Just finalising the details for a structured home cabling system in our new house (roof/walls are on, will be pre-wiring in the next couple of weeks. Would appreciate the advice of you geekzoners on a couple of things. Sits across a couple of forums, so figure diy is the most appropriate category.
1) I cant find it explicitly through searching the forums, but have sky stopped using siamese rg6 on their installs? Im deciding how many rg6 to run to the main tv location, was thinking only two, since we dont have any plans for sky at this stage, but do want it to be future proofed. I know that sky/mysky is 'served' only over one rg6 at the moment, can someone confirm that it is unlikely to require two in the near future? Have prepared for the possibility of UFB delivered TV as well.
2) What is the best way to mount a UHF TV antenna? I was thinking J-pole off the barge board, but they seem to be out of stock/hard to find online. I see a lot of solutions involving stays that attaching to the roof, but something about drilling roles in a brand new roof is just wrong to me. Its a colour steel roof, so wouldnt be technically hard to do, im just not keen.
3) Do masthead amps pass through signal effectively when they aren't powered? Reason that I ask is that the in our current house at the location (we are building in front of our old house), we have a masthead amp, however have quite old cabling and a very old UHF antenna. I would like to find out if the masthead amp is really necessary, but dont want to physically remove/isolate it. If I simply remove the power injector from the circuit, the signal is too bad. Will the masthead amp be attenuating the signal significantly if it is unpowered? We are in the middle of Paraparaumu, so no major hills in between us and Ngarara, so I might have thought that with a 43 element antenna, I should get enough signal without an amp (im trying to skimp on the $100 for an amp here)
4) Im trying to keep the central hub as discrete as possible, looking at a PDL DBF-45 (Standard home power switchboard, flush mounted into the wall). I know that its going to be tight, but can just fit a 19" patch panel in there, thats the main thing to me. Heat may be an issue as it doesnt have any vents as standard, but at this stage it should just be a modem in there, and I could drill holes and add a fan to the door later if neccesary. Anyone used this sort of enclosure for their structured cabling before, or any thoughts?
5) Cable routing: I seem to recall a recommendation of running bundles of cables in the ceiling space suspended from the rafters, so avoid tradies from walking on them. Is it worth the hassle?
Thanks for your time/thoughts!