lv in residential
Curious as to what the trends for tv and phone/data in houses are leaning towards now. For quite a while now I have been recommending at least one location in each room to have as minimum the following; 1-dual RG-6, and 2-cat5e cables. 1-dual coax and 1-cat5e to the tv locations. I personally would prefer 2-cat5e cables to every phone location in the house, but budget constraints sometimes don't allow that. I would also pull a dual RG-6 to a suitable location on the outside for a dish. All these cables go to a common location in the house, preferably close to the loadcenter.
Now, I know this setup doesn't address every configuration that someone could need, but it covers a good portion. Last year, on a 5000sf house we pulled the normal dual coax to the dish location. When the installers arrived, Dish Network, and I wasn't around, they told the homeowners that the electricians screwed up and they couldn't hook it up the way it was wired. They ran a single RG-6 out of the lv box, laid it on the floor of the equipment room, drilled outside, ran it on top of the ground, and up to the dish. The homeowners didn't see any problem with that.
I have had customers tell me that a dual coax to the dish wasn't enough for them. One couple actually had me come back twice to add a dual coax each time. They used 5 RG-6 wires at their dish(s). I don't know what was involved there. Impossible to anticipate something like that when prewiring a house unless there are specifics given.
Also, with the growing use of wireless internet devices and whatnot, is it still recommended to pull 2-cat5e, or better, to each anticipated data port? I am comfortable doing this if I can get the money for it, but I argue this point with a couple of my guys on each house. One in particular hates it for some reason and tells me that everything will go wireless and we are just spending money needlessly. I don't know enough about the standards or the installation end of this to be comfortable either way. Being an electrician, I am all for the hard wired version. I always thought security was better on a land line than wireless, and reliability was better. But what do I know? I know I'd like to know what everyone else is doing.
I am not talking low end spec houses here. Not necessarily high, high, high end custom homes either.
Thanks for any feedback, Jim
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. IMO its hard to have a structured layout for low volt, id be nice to run that banana cable everywhere and call it good.
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