Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

[Andrew R.]

Anyone cutting back on phone jacks?
Anyone roughing in CATV high on all locations?

[dlhunter]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

On the last few spec houses I was involved in we were running tv jacks at low locations but running a loop up higher so a future box could be cut in at a later date easily in case someone wanted a wall mount tv. Same with a receptacle. As far as phone jacks I think we were doing one in the master bed near our planned bed location, one in the kitchen and one in an office area if there was one. We also were running a 2" conduit from the basement to the attic for future pulls if needed. That worked out to be a good investment in a few cases.

[David Meiland]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

Completely remodeled my place this year and ran exactly one land line phone jack, no other lo-vo. Internet comes in on the land line. The TV has a wireless-enabled DVD player and that's all we need. If I had cable or dish I guess I'd have to run more wire. My guess is that virtually everything will be wireless in the near future, and the lo-vo guys will be out of work.

[Ted S.]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

I see a lot of that "Smurf Tube" which is a blue flexible conduit left in place to pull low voltage wiring in the future.

[Lavrans]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

Last few remodels I've done included very few actual cut-ins. I added quite a bit of conduit left in the walls, running to the utility room(s) so things could be added later. Lots of wireless- nowhere near as many cables needed overall, of any sort.

Glad I put in conduit though- we added a couple electrical services afterward, and it was nice having a couple extra 1" conduits running from the panel to the access areas under the house and in the attic. Saved a lot of fishing and drilling.

[Lightning]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

Starting about 6 years ago I started running an extra run of coax from down low to where a flat panel would be. Now I'm running a short HDMI from low to high, along with an outlet up high.

Putting in an extra few runs of conduit, definitely when possible.

Very few phone lines. One in the kitchen, one in a den/office, one in most bedrooms and that's about it.

Have mostly stopped running any CAT5 or data cables with wireless getting so good. But I did do one where the home network was running a lot of data between computers (who knows what) and needed a hardline.

[BobboMax1]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

Ref all the comments about running loops up to wall-mount areas, conduit to the crawlspace or the second story, etc., the problem is documentation- if no one knows it's there, it might as well NOT be there. How do you let the next guy know you were thinking ahead? I suppose you could tell the homeowner- they're always good at remembering details like this. And tell them you installed grab bar backing in all the bathrooms too.

[J.Buesking]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

I'm in the process of running cat6 to every room in my house. Sure wireless is great but I find it to be more troublesome than having the devices hard wired.

So my bedrooms are getting the phone jack switched out and another feed to the coax box. One for TV and one for computer in each room.

[Ctonrick]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

Re:documentation. Take pictures--or video. Leave prints or a disk or flash drive or whatever with the homeowner, along with all those owners manuals for the dishwasher and the microwave etc. that you stick in the kitchen drawer for them. Just be sure to label whatever you leave if it's electronic format. Could also email files of pics/vids I suppose, but less likely to get passed on to new homeowner if current homeowner sells.

[Robin McC]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

When I built my house 7 years ago, I ran almost 2 miles of Romex, Cat 6 (for ethernet and phone) CATV, door switch sensor wire, thermocouples (hey, you never know!) and speaker wire. Two observations: 1) I use about 0.5% of it and 2) I still say, "Why didn't I put an outlet here?!" and "CATV but no Cat 5? What was I thinking? The satellite TV needs both." If I were to do it over again I think I would go with a lot more conduit and pull the wires (and fiber) I needed when I needed them. Sigh...

[Otis P. Driftwood]

Re: Land line rough-in on starter spec homes…how many?, CATV high or low?

When I wired up the house a few years ago, I ran a 3" conduit from the basement up to the 3rd floor. Ran Cat6, Coax, and fiber in the pipe, and installed multi jacks in every room. Wireless was tried, but interference from the house's construction, and over 50 wireless access points in the neighborhood, hard wired won in the end.

JoeF