voiceguy

I'm the GC on my home I am building here in Ausitn and want to pull enough wire for security, video, data and phone... NOT going to do the all in one route as it's still 6 to 11 bucks a foot, plus our home is pretty compact and everything is central, so no prob running separate stuff to home runs. Going to use CAT6, RG6Quad, and want to run Fiber as well. I have seen some sellers on ebay selling bulk or surplus fiber and wondered if that was cool to run. I don't want to spin my wheels running the wrong stuff, but I have to run something, as we are doing spray in insulation... soooo can't do it after the fact. What are players in the industry running... like say Verizon FIOS?? (is that right) Do they have a requirment or specs that homs must have for this?

Any help would be appreciated.

jimbo

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jim kipping
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BuildingHomes

Maybe run fibre TO the house, but not in the house.. the fibre may be cheap, but the terminations and equipment are not when compared to copper.

Most new houses up here in the GTA have fibre run to the house by the hydro companies. Haven't seen them do anything with it yet, but it's there.

mdshunk

Until consumer products catch up, running fiber in the home is still mostly a wasted effort. If you wanted to run some, the 3mm duplex zipcord fiber is what you'd run in the home. It comes in 1000, 2000, and 3000' boxes that payout just like Cat5e cable does ("fiber in a box" for slang, at the supply house). For the connectors, you'd want to use the 'ST' connectors. They are inexpensive, relatively easy to install, and pretty much still the standard fiber connector nowadays. The 'SC' connectors are still widely used lately,also.

I might recommend that if you feel you must run fiber, run it and leave it unterminated. I notice a lot of consumer equipment lately that need the LC connector. Might just run the fiber and see what termination you need when the fiber is actually needed.

Speedy Petey

I must say. I live in an area known as "Tech Valley". I have not seen one home with fiber run inside.
In fact, most folks say don't bother with even Cat6. Cat5e and wireless will be adequate for years to come.

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giddonah

I really am interested in knowing what you do that requires fiber inside.

JohnJ0906

Perhaps running a 3/4" conduit from each location to a central location for future use would be the way to go. That way, when the HO wants fiber, or whatever the new thing is in the future, it can be easily added. Something like the Carlon "blue flex". Just my $.02.

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John from Baltimore
"One Day at a Time"
All replies based on the 2008 NEC

RightConnection

I have to agree with JohnJ0906 and the others. No sense in running fiber beyond the demarc point unless you can afford a structured package with fiber included. I don't believe any in-home standard exists regarding fiber and proper terminations. There was a big push to fiber the in home network about 10 years ago, but it quitely went away when the additional bandwidth could be pushed thru coax and cat5.
Terminating fiber is still much too craft sensitive compared to coax or twisted pair.

Teetorbilt

I like john's conduit idea. Run the 5 for now and have the ability to restring it with whatever they come up with during the life of the home.

I have a feeling that even the toaster will be wireless in the next 10 yrs.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

voiceguy

A year after I started the research for the house I can now say we are living in the hose. We now have a complete cat 6, rg6, 14g4conductor stranded for speaker and yes... FIBER house. I went a head and just did it! What the hell, it's in the way and there is at least 4 (2 send/2 rec) to each drop. 6 min to all video locations.

Someone asked what I do, well, the house I build over looks Robert Rodriquez (movie director) Willie Nelson is on the hill behind us, and there is a ton of musicians that live out here. I do audio/video/film production. We lived in what will be my studio for 1.5 years while we finnally pulled the trigger and built the house. It's pretty amazing AND we did a blog to log our progress. We were the GC on the project and the owner. The studio is where all communications terminates to the property, but then also in turn runs to the house. Cat6/RG6/Fiber also run underground between buildings too. Wanna look? Check out the blog at w w w PoggioSecco.com and click on the 2007 link on the right hand pane. That will bring you to the site to see our entries for the build. We actually built it in 5.5 months. Not too bad for someone that doesn't do THAT for a living!! Notice the 3 cable pull racks I built to pull 6 cat6, 3 RG6, Audio Control each pull! We basically have a server room in the house.

Austin Business Journal just did a 2 page spread on us two weeks ago.. see the on line version at Austin Business Journal and search for Kipping.
Thanks for the input peeps!

JK

ChillaWatt

I agree with most in this thread. These days there's no real big need for fiber in the home. Now for commercial, that's another story. I used to convert Big Ks over to fiber and have done a few WalMarts. We'd run a pair of fiber lines(one to transmit, one to receive)from their closets to these small 10Base-t/Fiber converters which would convert the signal to copper, which would then go to their NIC, switch, etc. It's not as hard as it would seem. I still have a bunch of those converters laying around and several hundred feet of plenum-rated fiber. It's totally feasible, just not too practical. The higher bandwidth that comes with fiber isn't enough to make that kind of a change in a home-based network.

Chilla