Has anybody ever wired a house for Ethernet after it was built?

[BunnyLab]

My house was built in 2009.  I like my house except that I wish it was wired for Ethernet.  Right now I'm running stuff off powerline, which is better than wifi, but direct to the router is best.

 

can you wire a house for Ethernet after it was built?  Is it hard to do?

[Volbet]

That depends on way the house is build. 

 

The house I live in was build in 1949 (although, it has been renovated several times since then), but wiring it for Ethernet wasn't that hard.

I was able to do most of the wiring through an old central chimney that is physically connected to most of the rooms. 

The cables are just routed from the modem through the chimney to both the upper floor and the basement. From there I just route the cables through holes in the walls.  

[Guest]

3 hours ago, BunnyLab said:

My house was built in 2009.  I like my house except that I wish it was wired for Ethernet.  Right now I'm running stuff off powerline, which is better than wifi, but direct to the router is best.

 

can you wire a house for Ethernet after it was built?  Is it hard to do?

You can wire it for ethernet but there's a good chance it will have to be external. Linus did a video of external ethernet runs as well.

 

Do you have phone lines running through the walls of the home? 

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

It depends how you want to do it. 

 

I've run Cat6 to 6 different outlets around my house by going through the walls and outside the house. Fairly simple to do that way. 

 

You can run the wires through drywall, but it can be a bit difficult. 

 

You can also use channelling to run the cables along skirting, rather than actually going through anything. 

[BunnyLab]

2 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

You can wire it for ethernet but there's a good chance it will have to be external. Linus did a video of external ethernet runs as well. Do you have phone lines running through the home? 

Yes, there are phone lines.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, BunnyLab said:

Yes, there are phone lines.

If you take off the cover of the phone inputs that run in the wall and have a look at the cable they are using there is a good chance that they use Cat5e. Those are network cables that can be used. Do the lines use Cat5e?

[BunnyLab]

I want to put my modem and router in the utility room in the basement and have an Ethernet plug in all the rooms upstairs and downstairs.

[manikyath]

my house was built with this in mind, so for me it was quite an easy job:

every cable is ran trough a tube, and extra tubes with just a string were put in place in vareous sensible locations.

--

if you dont have extra tubes, but there's other cables in tubes you can pull trough, you can either try and squeeze two lines trough one tube (depends on the thickness of the tube and wires) or replace lines that no longer make sense (like a phone line going everywhere in the house)

[BunnyLab]

2 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

If you take off the cover of the phone lines and have a look at the cable they are using there is a good chance that they use Cat5e. Those are network cables that can be used. 

Interesting.  I will check that.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

there is a good chance that they use Cat5e.

doubt they'd put in cat5e in 2009, but hey, worth a check i guess.

[BunnyLab]

7 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

You can wire it for ethernet but there's a good chance it will have to be external. Linus did a video of external ethernet runs as well.

 

Do you have phone lines running through the walls of the home? 

 

 

I'm not too keen on running exterior network cables.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

doubt they'd put in cat5e in 2009, but hey, worth a check i guess.

either that or regular Cat5 is my bet

[BunnyLab]

The powerline is 'ok' usually, but I'm only getting 1-2 mb/s when retrieving stuff from my NAS.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

either that or regular Cat5 is my bet

the only reason i'd see people do that is because they still had a spool on hand.

 

while cat5e is indead cheap as dirt, spools of phone wire are basicly free at this point, especially the thin junk

[BunnyLab]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

my house was built with this in mind, so for me it was quite an easy job:

every cable is ran trough a tube, and extra tubes with just a string were put in place in vareous sensible locations.

--

if you dont have extra tubes, but there's other cables in tubes you can pull trough, you can either try and squeeze two lines trough one tube (depends on the thickness of the tube and wires) or replace lines that no longer make sense (like a phone line going everywhere in the house)

I'm jealous that you have that option.

[tewynkoop]

7 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

If you take off the cover of the phone inputs that run in the wall and have a look at the cable they are using there is a good chance that they use Cat5e. Those are network cables that can be used. Do the lines use Cat5e?

The guy in this video did just that

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, BunnyLab said:

I'm jealous that you have that option.

its all a matter of intelligent people building your house

[BunnyLab]

4 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

either that or regular Cat5 is my bet

It has to be cat 5E to be worth it.

[W-L]

16 minutes ago, BunnyLab said:

My house was built in 2009.  I like my house except that I wish it was wired for Ethernet.  Right now I'm running stuff off powerline, which is better than wifi, but direct to the router is best.

can you wire a house for Ethernet after it was built?  Is it hard to do?

As mentioned if you have cat 5e used for telephone lines you can re purpose those, but as for running cable itself if you have drywall it's not too hard to poke a few holes to run things, if your good you can do it using fish tape and rods without having to do much patching or conceal those behind baseboards. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, tewynkoop said:

-snip

What's your point? Who cares?

[BunnyLab]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

its all a matter of intelligent people building your house

I'm the second owner of the house.  I had no say in the construction.  

[Guest]

3 hours ago, BunnyLab said:

It has to be cat 5E to be worth it.

Have you had a look at the type cables that run through the wall yet?

[Guest]

3 hours ago, BunnyLab said:

I'm not too keen on running exterior network cables.

I don't blame you, but it is an option. And I would only recommend this for pretty experienced users just to be sure. I'm not really too fond of exterior runs myself either. 

[tewynkoop]

3 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

What's your point? Who cares?

Some people follow videos better and its just reinforcing an idea that was brought up. Don't need to be so rude

[BunnyLab]

5 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

Have you had a look at the cables that run through the wall yet?

I'm super pumped.

 

i just took one of the phone face plates off....out pops blue network cable with it.  I look at the sheath....it says cat 5e!