Another Year, Another Office
What is it with me and only ever lasting a year in any given office? At the beginning of June last year the office I am sat in now was opened. Tonight it closes! Tomorrow all my equipment, along with everything else in the house, is going to be packed in to a truck and shipped down to Mansfield. Ready to move in to the new house in Nottingham on Friday.
Needless to say I'll be having some down-time over the next week or so. I hope to be back online early next week but will probably have to wait at least another two before I have a broadband connection. Here's to 2006 and BT's transformation!
There's also a lot of work to get done as soon as we move in. First for me is ripping out one of the chimney breasts. When I do this I plan on installing a network-cable conduit from the cellar to the loft (=attic). Following your advice I think this will be solid-core Cat6. Not sure what the actual conduit will be though. Maybe water mains pipe - that blue plastic stuff, about an inch thick...
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Jake,
this month's PCPlus {Link} advises that Category 6 (CAT6) is not proved technology (more sensitive to environmental factors, e.g. small disturbances in the cable might cause breakages, etc). The recommendation is Cat5e.
I don't know what budget you have allocated for re-wiring, but, personally I would look into fibre cabling (at least for the backplane). Yeah, I know, upgrade the NICs, routers, etc: too expensive. And the fibre cables cost 10x as much. Oh well! (My name is Patrick and I'm a technoholic ... )
Fibre installation notwithstanding, I would definitely keep the pipe as straight as possible and run a piece of string (something with good tensile strength) through your pipe: that way you can add more cables later, as required. (And you can never have too many cables! -- hidden away, of course.)
I think you should invest in a chair.
Great site.
Hang on, Jake - where's the office "after" shot? You know, the one with a desk strewn with rubbish and clutter up to the ceiling...?
Jake,
A friend of mine did just what you are suggesting and used simple 3" PVC. The 1" gets tight very quickly if you try to run any more cables through. Of course, the 3" needs more space. He put his down through the common wall from attic to basement and loves it. I wish I'd had the opportunity when our house was built, but I wasn't the owner then.
Safe trip! I feel a bit sentimental you leaving Sunderland... not sure why - I guess I'm missing it for you already. Silly old me...
Jerry
How about (draft) category 7 / Class F?
{Link}
category 7 versus fibre (and short history of categories 1-6):
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buy some cat 7:
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read a report with pretty graphs:
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Which one Pat? This one? {Link}
No need for sentiment yet Jerry. The buyers of this house have screwed the whole thing up and the move is now more likely to be mid-next-week.
Thanks Patrick. I'll give this some thought and report back when I get round to it.
Good luck with the move and the cabling.
Jake,
A bit of topic but if your going to do alot of DIY then screwfix is a good company for hardware & tools {Link}
The best buy is definitley this SDS drill {Link}/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?ts=00884&id=94802 I took a chimney breast out with it. You won't regret buying it. Maybe you should have a screwfix wishlist ?
Good luck with the move dude! I liked what you did with your current/old office ...
A.
Hey, Jake...for the US-English speakers, what's a chimney breast? :)
or maybe I just don't know the term because I've never had any chimney work done at my house...)
Bart,
For "chimney breast", see this link :
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Rc.
Ah, so it's not a difference in UK/US English...I never knew that those walls had a name :)
Jake did move last week, it was a close run thing and was almost cancelled at the last minute, but a big van full of more stuff than anyone could possibly require did eventually wind its way from old home to new home very late Thursday night/Fri morning.
Jake is now knee deep in chimney breast and wont be coming out to play for the foreseeable future.
What a desperate application this is ...
Jake, get thee to usenet's uk.d-i-y.... more useful (& some useless) info than you can shake a stick at.
Oh, and if you're going to be doing any substantial electrical work on the house wiring, make sure it's started BEFORE 1/1/05 - the government's about to impose rather onerous restrictions on what you can and can't do (building regs part P).
Oh, Mark B - www.axminster.co.uk and www.dm-tools.co.uk can be rather better for tool porn than screwfix...