Wiring for data in houses

[Denis Casserly]

Hi all,
I've often thought about wiring in houses and I think it makes more sense to 
have a wiring 'chase' or a route worked out in a house ahead of time. I 
worked as an electrical contractor in Toronto for a long time and one nagging 
question in any sort of residential or commercial construction was always 
"has everything been planned for". 
	I think a more reasonable approach to wiring consideration in buildings would 
be to accept that even if you are able to correctly spec and install the 
required wiring services, it's only good for today. What about tomorrow? 
	My approach to wiring is to make allowance for these changes. In addition to 
trying to provide for all the wiring systems, design the construction to 
allow for easy future wiring expansion by building in chases or wireways that 
will allow additional cables and conductors to be pulled or fished in at a 
later date as they're required. If you had wiring access to every room in the 
house the problem might be solved. This probably isn't the most economical 
solution but it could be simple and effective.
	For example if you need to go from room to room in a house you could use the 
clothes closets to locate the opening for a small chase say 4 by 4 inches 
located anywhere on the inside wall of the closet where it will never be 
seem. This chase could go to a common area like the basement, or to another 
closet in another room. If it was already fished with a piece of jet line 
string you only have to tie on and have an accomplice pull the other end. 
Don't forget to pull in a new string with the new cable you're installing.  
This approach might work with power wiring also, check the National 
Electrical Code book, it does make an allowance for fishing in cable in 
section 12.  If you're worried about fire transmission cover the hole with a 
large piece of 5/8" drywall. Just my two cents.
Cheers,
Denis Casserly
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml