Advice on wiring/wireless setup for new home with sound batts between rooms

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message2ben

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#98694 4-Mar-2012 15:00

Hi

I'm in the process of building a new home in Wellington (J'vlle) and am trying to figure out the best wiring and network device setup for our needs (as well as a some future proofing). I was wondering if anyone here would be able to give some advice. I've listed some specific questions below.

Here is the floor plan:

It's a small house (105msq excluding garage), with one room upstairs that we'd need wireless connectivity to. There are two bedrooms and an open-plan living area downstairs. We'll need wireless connectivity in the shaded downstairs rooms and one of the bedrooms will be a home office, so there will be some need for wire-connected devices there too. There is also a cupboard under the stairs that will have a hot-water cylinder in it but that could possibly serve as a good central point for a hub. In terms of network use, it'll be fairly normal stuff - streaming video, music, etc. throughout the house. The location we are building in doesn't have cable broadband coverage at the moment, so we'll have to go with a DSL provider at least in the short term.

There will be noise-cancelling batts in the walls of the bedrooms and between the floors, which will probably interfere with wireless signal between rooms (or am I wrong here?).

With that in mind, my thinking at the moment is that we'd get cable (cat5?) put in from a hub (blue star) through to each of the red stars, with a couple of ports at each of the red stars. We'd then plug in wireless access points in the rooms we need wireless access (initially the bedroom 1 and living). We'll get some ducting put in at the same time so that putting new/upgraded cable in at a later date will be easier.

I'm completely new to this, so my questions are:

- Does this sound like crazy talk? If so, what would you suggest instead?
If not...
- Should we go with cat5 for cable?
- Can you suggest a hub/router for the cupboard?
- Can you suggest good wireless access points?
- Can you suggest good installers I could contact that service Johnsonville?
- Anything else I should be thinking about?

Thanks for any help you can give!
Ben.

alexx

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Ultimate Geek

#590196 4-Mar-2012 15:24

message2ben:

There will be noise-cancelling batts in the walls of the bedrooms and between the floors, which will probably interfere with wireless signal between rooms (or am I wrong here?).

Not sure, but aren't those Batts some sort of fibreglass material?
Or is it something else?

I know in the days when I was involved with VHF radio and Amateur radio installations in cars, people had a lot of problems with ignition interference in fibreglass bodied vehicles (e.g. Corvette) due to the lack of screening.

There might be some attenuation from the Batts, but perhaps not as much as you might think unless they contain some sort or metal/carbon material that would screen the radio signal.

Having said that, install a much Cat 6 cable as you can while it's being built, or some facility for installing more later.

You can never have too many RJ45 outlets in your home.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

sbiddle

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#590204 4-Mar-2012 15:54

Cat5e cable is fine for the average install assuming you're only wanting to use it for ethernet. It does Gigabit and is cheap. If you plan on starting to use baluns etc for HDMI there may be some advantages in moving to cat6 with it's great bandwidth but you're still paying a premium for the cable (roughly 30% more still) and cat6 connectors and patch panel.

I'm a great fan of Ubiquiti for AP's these days.

antoniosk

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#590215 4-Mar-2012 16:28

1. Establish where your wiring for telephone - telecom and telstraclear - comes in from, from the street, and how it will get to your comms cupboard under the stairs. Conduit is the best of course - but also because there is a limit on what Chorus will subsidise into the premises (5m) with the balance of cost being borne by you.

Note they are only obliged to connect from the closest part of their network to you - normally the street pole to the corner of your house.

So Future-proof no 1 solved. Make sure lots of good power sockets and space in there too... and some ventilation :-)

2. A couple of cat5e points in each room back to the comms cupboard as well. From your layout that looks like about 10 connections

3. Maybe consider placing an access point in the centre of the house, on the ceiling and pointing downwards back into the house. Downstairs will get coverage, as will the other rooms. You're so close to it that perhaps down the back of shed might struggle :-)

Tuning WIFI is an imperfect science, and unfortunately the AP vendors don't make it easy to understand best placement.

Many of the cheaper AP's have an external rubber aerial - imagine the signal broadcasting left to right, with a little signal going up and down. Tilt the aerial and you tilt the shape of the signal. High gain aerials are horrible offenders - they 'flatten' the shape of the coverage so you get more left-right, at the cost of up/down. Omni -directionals are a little better in this regard.

The linksys E4200 for example, can be a lay-flat (meaning more omni directional) or put on the wall. The Airport Extreme is great for up/down/left/right but is a bit 'meh' for penetration through wood.

On it goes.

I have a Thomson 789vn VDSL2/Ethernet at work, which is an upright. It has unbelievably good reach through the building, which is mostly open plan interspersed by metal and glass. Overall the building is nearly 100m long. I also used an Allied Telesyn WR2304n which had those rubber aerials, and by rights should have performed better - no such luck, dies about 25m faster than the Thomson.

________

Antoniosk

chevrolux

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Uber Geek
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#590217 4-Mar-2012 16:33

I would put an access point above the door that goes from the living room to bedroom 2. Ubiquiti Unifi's are pretty cheap and look great mounted on the wall. Very un-obtrusive and are run on PoE so no need to put a power point up there. They have 3 different models (mini, normal and long range) so maybe go long range and it should have plenty of guts to reach upstairs - others could confirm this though.
As for cabled outlets, your location are fairly limited. I would go both sides in the bedroom, but just fit off the one you want to use for now and gib over the other set so you can just cut out a flush box in the future in case you change your mind on the layout. And definitely put atleast 4 to where the tv is going. This will allow for sky, games console, htpc or hdmi distribution (but not all of them at once lol).

tdgeek

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#590230 4-Mar-2012 17:15

Re upstairs room that you want wifi to. A wall may be 70mm thick but a stairwell for wifi is like a wall as thick as the stairwell, so keep the stairwell not in between the AP and the device, or cable that. Given that you are building, CAT6 eveywhere is a great idea while it is easy to include

webwat

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#590235 4-Mar-2012 17:43

Or maybe the access point can go in corner of living room, high up on the wall near ceiling level, next to bedroom 2. Put cable to another location (eg hallway) in case the AP has issues in the preferred location, and the spare AP location would potentially be available for a security camera or wall mounted TV in future. The biggest effect to wifi coverage would be concrete or metal in the walls.

It's worth putting dual outlets on different walls in bedrooms along with at least 1 coax TV outlet, and 2 or 3 locations in the living room is worthwhile too. If theres a couple of obvious spots for the TV, put outlets at both places. Looks like you have a suitable location for a cordless phone base station near the kitchen, and you might want to leave cables in the wall that allow for an intercom or centralised in-wall sound system. If you think there might be some case for a server in future that runs multimedia, security or home control then don't forget to put a couple of jacks in a well ventilated cupboard too.

I wouldn't want the comms cabinet in same cupboard with hot water because ADSL modems and other equipment goes into that cabinet, but you could run a bundle of cables from comms cabinet in the garage to whatever point is useful for distributing them around the house. A couple of cables need to run out to a point that connects with the Telecom feed, even if they aren't connected straight away.

Time to find a new industry!

message2ben

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#590236 4-Mar-2012 17:47

Thanks all.

The sound-batts are just the standard glass wool (no metal), so I might be pleasantly surprised by how a signal will go through them. I figure as long as I get double jacks wired into each bedroom, with more in the living area as one person suggested, I'll be able to play with access points as needed.

I hadn't seen the Ubiquity Unifi APs, so will definitely check those out some more. I also hadn't considered getting extra hotpoints put in the cupboard (duh!).

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message2ben

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#590238 4-Mar-2012 17:57

webwat: I wouldn't want the comms cabinet in same cupboard with hot water because ADSL modems and other equipment goes into that cabinet, but you could run a bundle of cables from comms cabinet in the garage to whatever point is useful for distributing them around the house.

Yeah, I might have a chat with the plumber about how much heat would be given off by the cylinder. My understanding is that new cylinders shouldn't give off any heat since they are now fully insulated. There should be a fairly large space under there too. Alternatively the garage would suffice - it is actually closer to the road, so would be closer to the telecoms connections.

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#590259 4-Mar-2012 20:00

message2ben: Hi

I'm in the process of building a new home in Wellington (J'vlle) and am trying to figure out the best wiring and network device setup for our needs (as well as a some future proofing). I was wondering if anyone here would be able to give some advice. I've listed some specific questions below.

Here is the floor plan:

It's a small house (105msq excluding garage), with one room upstairs that we'd need wireless connectivity to. There are two bedrooms and an open-plan living area downstairs. We'll need wireless connectivity in the shaded downstairs rooms and one of the bedrooms will be a home office, so there will be some need for wire-connected devices there too. There is also a cupboard under the stairs that will have a hot-water cylinder in it but that could possibly serve as a good central point for a hub. In terms of network use, it'll be fairly normal stuff - streaming video, music, etc. throughout the house. The location we are building in doesn't have cable broadband coverage at the moment, so we'll have to go with a DSL provider at least in the short term.

There will be noise-cancelling batts in the walls of the bedrooms and between the floors, which will probably interfere with wireless signal between rooms (or am I wrong here?).

With that in mind, my thinking at the moment is that we'd get cable (cat5?) put in from a hub (blue star) through to each of the red stars, with a couple of ports at each of the red stars. We'd then plug in wireless access points in the rooms we need wireless access (initially the bedroom 1 and living). We'll get some ducting put in at the same time so that putting new/upgraded cable in at a later date will be easier.

I'm completely new to this, so my questions are:

- Does this sound like crazy talk? If so, what would you suggest instead?
If not...
- Should we go with cat5 for cable?
- Can you suggest a hub/router for the cupboard?
- Can you suggest good wireless access points?
- Can you suggest good installers I could contact that service Johnsonville?
- Anything else I should be thinking about?

Thanks for any help you can give!
Ben.

I have batts in the wall space of internal walls and get good wireless speeds (20MB/s+).

Get cat6 for cable.

I use linksys e4200 for wireless (check smallnetbuilder for advice).

Consider a switch for your main cabinet. I use a fanless HP procurve 24 port gigabit unmanaged switch. Depends on how many points you will have though, maybe over kill for you.

Heat and noise are issues for a central cabinet. A hot water cupboard might get too hot with a bunch of hot networking gear.Fans make noise too.

If you think you might like a fileserver in your cabinet one day, do you have enough space?

One other thing, cat6 can transmit IR (for tv signals), video (1080p 3d using a balun), and audio. Could be a good way to send HD video to another room but you need cabling in place. I have 4 ethernet jackpoints next to my tv, and it is not enough.

chevrolux

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#590279 4-Mar-2012 21:06

You wont have a problem with heat in the hot water cupboard. For what you are doing in the home environment it just isn't an issue really.

jonherries

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#590301 4-Mar-2012 21:51

Not sure if/where the tv is going, but you miight want some portsthere. Also if are wanting to have a play with arduino and the like, you may want a jack into the garage.

Jon

spearsniper

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Master Geek

#591218 6-Mar-2012 12:57

I went down this route some time ago, and got 4 RJ45 ports in each room, 4 behind the TV, a couple in the garage, and have never regretted it.

It just gives you so many options for running home theatre, computers etc. I have the wireless AP hanging off one of the ports behind the TV, so we can sit on the sofa and use our laptops / smart phones.

I have a small patch cabinet in a cupboard. It contains a small UPS, ADSL modem, Cisco switch, Synology NAS, and Power injector for the wireless AP, and the patch panel itself. 8 ports were set up for phone, so I can distribute the wired phone to any RJ45 port in the house.
Even in a power outage I still have wireless internet for about an hour, as well as access to my file shares.

If I was to do it again, the only thing I would change would be Cat6 cabling, just for the future proofing angle.

cyril7

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#591262 6-Mar-2012 14:11

Hi, my comments, putting the hub in the closet under the stairs is a logical one, dont worry too much about HW cylinder heat but maybe ensure the closet can vent, this may simply be ensuring an air gap top and bottom of the closet door.

As for the leadin, if you run 2x cat5e or cat6 and 1x RG6 trisheild to the demarc which I assume is on the garge outer wall under or near the power meter or near the front right corner then you will have covered off all your future needs. I recommend that you place a blank faceplate on the inside wall directly behind the demarc so you can get access to the cables (and leadin) and create a path for fibre in future. Also place a GPO beside this to power a future ONT.

As for placement of the Wireless router, under the stairs will cover the lounge and lower bedroom just fine, and most likely the upper floor as well I suspect its not a large area.

I note you have made no mention of RG6 runs anywhere, so where are the TV's. And if you are wall hanging TV's then you will need an RG6 to that high wall (approx 1.2m off floor) location and a Cat5e/6 as well for the internal media client and obviously 2-3x RG6 and at least 2x Cat5e/6 runs to where the AV gear goes below, maybe you can detail your AV needs.

Obviously in addition to this you need a couple of runs of RG6 to the roof for Sky/FreeView, infact I would run all RG6 cables to the top floor ceiling near the man hole, and run one tie line to the closet/hub to pickup the any future HFC or Fibre TV feed.

If you are going to potentially use Telstra HFC then ensure all RG6 is Trishield, otherwise duobond is fine. As for cat5e or 6, personally I would just use Cat5e but Cat6 is not much more these days.

Cyril

message2ben

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#591399 6-Mar-2012 19:39

Re RG6 - we'll have a TV port in the upstairs bedroom and one in the living room (probably bottom right wall), but we don't actually have a TV or particularly want one (weird, I know). We'll be consuming most of our media on portable devices and will move to a wireless Hi-Fi setup once the technology improves/comes down in price. We will definitely get a few RJ45 jacks next to the RG6s incase we change our habits or sell the house.

I'm not entirely sure where the telco lines will terminate - will talk to the builder when we are on site next to get a feel for most likely point. I suspect it will be near the power meter, so thanks for the idea re getting a faceplate and GPO on the inside garage wall!