[kwlug-disc] Best place to purchase Cat6 in K/W

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

> On Jun 10, 2015, at 5:59 PM, B. S. <bs27975 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> And ... just in case ... don't forget, you'll want plenum rated cable, regardless of what you go with. (Heat/fire resistance.)
> (Dig into the kwlug archives within the last year or two, search cat6, there will be a group of messages from Cedric within that thread. It was good reading. 
> http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/ )

It was actually a kwartzlab post. I dug through and found it: http://kwartzlab.ca/pipermail/discuss_kwartzlab.ca/2012-September/001193.html

I’m looking at building a house and to be honest, I’m far more inclined to put cat5e throughout. Any truly long runs (say over 50m) would be cat6, but my intention would be to install a 3” metal conduit going from the basement electrical room to the attic (and another from the basement to some central location on the main floor), and then requiring ANY non-power cabling to be run through them.  I am not sure if I’d buy some 1/2” plastic conduit to run inside the walls of a given level or not (i.e. from the central conduit to a specific outlet) but I would ask that all non-power wires be left loose in the walls so I could more easily pull new cabling if the need arose.

Using a metal conduit between floors might even alleviate the need for plenum-rated cable, although to be honest most solid core cable is plenum-rated anyway. You can find 1000 foot boxes of plenum rated, solid core cat5e for about $45 on amazon, and I’d also check with local contractor outlets like Graybar to see what they can do (since you wouldn’t have to pay for shipping).

-A.