A home in the Blue Ridge Mountains is a great place to live.  Most homes here are designed and built with comfort and ease of living in mind with the ability to blend in with the natural scenery of this area.  An often overlooked segment of a home is the available technology, which has rapidly evolved during the past decade.

Technology can agreeably excite your senses with comfort, audible & visual sensations, automated lighting controls to reflect the mood of your home, or simply having peace of mind that your home is secure... at the touch of a button.

Even if you are presently not foreseeing the installation of any electronic systems in your home, any home being constructed without structured cabling (two CAT5E, two RG6 coax cables to each room...minimum), vs. the old standard telephone/coax cabling has been technologically obsolete for many years!  Why?

There's a myriad of home systems currently manufactured which depend on structured cabling being in place. The internet being one, is a common source of entertainment and information.  With home computers falling in price, and the availability of high speed internet access (DSL, Broadband, etc), it is simple, economical and convenient to have a home network.  A home network allows you to have more than just one computer in your home on the internet; they can now be in any room.  For example, music or video from a computer or the internet can be shared through out your house.  Your teenager is researching something for school while you are looking up a recipe at Emeril’s website, meanwhile, out in the shop your husband is viewing an on-line service manual  for one of his projects...  All of this done over the internet at the same time without tying up phone lines or others time at the computer.  However, in order to use a home network, cabling a.k.a. CAT 5e or Cat6 cable must be in place or you can settle for a limited bandwidth (slower), wireless network.  Keep in mind, the wireless networks have very limited range when they are installed without repeaters, etc..

In addition to networking your home PCs, CAT5e can be used for many other systems.   Whole-house audio & video allows you to utilize one entertainment system throughout your home instead of buying a stereo for each room it is desired in.  Yes, there are wireless network systems however, you cannot dependently send HDTV quality over a wireless system.  You can if your home has CAT5E or CAT6 is installed. 

In addition to entertainment systems, structured cabling allows for many other systems to be installed. These include remote video surveillance over the internet, allowing cameras at your home to be viewed by you on your laptop while you’re at work or traveling.

A structured cabling system typically consists of an enclosure located near the service entrance of a home built into the walls just like a circuit breaker panel. They vary in sizes from 12 to 48 inches in length depending on the required capacity.  Data network and telephone termination points are installed allowing for neat and an easy to manage layout of the cables for each room’s outlet.  In addition, all the coaxial cables for either satellite or cable TV can be terminated into amplifiers or splitters (depending on the individual requirements) for easy modifications in the future.  The structured cabling enclosure also makes an ideal location for a home security system control panel.  With this, a home has all the low voltage cabling in one centralized and manageable location with all the cabling labeled and neatly terminated.

No more coax cable hanging from a floor joist or telephone cables crammed through one hole to the outside of the house leaving the connections exposed to the weather and the homeowner only guessing which one goes where.

The key is to have your home properly pre-wired while your home is still in it’s initial planning and construction phase.  Like plumbing and electrical, centralized systems are much more costly to install later. Investing in ample headroom for future applications, not only adds value to the home and protects the original investment but more importantly helps the homeowner avoid costly and time consuming upgrades and retrofits later.

As with anything installed or built into a home, structured cabling as well as other home electronic installations, should only be done by a licensed Low Voltage Contractor who is experienced in the proper installation of these systems.