Why Prewiring is Important

When building a new home, it is critical to think ahead in order to determine how to properly utilize the space to reach its full functional capacity. Doing a pre-wire during your home’s construction will save both time and money, as well as safe-guard your home for the future. Some of the most important steps in this process are setting your home up for sound and creating a proper network.

Setting up an appropriate network in your home allows you to access the internet to its full potential. We run hardwired lines to multiple locations in your home so that your devices connect directly into the internet instead of draining your WiFi. It is crucial to recognize that WiFi and internet are not the same. When your home is hardwired, you have a direct line to the internet, allowing for faster speeds and stronger connectivity for multiple devices. WiFi is simply a signal that is sent out across your network. You are able to connect multiple devices to your home’s WiFi signal, however, the more devices you have connected, the slower the connection becomes. Typically, a WiFi network can support three devices, but exceeding three will begin to affect the speeds at which those devices run. Hard-wiring your home ensures higher speeds and better connectivity no matter how many devices are in use.

Pre-wiring also prepares and arranges your home to be equipped with sound. This could be for a future surround-sound setup or a whole, home audio system. Maximizing your home’s capacity for sound should be second on your list when wiring for a low-voltage system. Not only will this save you time in the future, but it will also save you money. Setting up sound during your home’s construction will cost only a fraction of what it would in a fully finished home. In some cases, it might even be impossible to put sound in an area that is already finished without making major adjustments.

Pre-wiring is a step often neglected during the building process, but it is the best way to not only sustain sound and a secure network in your home, but save you time, effort, and money in the long run!

Prewiring Explained

Siamese Cable

A Siamese cable run includes an RG6 Coax cable, which is used to send signals to your cable box or router. It also includes a Cat5e network cable, which gives your devices a hardwired line into the internet. Some cable companies like AT&T only use the Cat5e to send a signal to your cable box, and if that is the case, only having the Coax cable set-up will cause your system not to work.

Cat5e / Cat 6 Cables

Cat5e and Cat6 cables are network cables that transfer data from the internet to all your devices. Cat5e offers speeds up to 1000mbps/1gbps at 100mhz. This speed is sufficient for just about any home. It is even likely that it offers a faster speed than your current internet provider! The Cat6 cable sustains even faster speeds than Cat5e: up to 10,000mbps/10gbps at 250mhz. However, this speed is limited to 164 feet, so if you have a longer run then you will see reduced speeds. Cat6 works best for networks that have speeds over 1000mbps/1gbps. While these two wires have different levels of speed, they both use the same connection and look similar in a side-by-side comparison.

*Most internet providers offer speeds of 200mbps as the top speed for a residential set-up. Unless you have fiber optics running throughout your home, it is unlikely that you will exceed 1000mbps.

Cat 5e Cable

Cat 6 Cable

RG6 Cable (Coax)

This cable is primarily used by cable companies to connect their satellite antenna rigs to customer homes and businesses. It is also used as an Ethernet connectivity medium for your home router.

14/2 and 14/4 Oxygen-Free Speaker Wire

When it comes to speaker wire, we choose to go with 14-gauge speaker wire over the traditional 16-gauge wire. The 14-gauge is not only a thicker wire, but it offers better sound transfer to your speakers and pairs better with high-end speakers, giving you the best sound possible. Because sound travels on the outside of the copper wire rather than through it, wires with more coper strands promote more efficient sound transfer. Our cables are also oxygen free, meaning there will be no oxidation in the lines that could dampen the sound quality.