Why this matters now
Retrofitting a network into a finished house is the expensive way to do everything. It means chasing channels into plastered walls, surface trunking where chases won’t go, and compromise on where things can actually run. Doing the same work while the walls are open is invisible and, by comparison, almost free. The cabling is the one part of a smart, connected home that is far cheaper to get right before the marble goes down than after.
Think of the network like a utility
The mistake is to treat the network as something to sort out at the end, like buying a router once you move in. It is a utility, like electrical and plumbing, and it should be planned beside them. One design should cover data, Wi-Fi coverage, cameras, AV and smart-home control together, because they share routes, a rack and a logic. Planned once, as a system, it disappears into the house. Planned piecemeal, it fights the finishes forever.
The checklist — what to lay in
While the walls are open, this is what pays for itself:
- Structured data cabling (Cat6 or Cat6A) to every room, and to the access-point positions the survey calls for, so Wi-Fi is fed by cable rather than relayed by radio.
- Cabling to camera positions — gates, the boundary wall, entrances, the driveway and lawns — run while there is no plaster to chase.
- Conduit, containment and pull-strings everywhere it is cheap to add. You will not predict every future device; conduit lets you add or swap cable later without opening a single wall.
- A planned location for the rack, with power and ventilation. The hub of the whole system should not end up in a hot, sealed cupboard.
- Cabling for AV and smart-home controllers, so screens, speakers and automation have wired links rather than depending on Wi-Fi for everything.
- Outdoor runs for the lawn, the gate and any annexe or guest house, which are always the first things forgotten and the hardest to add later.
- Power-resilience provisioning so the network gear can sit on backup and ride through load-shedding.
Each line on that list is there because adding it later costs ten times as much, or simply cannot be done cleanly.
Where people get it wrong
The common failures are predictable. Too few points, so every room has one socket and none has enough. No conduit, so the house is frozen around the gear that existed on the day it was wired. The rack squeezed into a cupboard with no air. Outdoor and gate runs forgotten entirely. And, most often, the whole job left to the electrician as “just run some network cable”, with no network design behind it — no thought to how many points, placed where, on which segments, fed from which rack.
A second quiet cost is scale. Owners tend to plan for the devices they own today and forget how a connected home grows: a camera added at the new gate, a television in a room that did not have one, a child’s study that becomes a home office. Every one of those wants a cabled point, and every point that was not laid in becomes a chase through a finished wall. It is far cheaper to lay a few spare runs now — to the obvious future positions and into each major room — than to go back for them one at a time. Spare cable in the wall is the least glamorous and most useful thing you can buy while the plaster is off.
How the network should be designed
A good result follows a clear path. A survey of the plans and the site. A written design that sets out counts, positions, the rack, the segments and the Wi-Fi coverage. Coordination with your electrician and builder so the runs go in at first fix, at the right moment. And a documented handover — the House Book — so that years later anyone can read what was installed and why. Where active gear is named, equipment we specify includes MikroTik, Cisco, Ubiquiti, TP-Link (Omada), Dahua and Huawei; the cabling advice above stays vendor-neutral. See how we work.
Working with your architect or builder
We are used to working to someone else’s drawings and timeline. The architect keeps designing the house; we design the network that runs through it, and hand your builder clear routes and a schedule. Working with architects and builders sets out what we need from you and when.
Get the design in before first fix
The whole point is timing. A network designed before the plaster is invisible, complete and cheap; the same thing afterwards is a compromise. If you are building or renovating, get the design in early. See the network backbone and whole-home Wi-Fi, read why big homes get dead spots, and book your Signal Survey as a design-stage walk-through.