Cat5e cable

[pontifex]

Looking to wire my new house for ethernet and looking for about 500 feet in a pull box.

checked monoprice but they only have 1000 ft. boxes. I think even the 500 ft. is going to be overkill.

anyway, is SolidRun by Sewell a good brand? I found some on Ebay for like $45 shipped for 1000 feet. Seems to be the cheapest unless I go ahead and get the 1000 feet from monoprice for $80.

 

[kornphlake]

Fry's carried a box containing 100m (~330ft) a few years ago, it wasn't the most economical per foot, but the unit cost was less than the most inexpensive box of 1000' I could find.

 

[imagoon]

The cable doesn't go bad. Just run more jacks than you expected. Living room? Run 4 ports instead of 2. Bedrooms etc? Run 2. $80 / 1000ft is cheap. The terminations will be the expensive side. Worst case leave the pulled wired tied up in the wall for "future expansion."

 

[pontifex]

i found out that the solidrun is CCA, not bare copper. I think I'm going to go with monoprice since that is bare copper.

 

[ScottMac]

The cable doesn't go bad. Just run more jacks than you expected. Living room? Run 4 ports instead of 2. Bedrooms etc? Run 2. $80 / 1000ft is cheap. The terminations will be the expensive side. Worst case leave the pulled wired tied up in the wall for "future expansion."

Actually, it does go bad, and probably sooner than you'd think. The various plastics out-gas and shrink from exposure to air & light. AT&T produced a cabling system that they'd guarantee for ten years (maybe it was twenty, I don't remember off the top of my head), but they formulated their conductor insulation and sheath to minimize the deterioration effects.

Obviously, the cable doesn't just stop working, but measured performance to certification spec may degrade over time as the sheath & insulation "rot." Some environments cause the degradation to occur faster (chemical, high UV, temp, humidity, etc).

Nobody cares, I know, but I thought I'd mention it.

 

[Subyman]

Why not just get 5 lengths of the 100 footers from monoprice? It comes out to around 55 dollars. You would already have some terminated ends as well, which will save some time and money. They have good prices on keystones and plates as well.

 

[imagoon]

Why not just get 5 lengths of the 100 footers from monoprice? It comes out to around 55 dollars. You would already have some terminated ends as well, which will save some time and money. They have good prices on keystones and plates as well.

Pre-terminated stranded cable is not for in wall installation. Typically the pulls can't handle the stress putting the cables out of spec.

 

[kevnich2]

Looking to wire my new house for ethernet and looking for about 500 feet in a pull box.

checked monoprice but they only have 1000 ft. boxes. I think even the 500 ft. is going to be overkill.

anyway, is SolidRun by Sewell a good brand? I found some on Ebay for like $45 shipped for 1000 feet. Seems to be the cheapest unless I go ahead and get the 1000 feet from monoprice for $80.

I don't know how big/small your house is but unless you're only doing a few runs a 1000ft box doesn't last as long as you think. And how ever many runs to each jack you plan on doing, either double or triple it. Esp in the living room and main rooms. I would suggest in the living room where your main tv will be, put three runs on each side of the room. While you're running cat5e, also look into running another coax or two as well. The cable itself is the cheap part, the actual installation is the tough part. Always add in more than you think for future expansion. I have my whole house wired, every room has two cat5e and I wish I would have added more coax.

 

[skyking]

It is so easy to start a wire, tape another on, another and pull through than it is to go back and add a cable.
If you drag a second cable through an already existing run, you stand a very good chance of "burning" the cable that is already in there.
"burning" is when the new cable slides over the old one in a tight spot, literally sawing into it. Of course this happens in the worst place that you can never see.
Heed all the advice above and drag in extra. It is cheap insurance and if you don't terminate it, very cheap indeed.
When you have a single box, measure out the run carefully. add at least 10 feet to your estimate, then pull x number of runs out of the box and tape them together, and pull all at one go. Get coax, anything else and do it once.
That 10 feet is very cheap insurance. I have had clients move the patch panel location at the last minute and it saved my ass. At the end of the day recycle it.
Heed everybody's advice and overbuild. You will be shocked when the day comes and it was not enough 😀

 

[guskline]

Just installed 2 50 ft Cat 6a patch cables. Higher price but getting ready for more through put.

 

[Andle Riddum]

i found out that the solidrun is CCA, not bare copper. I think I'm going to go with monoprice since that is bare copper.

I just noticed CCA wires are EVERWHERE! Not too long ago many cat5(e) included with modem or routers etc were made of copper. I managed to find a couple of vintage cat5e's laying around. They're quite easy to spot, check the cable ends...copper =red/pink, CCA= metal grey

 

[Eug]

Buy two 1000' boxes of good quality CAT6 and pull them in parallel at the same time. If you have some left over, then just sell it on Craigslist. Remember, your house probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it isn't worth it to save $50 in cable.

Run two to each room minimum, not just for multiple devices, but also for redundancy. One of my cables got cut by the electrician by accident. Another got torched by the gas fitter. And I just replaced a cable because it was simply a bad cable. I reterminated the cable several times but it just wasn't reliable. Put in a new cable and it was fine. I wouldn't have had to do that if there had been a second cable there, but in that spot it was in an open area in a utility room so it was easy to replace fortunately.