We're moving into a new place in a few months, already having to have the electrician out there to fix some things so trying to think ahead. ChatGPT has helped me with a few things (like running network cable to every room as a "just in case").

Going back, what things would you have done different from a nerdery standpoint?

What are the cool must-haves now?

Two drops in every room.

DAM said:

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Two drops in every room.

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Damn, took the words out of my mouth.

Cat6, with at least 2 drops.

Central spot to run everything to that is well ventilated and away from everything.

Separate circuit for the central wiring spot with room for a server and a NAS

Ethernet runs for POE cameras

Speakers run to central location. I found I prefer stereo in every room outside of media room, including living room and game room where there are 4 speakers (tv viewing is casual in those rooms and doing left and right is great for a room where everyone is usually moving around)

If you have a fiber to the home provider in your area, look to see what type of fiber connection the use and the run a in wall rated fiber cable from that central area to wherever you want them to bring the service into the house. I could do this after the fact in my house with ATT fiber and it made install simple and they only had to drill through the wall in the garage.

If you're going to run Unifi WiFi APs or something close then drops for those in the ceilings

This is incredibly helpful. Thank you.

1" minimum Smurf Tubes to every room where you are dropping cables with included pull strings. Run you dual drops through them. Allows future running by just pulling cable on the string (With a new string attached to pull back the old. No more climbing in attic to drop cables down walls. Its dirt cheap to run when bought in bulk spools and cut to a run.

If it's a possible option for the future, low power wires to where automatic blinds might be installed.

tfunk02 said:

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If it's a possible option for the future, low power wires to where automatic blinds might be installed.

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Ha, I was just about to follow up with that one after thinking it through.

UPS at central location for network equipment.

FatZilla said:

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1" minimum Smurf Tubes to every room where you are dropping cables with included pull strings. Run you dual drops through them. Allows future running by just pulling cable on the string (With a new string attached to pull back the old. No more climbing in attic to drop cables down walls. Its dirt cheap to run when bought in bulk spools and cut to a run.

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It would be nice to get it everywhere, but I would try to get it at least into primary pieces, like from a point of demarcation for inbound services in the garage for fiber, or cable or anything, to the central location. Then from the central location to any place where you you might need to upgrade cables or add like a home office, or workshop area, or even a home theater.

If I could go back and add one thing to this house (which I didn't build), I would have a Smurf tube from my office to my wiring closet, and then from an upstairs closet to my wiring closet. Then I could add things later and better protect fiber runs between them and maximize 10Gig connections to make sure the network backbone is flexible without performance drop. This would give me a ton of flexibility where I can install and upgrade APs and also how my office is built out.

Final thing is, if you do any kind of home lab, you don't want it in the same room that someone is regularly in, so making sure that location has the proper power, the ability to handle heat, and then enough network bandwidth. Hopefully that's where all your cables are run to, as it will make network aggregation easier. But if it's not and you have options, make sure there is Smurf tubes/conduit so that you aren't locked into something long term for bandwidth/connections with the lab area.

Oh, one more thing. Not sure about your attic situation, but one thing I absolutely love these days is a proper antennae in the attic to get all of the local channels. So scoping out where to point it and finding a spot (in the attic or outside depending on where you're located, HOA, etc) then having a coax cable run from that spot to the central wiring location to hook it up to a HDHomeRun system to distribute it over the local network. Not having to rely on a streaming service for the local channels, and having the local channels even if the internet goes down is awesome. Gives you a lot of flexibility with TV and streaming (my family actually is to the point where we drop YouTubeTV after football season).

The comment about UPS at the central location sparked this one, as we have that and make sure the network stays up in power outages (up until battery goes down), and the local channels stay up also (we had that in 2021 ice outage where internet was down and power was up and down with spotty cell service, we still had the local channels to fall back on during the intermittent power outages.)

Only other thing I can think of is, how critical is the internet in your house? Both my wife and I work from home, so all business runs through that, we have a 2nd WAN setup with a cable modem, but I would have loved a run outside or to the roof for 5G antenna or starlink in a passive account in case my primary internet goes down (attic design doesn't make it easy for me, and my HOA is hard core strict on where I can put something outside)

Internet critical to the extent that if our power is out I'm stressing about being able to work -- so I'll look into having the backup option that functions better than my mobile hotspot.

I love the software and integration side of things, but the hardware aspects (cable drops, what backup systems I need, rack etc...) scare me in that I don't want to find myself a month into a house project and find I don't have the bandwidth/power/whatever and the fix isn't simply plug-and-play. The house is going to have the equivalent of a small arcade + multiple computers running at certain times -- no idea if I've even got the power supply to handle all of that.

Are there qualified tech "architects" out there that aren't just Geek Squad washouts that I can pay to help me plan in a way that keeps me somewhat future-proofed? This is the first house we've had that I can really lean into the tech side of things so I'm excited but I want to do it right -- but via Home Assistant or the like, I don't want some guy to just do it all and hand me a big universal remote and the shortcut keys.

IrishAg said:

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Oh, one more thing. Not sure about your attic situation, but one thing I absolutely love these days is a proper antennae in the attic to get all of the local channels. So scoping out where to point it and finding a spot (in the attic or outside depending on where you're located, HOA, etc) then having a coax cable run from that spot to the central wiring location to hook it up to a HDHomeRun system to distribute it over the local network. Not having to rely on a streaming service for the local channels, and having the local channels even if the internet goes down is awesome. Gives you a lot of flexibility with TV and streaming (my family actually is to the point where we drop YouTubeTV after football season).

The comment about UPS at the central location sparked this one, as we have that and make sure the network stays up in power outages (up until battery goes down), and the local channels stay up also (we had that in 2021 ice outage where internet was down and power was up and down with spotty cell service, we still had the local channels to fall back on during the intermittent power outages.)

Only other thing I can think of is, how critical is the internet in your house? Both my wife and I work from home, so all business runs through that, we have a 2nd WAN setup with a cable modem, but I would have loved a run outside or to the roof for 5G antenna or starlink in a passive account in case my primary internet goes down (attic design doesn't make it easy for me, and my HOA is hard core strict on where I can put something outside)

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If you have foil backed osb, antennas inside attic are pretty worthless. Check before you buy this.

FatZilla said:

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IrishAg said:

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Oh, one more thing. Not sure about your attic situation, but one thing I absolutely love these days is a proper antennae in the attic to get all of the local channels. So scoping out where to point it and finding a spot (in the attic or outside depending on where you're located, HOA, etc) then having a coax cable run from that spot to the central wiring location to hook it up to a HDHomeRun system to distribute it over the local network. Not having to rely on a streaming service for the local channels, and having the local channels even if the internet goes down is awesome. Gives you a lot of flexibility with TV and streaming (my family actually is to the point where we drop YouTubeTV after football season).

The comment about UPS at the central location sparked this one, as we have that and make sure the network stays up in power outages (up until battery goes down), and the local channels stay up also (we had that in 2021 ice outage where internet was down and power was up and down with spotty cell service, we still had the local channels to fall back on during the intermittent power outages.)

Only other thing I can think of is, how critical is the internet in your house? Both my wife and I work from home, so all business runs through that, we have a 2nd WAN setup with a cable modem, but I would have loved a run outside or to the roof for 5G antenna or starlink in a passive account in case my primary internet goes down (attic design doesn't make it easy for me, and my HOA is hard core strict on where I can put something outside)

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If you have foil backed osb, antennas inside attic are pretty worthless. Check before you buy this.

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That's a good point, which is why now is the time to figure out where to put it. Crazy that something which is so 80s is such an integral piece of tech for me and the family these days.

Tailgate88 said:

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UPS at central location for network equipment.

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Better yet, a sub panel for all critical loads, refrigerator/freezers, server closet. All access points and cameras on POE so you have continuous power as long as the ups is running.

Proposition Joe said:

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Internet critical to the extent that if our power is out I'm stressing about being able to work -- so I'll look into having the backup option that functions better than my mobile hotspot.

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Recently switched from TMobile broadband as my backup internet to the Starlink $50/month unlimited 100mb plan. I have a dual wan router with automatic failover and it works great. Something like that or a Starlink mini on the standby plan you could use as needed should work. Too many times when we have had a lengthy power outage the cable internet goes down a few hours in when their backup battery runs out and then cellular becomes unusable as people switch to that.

What kind of router?

I have a pfsense box. Pretty sure the Unifi routers have that built in too now.

Jethro95 said:

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I have a pfsense box. Pretty sure the Unifi routers have that built in too now.

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They do, I moved over to the Cloud Gateway Fiber from a pfsense box. They have dual WAN with load balancing and failover options now.

IrishAg said:

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FatZilla said:

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IrishAg said:

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Oh, one more thing. Not sure about your attic situation, but one thing I absolutely love these days is a proper antennae in the attic to get all of the local channels. So scoping out where to point it and finding a spot (in the attic or outside depending on where you're located, HOA, etc) then having a coax cable run from that spot to the central wiring location to hook it up to a HDHomeRun system to distribute it over the local network. Not having to rely on a streaming service for the local channels, and having the local channels even if the internet goes down is awesome. Gives you a lot of flexibility with TV and streaming (my family actually is to the point where we drop YouTubeTV after football season).

The comment about UPS at the central location sparked this one, as we have that and make sure the network stays up in power outages (up until battery goes down), and the local channels stay up also (we had that in 2021 ice outage where internet was down and power was up and down with spotty cell service, we still had the local channels to fall back on during the intermittent power outages.)

Only other thing I can think of is, how critical is the internet in your house? Both my wife and I work from home, so all business runs through that, we have a 2nd WAN setup with a cable modem, but I would have loved a run outside or to the roof for 5G antenna or starlink in a passive account in case my primary internet goes down (attic design doesn't make it easy for me, and my HOA is hard core strict on where I can put something outside)

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If you have foil backed osb, antennas inside attic are pretty worthless. Check before you buy this.

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That's a good point, which is why now is the time to figure out where to put it. Crazy that something which is so 80s is such an integral piece of tech for me and the family these days.

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If your house is a new build, I'm assuming spray foam throughout. OSB is dead technology now