[trpltongue]

Hi all,


I'm building a new house and it's a 2-story (no basement and no crawl space) which is great for the space, but means I have some issues when it comes to wiring.


I'm trying to decide if I should run all of my RG6, Cat6, and security wire to my media room equipment closet, or if I should run it to a structured wiring panel in a different location (Master closet?).


My concern is that my media room equipment closet is a bit small at 30"w x 36" deep and I'm afraid that all that cabling might overwhelm the closet. The flip side to that is that if I put my cat6 and rg6 in a different area I will have to run a bunch of extra wires to distribute video, etc.


Any opinions?


Thanks,


Russell

 

[jautor]

I would think you'd want the structured wiring panel in your equipment closet. Hard to hook up the "equipment" to the home runs if they're, well, not "home run"...


But that may depend on what you intend to do with it. If you're just running an ethernet network, phone, and cable/sat splitting to the rest of the house, it probably doesn't matter. But if you EVER want to do HD-over-Cat5, or any other whole-house A/V, you'll want the wiring to terminate where the equipment is.


Jeff

 

[jautor]

Oh, and looking at your floorplan, it doesn't appear that you have an easy path from the closet to the attic. Make sure to have the builder run you an empty piece of conduit (or 2) from your 1st floor equipment closet to the 2nd floor attic, so that you can add more cabling later (which you will). Also, there will never, ever be a cheaper time to run extra cable than there is before the drywall goes on. Handing an extra spool or two (monoprice!) of Cat5e to the installer is always a good idea.


Jeff

 

[trpltongue]

Jeff,


Thanks for the insight and the PM! I am building in NW Houston in Fairfield.


I am definitely planning on running a slew of conduit from the equipment closet to the attic. The electrician only uses 1.5" so I'll have him run 3 or 4 for me.


That kind of confirms what I was thinking. I'll just have to make sure I make room in the eq closet for the RG6 and Cat6.


Russell