Cost of getting hardlines run through the home?

[Attic]

I'm running my house with Cat6, I can supply the cable, wall plates, jacks, and do the terminating at the end points.

It's a two story house with an attic and i'm going to run drops to the various rooms, about 5-6.

I've thought about running it myself, but I know the walls have fireblocks and the attic is a really miserable place to be. Walls on the second story don't line up well with the home base so i'm worried about routing the wire without screwing it up and making a ton of holes in my walls.

Does this kind of work get done on an hourly rate or a per drop rate? And would you recommend one drop per room or more? It seems like each drop is going to be at least an hour or more for a couple of guys.

 

[kevnich2]

There's usually several options, depending on the electrician you get. Some charge by the drop, others by the time. If they charge by time, there's really no difference with running 1 cable per drop or two. Your issue would be getting cable to your first floor, considering it's a 2 story. Do you have two boxes of cable or only one? If you have two, they can tape the ends together and run both at the same time.

I would definitely recommend two cables per drop but it's better if you have a plan as far as what devices you want put where. Another option to consider would be having a few drops put in the ceiling and having some Unifi AP's or open-mesh AP's installed for wireless devices.

I use my ceiling wireless more than I use my hard wired drops anymore. I have drops in every room but only use one drop in my living room for my media center and several more in my office, but I have a 16 port switch there. Everything else is wifi with 2 unifi AP's in two parts of the house.

 

[brshoemak]

See if you can get an actual low-voltage installer to do the work, not an electrician.

Some electricians do a great job, but more often then not I've seen electricians treat network cable like it's electrical wire. I can't tell you the number of installs I've seen where the cable is stapled down like you would do with romex.

It might be a little bit more per run but it will be worth it. If you can find an electrician who is competent with UTP, then more power to you - just look into it first.

What you end up running is up to you, but I would definitely prefer run at least 2 lines to a wall jack. Wireless is great, but you can't beat having a hardwired port for reliability, latency, and overall speed. Wireless isn't quite there yet. Due to the costs involved, you'll only want to do this once so make sure you make as many runs as you think you'll need whether it be to the wall or to the ceiling.

 

[fkoehler]

Agreed, try advertising on Craigslist for low-voltage cable installation.
Probably end up getting a Union guy on the sly.

Just make sure no staples or zip ties, only velcro.

Be sure your sitting down when you get the estimate. And try to get 3-4.
Always try to get a flat-rate quote. Anyone compentent can ballpark the hours, add a little for contingency, and price it.

If they can't or won't, then show them the door. Most likely they will suddenly say that they can probably figure it out.
Time and materials is great if you can get a sucker to agree to it.

Depending upon layout, you might be able to drop lines from attic down the walls, and from each room, make a cutout in the sheetrock wall and drill down and drop to the room below.

Ask each contractor lots of questions, and what exactly their plan is.

 

[Attic]

Ok great. I had not considered low voltage installer vs electrician.

I had an initial quote come back at $4200 for roughly 14 ethernet runs and a 5.1 audio room wire job. This quote was with me providing all materials.

Definitely need to get multiple bids and ask questions. During a recent remodel i'm finding it difficult to find guys who do good/great work rather than cutting corners.


I'll end up with 2 Unifi AP-Pro's and hardlines to most rooms. I'm currently looking a single ethernet drop to a number of rooms with option of putting in switches if I need more at the drop locations. Ideally I'd want 2 or more I think.


Overall, process has been more difficult than i'd have thought.

 

[brshoemak]

That sounds absurdly high to me, although there could be circumstances that make the runs harder to do.

Also, you say 14 ethernet runs. Does that mean you are placing runs at 14 separate locations or are some of the 14 runs goings to the same wall plate? If so, then you shouldn't need to pay extra labor for those runs because they will pull both cables at the same time - no additional work involved.

Am I correct in assuming this is not new construction and you are doing this behind drywall and without the benefit of conduit already installed in the walls?

 

[Engineer]

Am I correct in assuming this is not new construction and you are doing this behind drywall and without the benefit of conduit already installed in the walls?

I've seen this reference several times lately. Surely, people who are installing Ethernet into older homes aren't running conduit down the inside of their walls? That would be a tremendous (and messy) job for an existing home.

PS to the OP: I just ran 8 jacks (7 singles and 1 double) through my house (7 in attic and 1 through garage into living room - couldn't get that one into wall because of 2nd story on house) and it was quite a bit of work to do. It worked my butt off for several weekends and the heat in the attic killed me after 10-11am every day.

 

[Michael]

In an older home, and 10 or so jacks I can easily see the cost (with materials) going to $4K to $5K. It is a lot of work to run all the wires through older walls.

Michael

 

[aigomorla]

In an older home, and 10 or so jacks I can easily see the cost (with materials) going to $4K to $5K. It is a lot of work to run all the wires through older walls.

Michael

especially if u need to break the drywall, to expose the fire break under it so you can bore a hole for the wire.

Then you need to repatch / paint the hole u made.

 

[Engineer]

especially if u need to break the drywall, to expose the fire break under it so you can bore a hole for the wire.

Then you need to repatch / paint the hole u made.

If I had to do that in my home, I would have said screw it and went with MOCA or something else. It was hard enough to crawl around in the attic, drill the holes and fish the wires down to the re-work boxes that I had installed.

 

[Red Squirrel]

For first floor, run all from the basement. If you make a plate hole you can drill down to the basement with a really long bit, then put a fish tape or piece of wire and pull wire through the hole. For second floor try to find a discrete area like a closet and run from floor to ceiling in a corner along the wall, you can then put a piece of wood or something to act as a "crown molding" and paint it. Distribute it throughout the 2nd floor using the ceiling corners, and install actual crown molding to hide it. Watch out not to nail through the wires. This way you can avoid the attic. My house is single story so I've never actually done the crown molding idea but I imagine it would work ok. This is assuming the walls don't have cross members that would stop you from dropping the wire down from a hole behind the crown molding to the hole where you put the jack. If there is cross members it gets more complicated.

A couple grand does not sound all that crazy though, it is a pretty tough job to do when it's existing construction. Also if you get someone to do it who does end up having to put holes in the walls that guy may not be a drywaller, so you may actually have to hire a drywaller and painter to fix it unless you do that part yourself. Consider that in your cost as well.

 

[mxnerd]

It's a tough job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86fM05JtZdo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr0lo-Sx-Cs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsbT8qOuYtY

But with WiFi technology advancing so much, I really wonder whether it's worth spending so much for home users with cabling.

 

[Engineer]

For first floor, run all from the basement.

I'm on a slab so that ends that train of thought!

 

[yinan]

It's a tough job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86fM05JtZdo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr0lo-Sx-Cs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsbT8qOuYtY

But with WiFi technology advancing so much, I really wonder whether it's worth spending so much for home users with cabling.

WiFi is still slow and has a lot of latency for large tasks. I would hate to do backups of large file transfers over wifi. WiFi is still basically a hub technology where all users share one set of bandwidth. Also, you can't get 10+ Gb wifi yet.

 

[mxnerd]

WiFi is still slow and has a lot of latency for large tasks. I would hate to do backups of large file transfers over wifi. WiFi is still basically a hub technology where all users share one set of bandwidth. Also, you can't get 10+ Gb wifi yet.

That's why I do my own wiring years back, I can't justify the high cost. It took a lot of sweat & labor though.

Some home users do have a lot of big files, especially movies, but it should be on central server or a dedicated workstation, use another PC to remote into it, and do local backup/process there, not transmitting big files back and forth between PC and server.

When you want to watch movies, just stream it.

With setup like this and with new ac router, it should satisfy most home users.

 

[bruceb]

There is a product out there called: Diversi-Bit .. basically it is a flexible 4 foot long auger, with a wire pull hole at the tip. You can also get an extension for it. So the electrician will open a hole in the wall, say about outlet box size, double check if there any other items in that wall cavity and send the bit in to drill up or down to the next level. It can be done and in some cases, it will not be easy. The more snags you run into, the more it will cost. If you do get a low voltage tech, try to get one that is BICSI certified, as they are trained to do data cabling properly.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[MustISO]

When we bought our house in 2000 network cabling work wasn't done much on new construction so we've kind of just lived without having it on the other floors in the house. The router, modem, switch are in an upstairs office so we could easily get to all the upstairs rooms from the attic but now that our basement is finished it would be tough to do. My plan is to be sure our next house is pre-wired for everything I can think of.

 

[brshoemak]

When we bought our house in 2000 network cabling work wasn't done much on new construction so we've kind of just lived without having it on the other floors in the house. The router, modem, switch are in an upstairs office so we could easily get to all the upstairs rooms from the attic but now that our basement is finished it would be tough to do. My plan is to be sure our next house is pre-wired for everything I can think of.

My home was built in 2003 and wasn't wired for ethernet. However, they did use CAT5E for the phone lines and they were all run back to a central location. This was pretty common around the time your house was built as well. What I did was remove the RJ11 jacks and punched the it down to a RJ45 jack. Then where they all came together in the basement I punched them down to a CAT5E patch panel and connected them to a switch. I then had a wired gigabit network.

For this to work, all the runs have to be CAT5 cable and each run must come back to a central location, it can't be daisy-chained throughout the house.

 

[fkoehler]

Yes, nice comment about running under crown moulding, and the BICSI certification. Put a post up on CL for IBEW (low voltage) wanted and I'm sure you'll find someone interested in making some money on the side.

In NorCal we were paying ~400/drop (2 cables/jack), in manf/admin buildings, so any other non-metropolitan area should be substantially cheaper. Although drilling through studs and floor plates(?) is more intensive and time consuming than running in cable tray and popping ceiling tiles...

Do make sure to get some references from each and make sure you can actually get in to look at the work they did and talk to the previous customers. For the $$ you are looking at paying, you may want to actually deal with someone licensed, and not some fly-by night who can just cancel his cell number and get another one.

One thought I had was because I have a pair sitting on my desk.
Might be worthwhile to think about having one path from the upstairs to the downstairs only, and dropping a SMF/MMF patch cable down it. Connect a couple of Gigabit fiber adapters to each end, and then to small small 5/12 port unmanaged Gigabit switches. Couple of years ago I picked up a cheap Netgear 5-6 port Gigabit switch for $40 or so at Frys.

That way, all of the upstairs run to the upstairs switch, and the 1st floor to its switch, then to the router.

Or get several Archer C7's and set up a simple mesh with decent external antennas? Still on 802.11n, however with AC, even with bandwidth drop due to repeater it should be pretty quick? Might not need to spend thousands?

Hah, even easier than the first option:

Get 2x $30/ea
https://www.google.com/search?q=swi...vw:l,p_ord:p&tbm=shop&spd=6648911019848435854

Then, get 2x $12/ea
http://www.sfpcables.com/j4858c?gclid=CJfYspywjMgCFYsYHwodiZgGVg


Get 1X $21/ea
https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/C...s_kwcid=AL!4223!3!47983870099!!!g!78267629007!
Slap an SFP into each switch, patch with a piece of SM/MM fiber (LC to LC) depending upon SFP type (SM/MM), and your "Core Infrastructure" is complete.
Might shave $1-2K off of that quote.

 

[XavierMace]

Why bother with MMF if you're only doing GigE anyways? I'm looking to run MMF across the house for 10GbE but good old Cat6 works just fine for GigE.

 

[azazel1024]

Cat6 works just fine for 10GbE too, up to 55 meters.

 

[XavierMace]

But not on my budget. I can get the fiber infrastructure for dirt cheap.