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Totally Wired |
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MORE TECHNOLOGY FOR WORK AND PLAY MEANS OUR HOMES NEED TO BE WIRED UP |
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player to watch movies on all the televisions in your home, and to network computers so family members can share expensive equipment such as printers and scanners. In other words, it's wiring for today's high-tech world and for the future, Hill says. Most homes have been wired the same way since the 1940s, says Kurt Scherf, a home networks analyst for Parks Associates in Dallas, a market research and consulting company that specializes in emerging technologies for the home. But a lot has changed in the past 60 years. Today, more people are working from home -- as much as 43 percent of us do at least some work from home, according to Parks. Many households have not one, but several, computers and they need separate phone lines for family and friends, business, fax and the Internet. More households also have digital satellite TV, high-speed Internet connections and digital TVs, all of which require high-performance cable. Conventional wiring is adequate for basic voice, fax or data communications, Scherf says. Structured wiring can handle not only traditional telephone, fax and data communications but also sophisticated video and data signals from computers and at a higher rate of speed. "If you think of wiring as a pipeline for information," he says, "conventional wiring has the data capacity of a squirt gun. By comparison, structured wiring has the capacity of a fire hose. Structured wiring can transmit more information faster." Conventional wiring consists of one or two twisted pairs of wires that are strung like Christmas lights from outlet to outlet through the house. Most traditional telephone wire is unrated or less than the equivalent of Category 1 wiring. It is not designed to carry more than voice transmissions and can be painfully slow when trying to shove through massive amounts of data. In comparison, structured wiring consists of four low-voltage Category 5 twisted-pair telephone wires strung along with two RG-6 coaxial cables. Some builders are offering wires that carry even more information, called Category 5E or enhanced Category 5. Category 5 allows transmission at 100 megabits per second; enhanced Category 5 moves data at 350 megabits per second. Category 5 is capable of handling ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) phone lines, which are high-speed data services expected to make more inroads into the residential market in coming years, as homeowners demand faster access to the World Wide Web. Structured wiring also differs from conventional wiring in that it's installed in a more reliable and versatile star-pattern, Hill says. With the star pattern, each line to each jack or outlet is connected separately back to a main distribution box. Hill is building a new home for himself in Upper Saucon Township that has structured wiring, and he's putting a distribution box on each of its floors for easier access. Structured wiring's star installation also eliminates interference problems when additional connections are added to a line, Scherf says. Structured wiring also makes it possible to easily move computers and phones from room to room as your needs change, says Jack Campbell, manager of media relations for Verizon Connected Solutions Inc., formerly Bell Atlantic Communications and Construction Services Inc. With traditional wiring, Campbell says, it may not be possible to turn your teen-age son's room into a home office when he goes away to college because his room isn't wired for more than one phone line or for cable. But with structured wiring, moving computers and phones is a simple matter of plugging them in wherever you want them. About two years ago, Bell Atlantic began selling structured wiring through homebuilders. About 250 builders from Maine to Virginia, including in Montgomery County and Warren County, N.J., have signed up, and about 10,000 homes have been wired for the future, Campbell says. The product, formerly called Bell Atlantic Ready, is also available directly from Verizon Connected but it won't be marketed in the Lehigh Valley until the fall, says Campbell, noting that Verizon is the largest provider of structured wiring in the country. Campbell predicts that as more consumers become aware of structured wiring and its many advantages, its sales will grow exponentially. Awareness is growing thanks in part to a consumer education campaign, Wiring Americas' Homes, recently started by an industry consortium, the Home Automation Association. The campaign aimed at North and South Americans stresses the importance of wiring homes to accommodate the evolving demands and opportunities presented through technology today. The campaign is sponsored by 15 leading technology companies, including Intel, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Smart House Inc., OnQ Technologies and Parks Associates. Scherf, of Parks Associates, predicts that within five years, nearly half of all new homes will have structured wiring. That's about four times the percentage that have it now. Structured wiring is more prevalent in homes priced above $250,000. "But even that's starting to change," Scherf says. "There are some structured wiring vendors who have made a point of telling us they're in homes valued less than $100,000, which really says a lot for the high technology found in our homes." Hill has been on his soapbox, preaching the need for structured wiring since it became available about 10 years ago. He gives seminars about it at the Lehigh Valley Builders Association's annual home shows. Hill works with a number of builders in the area who offer it to their clients as an option, he says. Don Keck, a project manager for the telecommunications side of Orlando Diefenderfer Electric, an electrical contractor in Allentown, says he recently received some calls for structured wiring. He expects his company probably would get even more if it did more residential installations, but its work is mostly for commercial and industrial businesses. The reason some hesitate to install structured wiring is the cost, although it's not that expensive. You can figure that structured wiring will add about 1 percent to the cost of building the home, builders and installers estimate. Scherf says a typical four-bedroom Colonial could be wired for between $750 and $2,000. "Over the lifetime of the 30-year mortgage, you're never going to notice that cost," he says. Hill says that some homeowners would rather spend the money on upgrades that are more visible such as landscaping or crown molding. "But you only get one chance at open walls," he says. "If you wire the house the first time, you're house is not going to be obsolete. You can always put the landscaping and crown molding in later. But we tell clients, with structured wiring, it's pay me now, or pay me more later." Structured wiring also adds to the resale value of a home, vendors and installers agree. Existing homes can be retrofitted with structured wiring, but the cost would be at least two to four times that of putting it in a new home, Campbell says. A small retrofit can be at least $2,000. The cost for a retrofit is much higher than for a new home because of the labor involved, Scherf says. He predicts homeowners might opt for structured wiring if they were doing renovations that involved ripping out walls. "There are companies out there that say they'll have the tools to make a retrofit a lot easier, but my forecasts for installations of structured wiring in older homes is not that optimistic. If you're building a house, do it now." Hill says if cost is an issue, install the structured wiring and later add the extras it supports, such as intercom systems, security systems, home theaters. Once the wiring is in place, the add-ons are easy to do, he says. Another reason some may not choose structured wiring is they believe the future is in wireless communications. With wireless, it may not matter what kind of wiring is in the home. But Hill and his colleagues believe that wireless is not far enough along, and that structured wiring is a safer bet. The new Autumn Park apartments in Breinigsville offer structured wiring. "We wanted to be as far a long as we could be in today's world of fast data transmission," says Valerie Glassford, the property manager. The first building -- there will be 14 with a total of 326 upscale apartments -- opened in April. Glassford says the structured wiring has been a real selling point as the area is attracting more high-tech companies, which means technologically savvy employees. "We're less than two miles from Lucent Technologies," Glassford says. "Lucent is bringing in a lot of new people, and people who work for Lucent speak that language and know what that wiring means." |
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