Structured Wiring Project

Structured wiring

Problem

There were too many devices on wireless which was causing reliability and speed issues.

Methodology

• Everything should be neat and professional. All wires were run inside walls, crawl spaces, and the attic.
• Everything should have a color. The wires are color coded based on their purpose. The same colors are used on the wall ports.
• Everything should be run in a star topology. No daisy chaining here.

Photos

This was the fourth house where I have run structured wiring. I decided to use what I learned and also have fun overkilling it. I designed a wall plate with applicable wiring for each room. The wall plates are Keystone for complete customizability. The wall plate pictured here is in the master bedroom. This particular wall plate has:

• 2 HDMIs run to 2 lower HDMI ports on the same wall.
• 1 coax connector for antenna, cable, or satellite.
• 1 yellow cat5e port intended for HDMI over cat5.
• 1 blue cat6a port for hard wired computer network.
• A black and red speaker wire terminal run to the same lower wall plate as the HDMI. The intent is for this to drive a center channel speaker.

All wiring runs back to a centrally located patch panel. This ensure the wires in the walls to not get disturbed when changing wiring connections. The bottom device in the picture is a 48 port switch.

This is the wall plate behind the TV in the next photo. It shows the yellow HDMI cables running from the wall plates to the TV connections. It also has a custom length coax wire that is connected to the wall plate and TV.

This is an example of what a television looks like after running the HDMI cables in the wall. That video game system is connected to the TV via HDMI and it is working in the photo.

Color Coding System

Black. RG6 connectors with coax wires for antenna, cable, or satellite. It is easiest to get this wiring in black.

Blue. Cat6a wiring for a gigabit computer network. Upgradable to faster speeds in the future. At the time of this project cat6a was not available in a lot of colors. Blue was the most exotic.

Yellow. HDMI wires and HDMI of cat5. This could also be used as an additional computer network by changing the wall plate terminations if needed in the future. Inspired by the yellow RCA jacks of old.

Purple. Cat5e wiring for phone wires. This could also be used as an additional computer/VOIP network by changing the wall plate terminations if needed in the future.

Green. Cat5e for POE IP cameras.

Orange. Coax audio. Only used for main entertainment center to connect receiver to television.

Amazing Tools

I purchased a four foot long drill bit. This was an amazing tool for drilling down into the basement from inside the wall. It saved me from cutting many extra holes in the drywall. I was able to drill the hole from the height of the rest of the gang boxes. So, I basically cut where the wall plate was going to be and drilled right through the same hole.

I always use compression connectors when terminating my coax wires. These are the easiest to use and are very reliable.

Surprise Issues

1. The RJ11 keystone jacks, also known as phone jacks, were too big to fit in the wall plates side by side or one over the other. It amazes me that they can make RJ45 keystone jacks that fit the wall plates as expected. However, I could not find RJ11 keystone jacks that fit as expected. In the end I had to add a single gang wall plate next to the 6 port keystone plates to separate the phone jacks.
2. The patch panel said it included a punch down tool and that it was a 110 punch down. It was actually a Krone punch down. I had some trouble with connections until I bought the proper tool to punch down on this panel. It is well worth it to buy a tool that has both 110 and Krone and also cuts the wire after punching down.
3. I accidentally ordered green patch panel wires instead of blue. This error was because I switched midway. I eventually used them for the security cameras and ordered blue for the computer network.