[TriLUG] Re: Houses

[Greg Cox]

Torrey Homes wanted $50/run to install cat5 when my place was being
built.  I passed on that, talked to the super, who balked at letting
me do it myself, too, so I added it myself later.  The only real
suckage was that the boxes are bound to the drywall, instead of held
to the stud.

I ended up putting 4 runs to each room (except kitchen/bathrooms),
2 runs of which go to the attic and are for mainly getting signals from
one place to another, the other 2 are for ethernet, and go to the coat
closet.  There's a recessed electrical box there, where the ethernet
runs are terminated.  I wired in an extra outlet for the network switch,
stuck the switch in there, and closed it up.

Did it over a 2 week period, without ever really hurrying.  It's not
that hard retrofitting if you can't get it in at construction time.
And, from what I learned about how my house is: if I'd made the wiring
decisions at preconstruction, I'd've totally had them wrong.  Plus you
learn a lot about your place crawling through the attic.  Like why
"3 points of contact" is a good rule, and what is/isn't a load bearing
structure, and and