Home Improvement

Deathwing_sl said:

I have a drywall saw on my Amazon cart and a stud finder. I'm looking for recommendations on those, btw. Never used them so I have no idea which is the best brand/model.

Missing is, obviously, the cabling itself. I can't decide whether to buy stranded or solid. From what I read, stranded is better for standard RJ45 terminators and patch cables, while solid is better for keystone jacks and running through walls. However, that would mean buying two types of cable and a patch panel and I think that's going overboard for a home cabling job. I was planning on putting wall mounts in the rooms and then running the cord directly to the router. Which would mean keystone on one end and RJ45 terminator on the other. I'm mostly sure I've picked out terminators and keystones that designed for stranded. Still better to get solid?

Whichever cabling I go with, should I just buy 100-200 feet of Monoprice's patch cord and just hack it up as needed? Really don't want to have to buy a 1k ft box of cable.

Am I missing anything besides the cable?

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Cable: I have never, ever, dealt with stranded. In fact until reading your post I didn't know that they made stranded, though I'm not surprised. Mind you I did construction and was not a network guy so I was often installing thousands of feet at a time and it was only from patch to plate.

Punch down tool: I have, and use, an actual punch down tool, but you may not want to spend the money on one unless you foresee a lot of cabling in your future or you are a tool collector like I am. I don't remember what brand jacks I used most recently (Leviton?) but most places I worked we'd buy the bulk stuff from a wholesale house and the boxes of jacks would come with a cheap little one-piece plastic tool. The advantages to using an ACTUAL punch-down tool is A) impact in tool cuts individual hairs while 'punching' it down, B) ability to adjust impact in the handle, and C) being able to swap out interchangeable bits like 110/66/Bix depending on what you are working on.

I worked with guys who hated using the impact punch tools and they'd actually just use the little plastic ones if they could and snip the wires by hand. Or they'd buy a handle that just held the bits but didn't have the impact feature. Hell, my old 110 blade was so dull at one point that it wouldn't cut the wires anymore, it would just cut them about halfway through so I'd have to grab the wire tails and 'twirl" them a few times before I could just pull the ends off. A big thing for the guys doing tons of wall jacks was that often there wouldn't really be a place to 'brace' the jack while punching down (let's say you only have a foot or two of cat5 coming out of the wall) and my left hand would get torn up holding the jack when I'd use an impact punch.

Deathwing_sl said:

Wow, huge difference between the ones you have pictured and the one Ortega listed. How important is it to have a quality punch down tool or can I get by with a cheap one that comes with a patch panel(pictured)?

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IMHO you can get by with that one, just look for a guide that talks about those so you can get an idea.

There are really only two things that a punchdown tool does: seat the wire, and cut the wire off. The tool above doesn't cut, it's just there to seat the wire into the jack itself. So if you use that then you'll have to watch to make sure you get everything seated deeply enough, and then you'll have to go back and cut all the excess off as well (if you have a sharp pair of small dykes, that could work). You probably won't be able to cut the excess off as close as you would with a proper punch down tool, but worst case scenario the cover for that part might be tough to get on (depending on make/model/design). You could try to precut everything first and then punch the wire down so that you don't have to cut anything off after you punch it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Where I would say that an actual pro-type punch down tool is necessary is if you were doing something like 66 board/block terminations (no room to really cut wires off by hand in the middle of the block), but that's more pure phone company stuff that 99.99% of people won't ever even try doing.

Also, IMHO if you are going to use the linear looking patch panel terminals (do they even make any other style atm?) then you might be able to do without an impact punch down tool. The ones I've ever used have MUCH more space and room to work around than old phone-tech stuff, so you might be able to use the disposable and do the same thing: cut the excess off manually. But it's a similar situation to the one with the jack: you can use the disposable tool, or get the "proper" tool. I'd still like to get one of these even though I'm not sure I'd even need one anymore, mostly because I'm an electrician and I do love tools:

I'd assume that your joists would be running perpendicular to both the direction your hardwood is running, as well as the direction that the wood on the basement ceiling is run. That's obviously not an absolute as people do odd things, but just from seeing the hardwood/ceiling, that's what I would look for first.

Best way to tell might be to take the two grills off and stick your head in for a peak. Might as well in any event; the more you know about how they would have framed that all in, the better (assuming it's just air through framing void and isn't ducted somehow). And how your joists run will determine how you can run whatever cable you want.




My first guess is that your joists might run in the direction of the red arrows (fireplace on gable end or side of house). If you need to bring the cable in from that side of the house then you'll have to get past or through those joists somehow. This might be where seeing how those vents are ducted comes in handy; if your joists DO run front to back and that IS from the fireplace as a heat exchanger, then they would have had to have provided some way to vent the heat across the joist runs. Now, if your joists run the direction of the green arrows then you could possibly just fish cable through one of those joist pockets all the way to the side wall, and out.

Can't really say much more than that atm without knowing more. If I came out to your house to install cable that would be one of the first things I'd look at (as I hate just running stuff like RG-6 all willy-nilly like cable companies do).

I will say though that most people (especially homeowners) don't worry about plenums at all. NEC Article 300.22 (C) [yes I actually pulled the codebook out ] talks about running cables through 'plenums': this includes cold air returns used in many homes where the return itself is simply one of the joist pockets. ByCODEyou cannot use such a plenum/return air space as a 'raceway' to run your cables - if there IS a joist pocket that is being used as a return air, you have to try to run directly across (perpendicular) through it, or avoid it completely. This is a fire/toxic fumes thing but they know they can't eliminate it 100% from residential so that's why they have the exception. Also by code if you get actual plenum-rated RG-6 you can skip to article 820 or so and toss a bunch of that out, but no homeowner is realistically going to pay for plenum rated RG6. Looking at bulk RG6 prices, 1000ft of standard RG6 might be $50-$60 while 1000ft of plenum rated might be as high as $400-$500. So now that I've said my piece, you can choose to do what 99.999% of all homeowners do and use regular RG6 everywhere, including up through walls in cold air returns to get from, for example, basements to 2nd floors....just be aware that this is a fire hazard though as cable can help spread fires through air returns and it's why the NFPA fights against it being done.