I wonder why I don’t see houses using dropped ceilings to provide for infrastructure space with easy access? It seems like a universal in offices that I’ve seen.

and here I thought I was being excessive with thinking about conduit. There is a large unfinished basement that mostly everything in it was destroyed from a flood. After I ripped everything out, installed a new stairwell, and ran new drainage to avoid the next eventual flood (as all lower elevations like to do), I was pondering running conduit for everything to protect from moisture in that area for at the very least some high wall outlets to power systems down there. I could scale that plan back and not have everything being conduit (for cost sake) but install it in specific spots for anything that won’t have easy access in the future. I know of a few spots that will need new lines ran through 3 floors so the pull cables would come in handy for future use.

Fiber is a sore subject lol, it was a big local deal when fiber was coming to town with newspaper articles and everything about the big development and how great everything was gonna be with the upgrade in speed. Lots of crews all over the county for months (maybe years? time is fickle) and even had them running the lines on my street and a relatives on the other side of the main town. Turns out they decided to not actually make fiber available for the area, it’s just running through. I understand you can’t just splice into fiber lol, still irks me I have a box I can’t touch or move with “Fiber” labelled on it sitting on the property though and have to deal with cable internet that runs like it’s a DSL connection.

With wired Ethernet to every room, would something of this type of connection be aesthetically pleasing? I would like to bundle everything so there’s not an excessive amount of wall plates and others have suggested running two lines in parallel with STP cat6a (cat8 will probably be saved for the next place if it has fiber available). I’m just worried about the look of having several wall jacks or several unknown connections that might confuse someone (I will label everything but that only goes so far for understanding). If I include coaxial it might look a little like this style of outlet if I’m not running two ethernet ports. I’m starting to lean into the coaxial/single ethernet just because cable/satellite tv is still king around these parts and people love their boxes.

If you had to have a modem box for internet with coaxial or DSL, would you prefer that tucked away into the server closet as well? or keep that in a separate area with the phone connections and just run an ethernet from the modem to the server closet where the router and switch setup are at?

a dedicated UPS circuit so I could have a single, large UPS to backup everything that needs it

That’s beautiful and didn’t cross my mind. I’ve done solar installs so my mind always just thinks of that type of battery bank for my needs, that’s definitely a viable alternative that I could tie into the cctv system for continuous security as well without adding extra systems. I’ve only had a small “pc” UPS that crapped out on me years ago but I see they’re scalable so I will entertain myself looking at some specs while pondering.

Yeah at least 2 cat6 cables and 1-2 MMF or SMF fiber pairs to every drop. At least 1 drop per room and include ceiling drops for ceiling-mounted wifi. Always pull double what you think you’ll use at a location, since pulling new cables is more expensive than the cable itself.

STP might be overkill for home wiring though, tbh. I would really only recommend it if you’re running any cable outside or near kitchen appliances or motors.

Unfortunately Zigbee is precisely 2.4GHz, which isn’t used much for phones and laptops, but still widely used in TVs, vacuum robots and other smart devices that don’t need much bandwidth.

For my money, KNX>Zwave>Zigbee. Zigbee’s standard are not certified so you get non compliant devices that don’t work well, and 2.4 is a very crowded frequency with lots of interference not only from other wireless devices but also microwaves, etc. Zwave solves both of these issues and generally has a higher level of quality, but for me a wired standard will always beat a wireless one if I’m starting from scratch.

If you wire things, use keystones. I didn’t know that standard. Makes it much easier to have ethernet. My house had non standard keystone type things. Those are sort expensive, I replaced them with keystones just not have to deal with anything other than keystones in future.

I totally agree with the first part. I’ll be building a home in a few years and I’m going to be running Ethernet cable to the home theater system, to the home office, to the doorbell, to the primary bedroom, probably to places where I need to put WAPs, and to places I may not need but could get use out of in the future.

I’m tired of having a WiFi router on one side of the house with crap coverage elsewhere and no way to wire my PC and game console without PITA cable running effort.

I’ll probably have a network closet built in somewhere or stick a router or switch in the utility closet so that I can put WAPs anywhere in the house.

lol I’ve seen that before and sympathize every time I see my router log filled with my partners apple devices doing their thing. I’m slowly convincing them to move away from it all with suitable replacements I find along the way.

The only problem with that is if you’re pumping air out you have to think about where the air is coming in from. Older fireplaces are notorious for this because any air escaping through the chimney has to be replaced usually resulting in the rest of the house becoming actually colder through air gaps/cracks. Newer built houses even have ductwork for controlled air introduction when using exhaust fans like the range hood over the stove to maintain relative pressures with energy efficient houses (this house is nowhere near that level yet, but once newer windows are installed and I can seal the outlets I replace/install it will be one step closer).

One thought I did have is running the HVAC return through the area, it would reduce the relative humidity of the house as I’ve already installed several dehumidifiers for the closed crawl spaces I’ve sealed up and insulated but this whole geographical area is just horrible (/s about the servers being a dehumidifier, but realistically the equipment has to have some type of impact even if 1% lol) . Nearly every house I’ve worked on has some type of moisture issue but home owners typically don’t care unless it becomes life-threatening or threatens the structure. My thoughts on the return is so cold air isn’t directly blasted into the area as the dramatic temperature change might introduce condensation, the calculations for the CFM (airflow) have to be exact though so I’m not killing any systems early. The house has an old A/C system with an oil heating system (also has propane and electrical heating in other locations, idk if the person before me had a thing for collecting all the systems but it’s rather insane), the a/c doesn’t cover the entire structure though so I either have to think about replacing the entire setup (it is rather old but looks well maintained surprisingly) or milking the old system while installing a secondary hvac system for the unconditioned areas (mainly 2nd floor, plenty of attic space to install it which will probably be sealed as well if I do).

You definitely hit on a great idea though, I was planning on installing a secondary thermostat in the server area. If I did a return through and set it to active the hvac system fan when a temperature threshold is reached, in the winter it would disperse the heat through the house and I wouldn’t have to worry about the system switching from A/C to Heat or how I would continue to cool an area now getting hot air directly pumped into it. Then in the summer the air returning would be directly cooled when necessary and released back into the house so I’m not worrying about another outside vent opening requiring filters that need to be replaced/inspected etc. Might be able to pull off the airflow requirements with something as simple as a slotted closet door a lot of bedrooms have. I would be concerned someone might replace the door one day without realizing it’s importance so maybe dedicated wall venting into the server area is safer, even if it looked worse.

To put this in perspective:

• if you have a lab or commercial equipment, active ventilation (fans) is important
• if your data closet has a switch and WiFi, don’t try to stuff it into a structured wiring box. A closet, maybe with passive ventilation (air circulation) is probably fine

In my old house, I didn’t have much equipment but I tried to put it all into the structured wiring box … and wondered why my switches kept dying.

My current house has much more, but it’s all small form factor, attached to a data wall, open to the basement air, so no concerns about heat. A huge plus is how easy it is to work with

cheep Chinese ip cameras that have poe and are blocked from the internet

That’s a good point. I’ve been introduced to those systems with some installs and was avoiding anything that connected to a server not under my control even if it’s more complicated (completely wigs me out people are complacent with some unknown server recording EVERYTHING). I hadn’t looked into “dumbing” the cameras to take advantage of their lower price points, much like you can buy a smart tv but avoid it’s connectivity to use it more privately and without bloatware. Been sporadically searching security systems the past few weeks so I’ll have to double down and keep that perspective in mind.

Yeah, unfortunately it’s really hard to sell home automation with the house. I think a well-engineered, simple node-red setup might be resellable if done right, but it’s not easy to do. The hardware has to last for 20 years with redundancy, the node-red and os has to programmed in a way that it will always work, even if it’s unplugged or loses connection, and you need some sort of consistent way to control it that isn’t pulling out a computer and logging into port 8080.

Oh nice! I had home assistant on my radar from other open source threads I read but hadn’t run across the site link or realized they have smart hubs for sale with it. I’ve been hesitant with the automation setup because of the complications you mentioned. I imagined the high priced homes/condos with automated systems probably came with a subscription service for customer support with the equipment installed but wasn’t sure if that assumption was right. If I can pull the same thing off with an open source project that’s reliable and has custom equipment built for it then maybe it’s worth looking into after all.