a really nice future-proofing system.

Since the walls and ceiling were already being opened they installed flexible corrugated plastic conduit runs into most rooms and fed it all back to a closet that had power and was chosen to be close to the telecom and cable entry point in the house. It was wired up with cat-something.. normal-looking cables running around everywhere and an extra plastic pull-string tied in place.

It looked good because it meant that replacing wiring or upgrading would be as simple as pulling something new in, no climbing around in the attic and trying to fish down holes in the walls.

[Anonymous No.790303]

>>790298
Make sure your installer isn't a fucking mongrel. I've seen five million dollars worth of condos where every single conduit was crushed/flattened/deformed.

[Anonymous No.790305]

>>790303
a true concern.
"AV installers" can sometimes mean "street-corner laborer being paid nickles"

[Anonymous No.790313]

>>790298
Yeah that sounds like a great idea. That sounds like you'd have to tear down entire walls to get that in, though. Is there some other way of putting that in?

[Anonymous No.790315]

>>790292
Cat6a is good for 90m in the wall in a single run.
The budget of that + repeaters vs multimode fiber baluns depends on how big your house is.

You also need to be careful of minimum bend radius and stretching with Cat6a and connector installation. Everything needs to be rated for 6a.

Fiber is not much better. Very sensitive to bends (unless you pay for the good stuff) and stretching. You get better range though. Spend an extra $15 and get proper slack trays at either end of your run so you can get a pre-made length and won't need to worry about connectors.

I'm not comfortable enough with fiber to bother, I'd just do cat6a with repeaters because I am comfortable with it and have all the tools I'd need. Definitely do the conduit either way, It'll keep the rats away better.

[Anonymous No.790318]

>>790313
It's only like 1" or 3/4" usually. If you got a big enough drill bit it shouldn't be much different from running a wire.

I don't want to look it up to double check, but I think a closed loop of fire rated conduit on the opposite side of the cavity is the only way to run low voltage in the same cavity as power.

[Anonymous No.790327]

Obviously you'll want to replace the panel, especially if the one in there is a Stab-Lok or other fire hazard. While you're doing that, you might want to add things like a generator transfer switch (maybe with separate subpanel for critical circuits only) or a whole-house power consumption monitor that can log your usage over the whole day so you can hunt down things that waste energy.

[Work stories No.790329]

>>790327
Fuckin' A. You just reminded me.

Sparkies working on the panel.
They make room for me, just doing one phone jack a couple feet away.

Start hearing a cutoff saw behind me. Must be cutting a conduit or whatever.

Get up to go pull my wire outside.
They are using the chop saw with abrasive blade to freehand shape the panel cover to fit in a hole the drywaller made too small over the panel.

Freehanding it. Right into my back. Like if they let go or it caught I'd have a sheet of steel stuck in the back of my rib cage

Fuck you guys.

[Anonymous No.790331]

>>790329
they forgot rule number one: fuck the drywallers. The reaction to a too-small hole or badly placed cutout is meant to be a hammer or drywall saw, depending on how much trouble they have been.

[Anonymous No.790350]

>>790331
Yeah, I hired one to fix some bad wiring in my built 1985 home..

stupid fucks dicked up the dry wall. put holes where there wasn't suppose to be any at all, there wasn't wiring being run through those areas. TWO DIFFERENT GUYS in 3 days. the second guy didn't know dick what the first one did.

Fucked up my drywall good. Its okay, they paid for it. Even though I was the one that fixed it. Materials + time. kek. being self contracted good feels man.

[Anonymous No.790406]

Put in conduit for future proofing.
That way you can pull cables as your needs change.

Copper network equipment is cheaper than fiber equipment.

Install cat6 (or better, cat6a) if you think 10gig ethernet will be good enough for the future. Be aware of maximum lengths for cat6a though, 100meters for 10gbe according to wiki.

It's kind of hard to imagine home users needing 100gbe but you can put fiber in if you want to be really future proof.
If you have outbuildings like a shop you can use fiber there too.

[Anonymous No.790417]

>>790292
Cat6 is certifiable to 90m...

[Anonymous No.790418]

We just finished up some high spec condos and ran cat7 to each TV position for the AV fags to balun up and run HDMI over.

[Anonymous No.790519]

>>790406
>outbuilding fiber
This is highly recommended because of the need to provide surge protection between buildings.