nice article, fun project. I did cat 6e. Was gonna do fiber but my telco and modem dont support above 1 gig. but on the lan its 10g.
Wiring my home with fiber
131–140 of 305 posts
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#132This is likely not useful in most west european homes (even gigabit connections are unheard of in the uk, 10 megs being advertised as “superfast”, let alone tens of gigs). But still a fun project!
The uk is behind most of europe. Even east eu countries have fiber to a significant chunk of the population now, and west is doing great. In france i get 5Gb/1.2Gb for 49 euros. Switzerland is even better. When i sold routers to businesses they would always be gigabit fiber available, so much that i had stopped checking.
That said 25Gb is a lot outside of switzerland.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#133I 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.
Youd be surprised what you can do with a 40in drill bit and a wire snake. did my whole house and only had to repair 1 piece of dry wall.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve done a lot of drywall work and I still avoid it whenever possible. Doing basic drywall and paint isn’t rocket science, but getting a professional level fit and finish actually takes a lot of practice and experience. It’s also a completely different experience when you’re trying to match old specialty paints from a previous homeowner, blending repairs to match the wall texture, and other complexities that don’t s…
I just redid my whole kitchen to the studs. You're making it out to be a bigger deal than it is. Now I'm onto a bedroom where I removed two whole walls that had been weirdly built to cut the room into a smaller room. This is going to require a bunch of repair work, all the way to the ceilings. Certainly, if you're looking for perfectly smooth walls, then you're never going to be happy regardless. My place is Santa Fe…
Sure, it’s easy when you have the wall texture that is designed to look like a bad drywall job. If you’re trying to match the wall type found in 90% of American homes, there’s a huge difference in efficiency and quality between a DIYer and a professional mudder.
A good feathering job saves a ton of wasted sanding effort and drywall dust. When I ask GCs and tradespeople which job they would would never do themselves, drywall is far and away the most common answer. It’s the only job I regret doing myself.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have to think about the future though when you’re dealing with running stuff in walls. Think about what would’ve been acceptable throughput 10 years ago. If you built your home network around that, you’d probably be kicking yourself today.
Even CAT5e supports 10gbps in your typical house (you'll want CAT6 for longer distances though), and 10gbps is likely future proof for the next 25 years (which is crazy because CAT5e came out in 1999).
And ipv6 came out a year before that.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#136Wiring for me has been a waste of time. I spent a good amount of time wiring the house with cat 6 cabling. I had our TV on a hard wired network which felt great, no drop outs, no wifi noise. I then bought a roku box and left on wifi for a while. Its still on wifi, works great and kept it there. Family mostly uses wifi now, no PCs using the hard-won ethernet jacks.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, it looks terrible to you (and to me), but there are plenty of people who have no issue with it. Just like there's people who get agida when there's things like toasters that sit out on the kitchen counter, but a lot of people think it's fine.
Just like there are people who don't care about how good or bad code they write as long as it works. Doesn't mean we should accept or promote this as 'good'.
Aesthetics aren't the same as quality, right?
Also, I would say writing bad code makes the code very inaccessible...just like burying important infrastructure in a wall.
Did that water leak last year cause mild growth in the wall? Don't know without some demolition! Want to upgrade your piping or electrical? Gotta destroy some wall, hooray, and then do more work to hide it again. Lunacy.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just redid my whole kitchen to the studs. You're making it out to be a bigger deal than it is. Now I'm onto a bedroom where I removed two whole walls that had been weirdly built to cut the room into a smaller room. This is going to require a bunch of repair work, all the way to the ceilings. Certainly, if you're looking for perfectly smooth walls, then you're never going to be happy regardless. My place is Santa Fe…
Sure, it’s easy when you have the wall texture that is designed to look like a bad drywall job. If you’re trying to match the wall type found in 90% of American homes, there’s a huge difference in efficiency and quality between a DIYer and a professional mudder. A good feathering job saves a ton of wasted sanding effort and drywall dust. When I ask GCs and tradespeople which job they would would never do themselves,…
From what I've learned on YT, using quick drying mud and mixing it yourself (not using the premixed stuff in plastic containers), is the key to smooth finishes. Mostly because it hardens quickly and doesn't shrink. I used the 40m quick dry and it was quite easy to work with. You're right, feathering correctly... no sanding needed.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#139Awesome project, I did something very similar at home, but used fiber only to connect switches and routers around the house. PoE is still a must for powering wireless access point and perimeter security cameras.
PoE is a huge reason why CAT-x cabling will be around for a long time.
Re: Wiring my home with fiber
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Unfortunately, in my experience of 6 or 7 new builds in the last 15 years or so, coaxial cables are usually staples to the studs and useless for this purpose.
Coax stapled to the studs is different than coax running inside of a conduit.
I have never seen coax running in a conduit in a residential setting in the USA.