I usually order my cable in 1000' pull-boxes online. Much cheaper than getting it locally. I'd go with solid for your in wall drops - the stranded tends to stretch over time (especially in an attic) and is a little too flexible when trying to feed through some openings. If you don't have one, get a fish tape - 12-2 romex can be forced down a wall by itself, but Cat 5 cable will just curl right back up at you. I'd also invest in a 3/8 or 1/2 "installer's bit" - I don't know the construction on your house but our's (and every one in our neighborhood) has some pretty thick top plates on the walls in some places as well as fire breaks in some places so the normal 6-8' bits will not go through - this is where installation in a commericial building is alot nicer than in a residential house. I also like the Leviton Quickport system. The system has 2, 4, 6, and 12 port wall plates that any of the jacks in the system can "snap" into, use low voltage rings instead of boxes in the wall (boxes don't have enough space for the wire and the back of the jacks). The system has Cat 5e, Cat 3, F, Banana, RCA, etc. jacks. A 10-pack of the Cat 5e jacks runs about $30 at the Home Depot in Lafayette (probably cheaper online). The Cat X jacks have a 110 punch down block on the back to terminate to. The system is nice for residential installs in that you can terminate multiple types of wires in one location. For example, I have one 12 port and one 4 port plate behind the tv in the living room: four Cat 5e for network, two F's for satellite, one F for Cable, three Cat 5e for phone - I had the Cat 5e's laying around, and since an RJ-11 will fit in an RJ-45..., four banana jacks for the rear souround channel, one blank I drilled for the cable leading to my wireless antenna in the attic, and one blank. I always get white jacks in the 10-pack and use sharpies to color code them (black F: cable, blue RJ-45 10/100, yellow RJ-45: 10/100 POE, green RJ-45 gigabit, white RJ-45 phone, etc.) - the system does have various colored jacks, but I've found they are expensive - $4-6 a jack + shipping when you can find them. James
_____ From: general-bounces at brlug.net [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of michael dolan Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 4:35 PM To: General at brlug.net Subject: [brlug-general] inexpensive cat-5? I'd like to wire my house with cat-5. Can anyone recommend a good (cheap) place locally to buy a few hundred feet of cat-5? Should I just order it? I also have no experience running cable, but seems like it should be fairly easy. Anyone have any good tips? -- Michael Dolan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.brlug.net/pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20070425/66fdd8c7/attachment-0001.html
