Under-stairs on In-loft..

[EVH]

Hey all,

Still trying to plan our pending new build, however I am faced with a dilemma at the moment. The mrs' has given in and decided that I can use the under-stairs cupboard for whatever I want providing she gets a cupboard in the utlity room for her cleaning gear (fine by me!) anyway..

The cupboard will be able to house a full 42u rack at it's highest point, and will be roughly 800mm deep / 3ft 8" (width of stairs), however I am starting to wondering if it's such a good idea.

Plan A consists of using the cupboard to house all the networking, and audio visual equipment so my only real concerns are 1) cooling 2) running all the cabling under the stairs. I think I may have cracked the cooling.. I am planning an extractor fan to vent the heat in to the downstairs toilet, and will have vents on the door but I'm struggling to picutre how I am going to get 48x Cat 6, 16x speaker cables, and all the various Sky feeds to the cupboard.

Now, Plan B means using the loft space to house the equipment. This will be easier to cool and much easier to run cables to but it also means more legwork when watching movies (treading 2 flights of stairs to change a disc )

Just looking for some advice really.. anyone with experience running cables to under-stairs locations.. any problems to watch out for? Also, is it better to keep consoles etc "local" e.g. in the rooms, as my original plan included them under the stairs for toddler-friendlyness.

Finally, while I'm here (don't fancy creating another thread for this), but what terminations should I scatter around the house? I plan on having everything via baluns on Cat 6, so each TV will have 4x Cat 6 and the main location will have 8, I'll run speaker cable to in-walls or sockets (that's another thread) but I'm stumped for any other future-proof ideas.

As you can see I'm going mental.. appreciate any advice

[wizbongre]

Hi,

Personally, I think you are wasting money and probably a bit of time using Cat6 instead of just Cat5e - I think many people will agree it is more than adequate for home use.

Specifically to your question about loft versus understairs... I think you will be surprised how hot a loft gets in summer which isn't a good environment for equipment to stay in. I had a server in my loft for a while that overheated a bit in summer. I now have my rack with switch and router and stuff under my stairs. I have an old house with suspended wooden flooring so all of my cabling runs underneath the floorboads - is that an option for you?

Best thing would be to lay sufficiently large trunking of some sort with pulling cable installed to all points in your build you think you will need cables. Then you can adjust it at any time.

[EVH]

Do you have any pictures of your under-stairs install ?

Also, how did you route cables from the stairs to the upper floors?

Thanks for the help

[wizbongre]

Unfortunately not sorry - and it's hidden now so not much to see!

I installed my cabling alongside central heating pipes (although not right on top of them obviously!) which needed boxing in after the previous owner installed them. So my Cat5e runs come out of my patch panel which is located right up near the ceiling and through a hole in the ceiling into the cavity below upstair's floor. Then it was just a case of running the cables outwards to the 3 bedrooms upstairs. This was made a bit easier as the cables came out slap bang in the middle of the landing and just spider out to the rooms.