To conduit or not

picflight

House has raised foundation with about 24" of crawl space.

I want to do structured wiring for data and phone.
The control panel will be in the garage, phone cable from outside will come here and get distributed.

4 locations in walls where Data/Phone will go, max run from control panel is 20'.
Max fill per location will be 6 CAT5, 1 COAX.

Should I run 3/4" - 1" PVC conduit under the house to each of the four locations or run the bare CAT5 cables?

Opinions, reasoning's welcome.

Evstarr

If the crawl is not an unpleasant place to be and is critter proof, I would stub pipe from the wall location down so you can properly air seal and then run the lines to the garage in the air.

If the crawl is nasty or critter prone, pipe the whole way.

jeepdawg

If your crawl space is anything like mine....the worse thing you will find is spiders...dead ones.....

Exposed is fine....just make sure you nail the stuff up out of the way...otherwise you end up yanking out wires as you crawl around.

BTW....detached or attached garage? If detached....I would run conduit underground between the 2.

picflight

How do you keep your spiders dead? I am afraid to get in my crawl space, it is clean and secured but who knows what's in there.

Garage is attached.

Sent from my iPhone using DIY Forum

jeepdawg

They don't live long down there...not much if any food....you see a few spider webs but I have never seen a live spider...that, or the run when they see the light.

I typically use a head light....LED with an elastic band...that way both hands are free to wave the stick to take down the webs.....I HATE spiders...

Anyway....attached garage? Do it like Evstar suggested....

Once you get down there, it's not that bad......one time I fell asleep...took about a 30 min nap.....

7echo

If you run pipe all the way you can leave a string or 2 in the run for later pulls.

But with 6 network cables per box maybe you won't ever need to pull more.

If you don't use pipe use some D-rings or bridal rings.

andrew79

For 6 cat5 and a coax you'll want 1 1/4 inch pipe at least

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