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Wiring my home with fiber

sschueller.github.io

41–50 of 305 posts

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#41

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.

Many parts of the world use concrete or brick and those almost always have conduit.

The US can add it but it’s an extra cost and so rarely done.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#42

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 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 don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious.

Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit just hanging on a wall? What is this obsession with hiding all wiring within the drywall? What am I missing here?

It could be something as simple as a conduit like https://i.imgur.com/6X5of8Y.png

Not that I have a leg to stand on because I still can't afford to buy a home outright (and at current rate, never will). I live in an apartment and I don't make any changes to it. I cannot even imagine doing something simple like drill a hole on the door for a doorbell. So, I am definitely hypocritical when I say this. Maybe I am just being salty as a non-home owner. I feel like all of this comes from treating our homes as some kind of liquid asset that we must keep in pristine condition at all times so we can stage it and sell it at a moment's notice.

If you own your own home, why not live in your home like you own your home? Run that conduit across all the walls (and through inside door frames or something like that if you must). If not, do you really own your own home? Why not just live with housing insecurity like I do?

Edit: spelling

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#43
While I like the idea I do not like much fiber or to be more precise their live stuff, since they degrade far faster than copper. A copper switch might work well for 10+ years, and since at home we normally not need such extreme performances and these days 2.5GBE on cat 8.1 copper are relatively cheap and common...

Sure, it's very "blinkenlichten" but...

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#44
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A plastic bag tied to pulling twine works really well and is less likely to get stuck than a ball or plunger. I always leave a length of twine in my conduits so I only have to use the vacuum method once.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#45
post #42

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 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 don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…

Many people who own homes use them with an eye to selling and so they don’t bother with things that they’re afraid would reduce resale value.

Or they just run cable along the walls.

Many garages will be as you describe.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#46
post #42

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 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 don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…

[deleted]

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#47
post #42

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 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 don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…

It sounds like you just have different priorities or a different aesthetic sense than folks like me who go to great lengths to hide cables.

To me it just feels good to wake up in a visually simple environment with things out of sight. It feels like magic, in a good way, to be surrounded by performant, reliable and useful technology but to be able to see almost none of it. And I have an automatic negative reaction to visual clutter or conspicuous machinery in my house.

I don't see anything wrong with your way of thinking. I can't easily change how I feel about it and I see no reason why either of us should have to.

Edit: this makes me think about sci-fi spaceships. Battlestar Galactica vs. the Heart of Gold from Hitchhiker's Guide. One has its conduits and controls run every which way and the other is minimalist to a fault. I like them both but would definitely prefer to wake up every morning in the latter!

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#48
post #42

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 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 don't own a house and have never owned a house. This will probably sound stupid and I am sorry if this is something obvious. Is it that my spouse will leave me or my parents will disown me if I run a conduit…

That conduit would look terrible. Most people care about how their houses look. Decorative trunking exists: https://www.d-line-it.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/1240-x-... , I've used it, and it blends in well enough.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#49

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.

One interesting technique I have seen with fiber is running it along/behind baseboards in old houses. Since it is very small (and you can get even smaller single mode fiber) it can in some cases run along side. Some people remove the baseboard and put it behind it. It creates some routing issues, but might also solve some.

Re: Wiring my home with fiber

#50

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…

Not surprised to see you on here. I was the guy who got into the discussion about the merits of single mode vs multi mode with a few of your friends on Facebook a while ago. I was in the multi mode camp mainly due to cost reasons whereas they were in the single mode camp for future proofing reasons.

That said, the cost gap between MM and SM optics today is much smaller especially for 10G (and for the fiber itself it seems to have even reversed), so single mode definitely makes more sense. For some reason, MM fiber is still widely deployed in certain niche use-cases though. Not quite sure why.

For example, I know that it's used on modern military jets for their 10GBASE-SR networks. I wonder if it has something to do with being able to repair terminations in the field? I know MM is pretty forgiving that way. Or maybe it's just another case of them adopting whatever was popular at that exact moment.

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