What is the best way to wire a house ?

[DarkManX]

My family and I will be moving soon and i want to wire up my house with CAT5/6 and Probably RG6 what would be the best way to do this especially with the RG6.. how will I distribute video? We will Have a combination of cable and sattelite. So what hardware would I need to do the distobution. My cousin has a Fishing tool so he will help me fish all the cables, the thing i need help with is terminating the cables at the end and what equipment to use.

 

[cmetz]

Do a search, hopefully the threads on this subject haven't disappeared. The home wiring question gets asked all the time, just every time a little bit differently, so eyeball-scan thread subjects looking for something of this nature.

Run conduit if possible - gives you a lot of flexibility to change things later. Home Depot has reasonable cat5e cable and Leviton modular faceplates/jacks, there's some mail-order vendors of the same that other folks will recommend, it's all fine.

Get the Ideal Punchmaster II ($65ish) for the cat5 RJ45 110 block terminations, and a good coax crimper that does RG6 (Ideal makes an okay one which is what I have - folks here should be able to recommend a better one). You can get cheaper tools, but in the long run there's no deals in tools - at this cost scale, good tools pay for themselves, and they pretty much last forever. Also consider getting a tone generator and handset ($80ish), and a basic RJ45 cable tester ($50ish, the kind that checks that you got the right pins connected in the right places, not the kind that really tests the signal quality of the cable, which are too expensive to be worth it to most hobbyists).

For video, RG6 quad shielded, and depending on how many drops, either a passive splitter (Ideal again) or an amplified/active splitter (no idea whose to get, check bandwidth of the amp, too).

 

[skyking]

I'd be tempted to buy this kit for starters.
cat6 kit

 

[DarkManX]

I work at radio shack, so I can buy/borrow whatever tools I need, plus we actually sell most of modular jacks. Im just mostly wondering on the video, and how to split it without loosing signal. Or possibly somehow share the Dish network PVR all over the house.

 

[DarkManX]

where can you get a splitter that does has more then 4 outputs?

 

[TJN23]

i recommend getting cable (cat5e) and levitron faceplates and modular jack equipment at home depot...

its there in front of you and u see what you're getting for this hands on job you're about to undertake...

they have nice 3 port faceplates i use...one for telephone, Cat5e, and coaxial...they also have 6 port faceplates if thats what you need...they are a bit pricy, but come with clear instructions, easy to see color codes, and proper punch down tools (they look nice too)...

good luck with your project!

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: DarkManX
I work at radio shack, so I can buy/borrow whatever tools I need, plus we actually sell most of modular jacks. Im just mostly wondering on the video, and how to split it without loosing signal. Or possibly somehow share the Dish network PVR all over the house.

You may want to check out the forums at www.dbstalk.com. I'm sure you can get your PVR questions answered there.