Advice on wiring house for ethernet?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am in the process of buying a new construction house, which naturally, as I’m buying it, I really like, but one drawback is that despite being new construction firmly within the digital era, the builder did not run any hard-wired network cables. (There is a cable connection in every bedroom.)

I still use a desktop computer, sometimes play an online multiplayer game, and can notice the difference in streaming video buffering speed with a wired vs. wireless network, so I am interested in wiring my house with Cat6 cable.

How easy is this to do yourself? My father was a general home remodeling contractor, and I worked for him summers in high school/college, so I’m decent at DIY stuff, but there a few factors that leave me wondering whether it’s worth it to try. My new house is 2 levels, with a crawl space and an attic. It’s a twin, and the caliber of fire blocking the builder put into the common wall required that nothing be run through the wall, so all the outlets that would be in the wall on that side are in the floor instead. I’m thinking things should be fairly easily accessible from the crawl space below, but as for the attic, there’s a little section up there with some plywood laid down but all around it is blown loose fill fiberglass insulation, so I can’t even see the floor joists and have no idea if any wires are running through it or not. I was thinking I could use the same routes and boxes the cable lines are currently in, but there’s the complicating factor that on the 2nd floor, some of those are in interior walls which are not continuations of first floor walls: i.e., directly below those walls, you’re in the middle of a room.

Anyone ever taken on a project like this yourself? If it’s not worth doing it myself, how do find the right person to hire? I don’t know anyone locally who’s had this kind of job done. I’m thinking the right kind of guy would be an electrician, as I tried Homeadvisor/Angie’s List but they seem to come up mainly with tech support-type guys who help you configure your network rather than guys who actually install cable.

ETA: in the living room and master bedroom, in addition to a cable connection, there is an HDMI connection. Any idea what that might be for? I forgot to ask the builder, but I haven’t seen any closet or anything where the other terminus of those might be found.

2

I’ll skip possible alternate methods (e.g., powerline data units) and simply suggest calling an alarm installer. They generally also do A/V and data cabling. There are quite a few tricks to running low-voltage cable and some specialized tools are helpful. They know/have these and would be happy to give you a quote.

I used to do this for a few years and you might be surprised how easy it is to do yourself. Glow rods and long flexible bits will get you into a lot of places. Much easier than rewiring electrical circuits.

3

If you are running wires through the floor and the walls you definitely want an electrician. That’s their specialty. Before doing that I would check for improvements in wireless technology first. Even if it’s not suitable for you now it will be eventually. It won’t increase your home’s value to have wiring that’s useless by the time you sell it.

4

When you say “There is a cable connection in every bedroom.” I assume you mean coax, like for cable TV? If so, no need to rewire. Go grab yourself a few MoCA Adaptors and you’re set.

Lest you think they’re not going to be fast enough, Mr. Athena and I both work from home, both are on VPNs and video conference calls most of the day, both using these MoCA cables. I also play online games quite a bit. I’ve never felt a need for more speed than the MoCA gives me. We were in the same boat as you - about to look at wiring our 3-story house, because WiFI just wasn’t doing it for us. Then we found the MoCA stuff and have never looked back.

Similar adapters exist for electrical lines. We do have one of those as well, for the one room in our house we needed a wired connection that didn’t have coax. Mr. Athena mostly did that one, so I’m not sure of the details, but it works fine.

5

If you’re pulling new cable, you might consider cat 7 or at least cat 6a. 10 gigabit Ethernet cards just recently became affordable, and I’d expect 10 GbE to be common even for consumers in the next 5 years. Cat 7 can handle 40 gigabits and even 100 gigabits for short distances. That’s way beyond what you need now, but in 15 years (or whenever you sell your house) you won’t regret paying for cat 7.

Whoever pulls your cable may well be able to use the existing coax to pull the Ethernet cable along the same route, at least on the first floor—that could save you some money.

I’d get quotes from 2-3 electricians and 2-3 alarm installers. There are contractors who specialize in pulling data cables, but AFAIK they mostly do commercial work. Still, if such a contractor needs to keep a crew busy, they might do a small residential project like yours. Try a search for something like “structured cabling contractor.”

Finally, although it’s possible that streaming video load times take longer over your wireless connection, it’s highly unlikely unless your internet connection speed greatly outstrips your Wi-Fi speed. If you’ve got a decent 802.11ac signal (AKA “WiFi 5”) then your wireless network isn’t the problem.

6

But it will increase my enjoyment of my own home. One of the reasons I’m finally buying is that I like the idea of being able to do what I want with the place.

Yes, coaxial. Though there is no coax line to the first floor room I plan to use as my office/study, where I will want to put my desktop computer. And I don’t want to use up outlets with those power line adapters. Still, MoCA might be good enough for now, as someone told me there was no fiber available in the neighborhood yet, so I might be stuck with cable internet.

Is Cat 7 definitely the next standard? I thought I read somewhere recently that it’s not worth installing Cat 7 because it’s not yet clear that it will become the next standard.

And actually, the thought of using the existing coax to pull the Ethernet cable along the same route is one of the reasons I’ve entertained the thought of doing this myself. I mean, that would make it really easy. Assuming the holes they drilled in any studs/joists are big enough to fit additional cables through. Anyone know whether it’s common for a builder to affix the coax at points inside walls/floors rather than just leaving it totally loose?

7

And that is the very best reason to do it!

8

It’s no harder than running a phone wire. You drop the wire down an inside wall of the house. Don’t use exterior walls. They often have insulation and blocking.

I ran cat5. You’ll need a crimper to install the plugs.

How to make a Ethernet cable

9

I say to go for it. I ran it throughout my house. It’s not quite right to say that this is an electrician’s specialty – I think running dangerous levels of power safely throughout the home and wiring circuit breaker panel is more like their specialty. You no more need an electrician to run network cable than you do a plumber to install a gutter. One thing I wish I had done differently is I wish I’d made more of a shrine out of the central point I ran much of it to, where I have a network switch and shelves with other gear. Let it take up some wall space downstairs, and let it be easy to work on. And I’m glad I ran a few extras to locations like my home office.

With a little thought, you could probably make it pretty easy to pull replacement cable through if the standards change that much.

10

Running wires through existing framing is the electrician’s specialty. Doesn’t matter what the wires are used for.

11

The problem is, it’s not as simple as dropping a wire straight from the 2nd floor all the way down through the wall to the crawl space. Instead, for a couple of the rooms I’d have to run a wire down the 2nd floor wall, then horizontally through the floor, then vertically again down through the 1st floor wall into the crawl space. Now, in those rooms there is already a coax cable doing just that, but I’m not sure how easy it would be to piggyback off that.

(Also, I’d have to get all those cables from the crawl space back up into the 2nd floor laundry closet, which I think would be the most sensible place to place the router and switch, given that no other outlets have power and I want this to look neat and permanent, without messiness like running an extension cord into a closet.

Right, it’s because they’re going to be good at snaking wires through walls and floors with minimal drywall removing and patching needed. Just like if you need to do the same thing with pipes, a plumber is the expert.

12

I’ve wired a lot of my house for Ethernet.*

But I have several advantages. The living spaces sit atop a basement and garage with unfinished ceilings. There’s a nice gap around the edges of the floors under the baseboard where the carpet doesn’t reach. Pulling back the carpet and drilling a hole up into that gap is fairly easy. Run a wire thru that hole, and hey, Ethernet. Pull the wire out, and hey, no sign of anything having been there.

I don’t do wall plates for Ethernet but I have for other things like antenna coax. Dropped down from the attic. So if need be, I could go that way as well, either from above or below.

So the big question is: what are the access possibilities for running wiring to the rooms and can you get access to a wall from above or below?

And if you want to get fancy, can you add your own connectors at places like wall plates? I used to be able to do this easy-peasy but the last time I did it earlier this year I found that my fine motor control isn’t as good as it used to be.

  • FtG, Ethernet fan since 1978.
13

There is a crawl space below and and attic with mostly no floor above, so yes, I should be able to get access to a wall from above or below. Was that not clear from my OP?

I don’t think making my own connectors will be a problem.

14

As I stated before, you need (or would find helpful) a 72" flexible bit with a 48" extension and a couple other things. Using a piece of wire coat hanger as a feeler bit is a good trick to help you locate top and bottom plates in walls. There have only been a couple times where I found I just could not get a low-voltage wire to a specific location.

And I’m not trying to put electrical contractors down (I am one), but they often do not have the experience and expertise in fishing cables that alarm installers do. They are a lot more likely to simply tell you that they need to knock a hole or two in the wall to get where they need to go. (This is strictly my opinion based on 39 years of experience.)

15

If you’re lucky they will have run some conduit (plastic or metal pipe) in the wall, and then run the cable through that, which should make it fairly easy to pull new wires through. Although they might have run conduit that’s just barely big enough for the coax, so you won’t be able to fit both wires through it. If you’re not lucky, they used some kind of nailed-in wire-holder to attach the cable to the framing, and you’ll have to do a totally separate run.

I’m going to echo the person who suggested getting some ethernet over coax and being done with it. I get wanting to do it the right way, but it’s a lot of work to avoid having a small box on either end of the connection that could be hidden behind whatever you’re plugging ethernet into anyway. None of this is rocket science, but I expect you’ll find that you ended up doing a lot of work for little gain.

The biggest problem with doing a new cable run is that there might be a fire block in the wall. This is a horizontal 2x4 that runs between studs. It’s to keep a fire that starts in a while from just racing up to the top of the wall. To get through it, you either need a really long drill bit from above, or you need to cut an extra hole in the wall close to the fire block, drill a hole in it, run the cable, then seal the fire block (otherwise it won’t stop fire), patch the hole, and repaint. That’s… kind of a hassle. See this video for directions.

15 years ago I had a summer job pulling network cable. I was the smallest guy on the crew so I got all the “crawl through a tiny crawlspace full of spiders with a bundle of cables tied to my ankle” jobs. I also spent what seems like hours untangling the Gordian Knot that 200 ethernet cables can make. It built character.

16

A Spear-Zit bit will make short work of any fire block made of wood. You can get other types of flexible bits, but a Spear-Zit works best because it clears the wood chips without backing it out. It goes through in seconds. Spear-Zits do ten to wander if you hit a nail, but it’s highly unlikely you will do so if you drill midway between your studs.

17

Anyone fishing wire needs flexible fiberglass rods. Electricians use them.

Very inexpensive at Harbor Freight. You can buy a better set for wiring a house.

18

Yeah, I think at the very least I need to poke around just enough to see how and where they ran the coax. There are two rooms, the living room and the office, where I would like to have multiple ethernet ports, thus requiring not one additional wire, but 2 or 3, though that’s mainly because I thought I read somewhere that you shouldn’t daisy-chain network switches. If I’m wrong and it is OK to daisy-chain switches, I could just get a 4-port switch for each location (I already have one in my living room in my apartment.)

Doesn’t each MoCA adapter have to plug into a power socket? So then I’m not only taking up another power socket, but have an always-on 5W or so power draw at each location. That’s not nothing.

I have the contact info of the builder and his construction manager, so I’m sure I could find out from them if they put fire blocks in the walls.

What kind of outfit were you working for? I assume it was commercial work, given the 200 ethernet cables?

19

True. And if you end up having conduit that can fit another cable, this is going to be easy enough to just do. But if you have to start cutting a bunch of holes in the wall, well, a little power is not a huge cost.

On the other hand, if you’re doing this because you think it’s fun and want a project, go for it. That kind of thing can be fun too.

Yeah, it was commercial, but of all sorts of sizes. We did 1000-drop ISP centers and 4-drop retrofits. Technically I guess I misspoke. I either had 200 cables towed behind me or a crawlspace full of spiders. Never both simultaneously, since the 200-cable runs were new construction and the spiders hadn’t yet moved in. It was my aunt’s company (yay, nepotism) which I believe they closed or sold years ago.

20

Ha ha. Yeah, I do think it’s fun and want a project, just not sure exactly where the complexity threshold is for me at this point in my life to decide it’s not worth it. But if I do it, I’d rather it been sooner than later, while the house is still new, when crawling around in the crawlspace means crawling in only mud and not mouse poop and cricket carcasses.