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Installing Networks in New Construction

If you have the good fortune to be able to wire your home before the walls are closed, make sure you include all of the wires that are necessary to make your home "future proof." In a new home, structured cabling should be added as a minimum. Along with the media outlets, you should add audio wiring to be able to take advantage of server based music and video, occupancy sensors for security and automation and HVAC cabling for automatic control of your environment. Even if you don't install the equipment, you should install the cables for future use.

FAQs

Should you install fiber optics? Fiber is good for distributing high speed data over long distances without noise. Inside a home, at the current time, there are almost no products available that can utilize fiber optics. Maybe ten years from now, that will change. If you want to stay way ahead of the technology curve, we can install fiber now and leave it in the wall, un-terminated.

Should I use conduit to my media outlets? This depends on the construction of your home. If your home is standard colonial construction with a basement and attic, then it is not necessary to use conduit, because you can always access the outlets from the attic or basement. If your house is of the contemporary style, no walls line up and there is no attic and/or a finished basement, then it will be necessary to use conduit.

In general it is better to err on the side of too much wire than too little. We always find a use for the wires that are installed and we find we could have used one more cable in some situations. Put extra cable wires in the media center and more Cat5 in the office.