House refurb - future proofing?

Moyglish

Currently in the process of doing extensive renovations and refurbishment on a house, all floors are stripped presently, so before new flooring goes down, I'm wondering if now might be a good time to lay some cabling like CAT 5 or something?

Tbh, I don't know all the lingo and terminology, but I would like to future proof the house as it were and now seems like as good an idea as any while works are ongoing.

The house is detached and in a rural area and unfortunately has very limited broadband options with very poor speeds.

I'm thinking I may go with a 4g router and SIM for now and see how I get on, but I'm thinking for later on down the line should I be laying CAT 5 o anything?

Thh, I can't see many devices being hardwired via ethernet at the moment, perhaps an Amazon fire tv box or similar, but that's it.

Most devices would predominantly be using WiFi anyhow, so perhaps laying cables would be a waste of time and money for my needs?

Main useage would be for streaming Netflix etc.. Will hopefully also have a few smart bulbs and Echo Alexa speakers and things like that.

Should I be putting down CAT 5 or similar or would it be overkill for my situation?

There's likely to be a few TVs with amazon boxes so would be nice to be able to have them all wired directly to ethernet.

Or should I focus on getting an antenna booster for a 4g signal instead?

Johnboy1951

IMO, you should definitely lay Cat5e or Cat6 cable to multiple points in each room.
I would even advise that you do double runs to each location, in case of failure of any cable.
The cable is cheap, and it is unlikely you will get another chance to do this.

Bear in mind also that you could if you wished, have multiroom TV over the ethernet cable.

Select a central location in the house for a 'media press'.
Make sure it has plenty spare space and preferably is not heated.

Bring all the Cat5e cables directly back to this media press.
OK, initially you will only need a few to be connected, but this is a 'once off' situation, so make provision for long term future use === plenty spare capacity.

Remember if you have each room hardwired and have wireless failure there, it is very simple to add a wireless point for that area from the wired socket.

If possible do the Cat5e cable runs within continuous pipe, from media press to wall socket. If you can manage that then a single cable run will be sufficient as it should be easy to replace the cable if required. I was unable to do that when doing my own gaff, because it was retrofit and the runs in ceilings, so I used doube cable.

I presently have TV channels from tuners in the media press, available in all rooms on the RJ45 sockets, as well as internet everywhere ... wired and wireless. (well not quite everywhere because I have not finished the whole house yet)

I put three or four RJ45 wall outlets in each room (room shape dependent) ....... and am happy I did because at least three are in use in two rooms and in one of those the fourth had been used for some time, and will probably be used again in future.

Don't scrimp, and centralise would be the two things I would advise.

Have fun!

The high horse brigade

Run cat6 to celings for access points, it's the best place for them, gives great coverage. There are some very neat looking access points like Ubiquiti Unifi