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Wiring my home with fiber

sschueller.github.io

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Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#31

Post by sponaugle »

spockz wrote: post #21
sponaugle wrote: post #13

Nice read, and great work on the terminations. I did an extensive amount of both fiber and CAT6A in my recent house build, totally about 21 miles together. I did a mixture of single mode and multimode only because of some AV device support for multimode, and because all of it was so cheap compared to the labor and time. I ended up with significant fiber runs between the MDF and IDF closets, the server room, and all o…

What kind of house needs 18 AP? Was this in an existing house or an house being constructed?

It was a new house. The 18 AP locations serve a couple of different long run purposes and reasons:

The first is to have direct nearly-line of sight locations for the majority of the house which is primarily to support higher frequency(60GHz) and beyond which have poor wall penetration.

The second is to provide good wifi coverage due to signal attenuation from the construction techniques. I did many of the walls in double 5/8s drywall, some in green wall, all insulated, and all solid hard doors. Steel cross structures as well. As a result wifi propagation is surprisingly bad across rooms.

The third is to provide lots of locations to aid in flexibility of having the best locations. I do not use all 18 locations right now, but I may use more in the future.

It is also a somewhat large (>10,000 sq ft, ~ 1000 sq meters) house, so that facilitates a need for a bit more coverage.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#32

Post by Someone1234 »

mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

Agreed. In most US homes, by code, there needs to be a fire-stop between floors but also for practical reasons there are often cross-bracing mid way up each wall, therefore going from one place to another often involves multiple holes in drywall (which is relatively inexpensive, but also a dusty/annoying nightmare to patch).

If I built a home I'd add conduit, but that's an extremely niche idea.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#34

Post by KerrAvon »

jonatron wrote: post #30
mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

I'm guessing you're in the UK. Even in my relatively new house (80's), almost all cables are chased in, no conduit anywhere. Standard construction in the UK could be improved by just doing basic obvious things that other countries do.

Likely the US. Unless it’s a very new high-end house or you got lucky and bought the house a contractor built for themselves to a high standard, they did the cheapest thing the electrical code allows them to get away with, which certainly wasn’t conduit in the 80’s, unless that was local code somewhere. Certainly not in CA or FL.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#35

Post by throwaway09223 »

mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

I was able to run two conduits to key areas during a remodel of my older home. Take advantage of open walls when you can!

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#36

Post by js2 »

yakubin wrote: post #27
mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

I've watched the video and I still don't understand how you get the wire through the conduit though. Part of the video seemed to happen through telekinesis: the part where a wire magically came out of the wall, allowing you to pull from the other side.

I'm not sure which video you mean, but you use either a fish tape or a pull line.

I know that Verizon also has fiber with a stiffer jacket that they can push through conduit a pretty good distance. I know this because I helped the Verizon installer run FIOS at my daughter's apartment in a building that was over 100 years old. The conduit had a crimp in it so it took the two of us a while to get past that.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#37

Post by sschueller »

runjake wrote: post #5

This article is great overall, but there is some stuff you should do differently, if you're wanting to follow in the author's footsteps: 1. Just use UPC connectors everywhere unless you have really good reasons not to. 2. Use single mode fiber (SMF) everywhere, including internal wiring. SMF is infinitely scalable for future needs, multimode (MMF) is not. These days the cost differences for cabling and optics is negl…

I had a hard time finding UPC wall outlets since most that are available in the Swiss format are for FTTH use, so they all have APC LC connectors on them. The keystone versions are available as UPC but they lack any fiber routing in the back.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#38

Post by thefounder »

yakubin wrote: post #27
mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

I've watched the video and I still don't understand how you get the wire through the conduit though. Part of the video seemed to happen through telekinesis: the part where a wire magically came out of the wall, allowing you to pull from the other side.

You have to have a wire installed in the first place(i.e coax or just a simple thin but strong wire). That wire is installed when you install the walls/gypsum. Then you use it to pull whatever you need(hdmi etc). When you pull the new wire(hdmi) you attach an additional wire at the tip so that you can pull back your initial wire once your new HDMI is in place.

If you don't have an initial wire installed you can use a magnet kit with a specific wire to pull it through the conduit.(e.g youtube "magnepull"). A camera small comes in handy as well.

If you need to pull wires through the ceiling and you already have recessed lights you can use their wires to pull your new wire.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#39

Post by Unklejoe »

yakubin wrote: post #27
mr_sturd wrote: post #23

I always end up green with envy that people seem to have pre-existing conduits in their walls for running new cables. There's no way, in my old house, of doing this without some invasive smashing in to walls.

I've watched the video and I still don't understand how you get the wire through the conduit though. Part of the video seemed to happen through telekinesis: the part where a wire magically came out of the wall, allowing you to pull from the other side.

You can attach a string to a foam ball/plunger type thing and then suck it through with a vacuum from the other side. Then, fix your wire to the string and pull it back in the other direction.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#40

Post by js2 »

KerrAvon wrote: post #34
jonatron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're in the UK. Even in my relatively new house (80's), almost all cables are chased in, no conduit anywhere. Standard construction in the UK could be improved by just doing basic obvious things that other countries do.

Likely the US. Unless it’s a very new high-end house or you got lucky and bought the house a contractor built for themselves to a high standard, they did the cheapest thing the electrical code allows them to get away with, which certainly wasn’t conduit in the 80’s, unless that was local code somewhere. Certainly not in CA or FL.

No conduit in NC in my 2004 built house, with the exception of specific chase pipes I asked them to install from the basement to the attic. The drywall was already up to get them to do much more than that. I'm guessing all the cat5 is stapled into place behind the drywall. Fortunately between the attic and the ceiling-tile basement I can get to where I need, it's just a PITA because of fireblocks. So many fireblocks.
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