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In wall vs Riser rated Cat5 Cable

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scottd34

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 3, 2005
Messages
69
I am going to be wiring up my house while I am doing renovations and I wanted to run RG6, Cat5 and phone wire to each room.

I was looking at cat5 cable at monoprice and I saw they have riser rated and in wall rated cable.

I have a few hundred feet of riser rated cat5e still, will this be fine to use in the wall runs in the house or should I be going with the in wall rated cabling and just use the remaining riser rated cat5 that I have for other things?
 
scottd34 said:
I am going to be wiring up my house while I am doing renovations and I wanted to run RG6, Cat5 and phone wire to each room.

I was looking at cat5 cable at monoprice and I saw they have riser rated and in wall rated cable.

I have a few hundred feet of riser rated cat5e still, will this be fine to use in the wall runs in the house or should I be going with the in wall rated cabling and just use the remaining riser rated cat5 that I have for other things?
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IIRC monoprices "wall-rated" cables are desgined for durability in Home theater insallations where you hide some wires in the wire, but its for short point to point runs, usually of HDMI cables and such.

Riser cable is what you should use, because its also called Plenum grade cable and its designed to not let off toxic fumes when it burns. To be up to legal building codes you MUST use plenum cable.

That said I was a cheap bastard and used plain old cable to wire the parts of my house I've wired so far, and I intend to do it again soon when I run some more ports.
 
As long as you are using solid core cable, it should be fine. Don't use stranded cable for in wall runs. One, solid cable is much easier to straighten out and run through the walls, two, it generally has better performance over long runs, and three, most punchdown blocks are designed to handle solid cable. Just like most RJ45 ends are designed to handle stranded cable.

I can't imagine trying to pull stranded cable through walls anyway. What a pain in the ass that would be, that shit loves to twist up on itself all the time.
 
Ok, thanks. I will stick to the riser rated cat5e cable for the renovation.
 
JBark said:
As long as you are using solid core cable, it should be fine. Don't use stranded cable for in wall runs. One, solid cable is much easier to straighten out and run through the walls, two, it generally has better performance over long runs, and three, most punchdown blocks are designed to handle solid cable. Just like most RJ45 ends are designed to handle stranded cable.

I can't imagine trying to pull stranded cable through walls anyway. What a pain in the ass that would be, that shit loves to twist up on itself all the time.
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oh yeah. I never buy stranded cable. Well the pre-made cables I own are likely stranded, but most of my cables are home made.
 
I believe riser and plenum are usually two different types, where plenum is the type of cable that can be run inside HVAC duct work and elsewhere where you don't want toxic chemicals being released into the air (building/electrical codes vary across the US, check to see if it is required). Otherwise solid-core riser rated will be fine for your application. Home Depot and other places have it in stock. The plenum (in my local HD) is no longer sold in boxes. Have to buy it by the foot or buy CAT6 500ft plenum.
 
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