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mxk1235
Registered Users
Posts:3
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| 02/19/2008 5:54 PM |
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my parents constructed a Polysteel house a few years ago, although without ICF flooring and roofing, and they love it. Nowadays, I am looking around for the right plan, site and technology to potentially build a house in a couple of years. Just researching right now.
From the sounds of it, I am definitely in favor of ICFs, and the open questions are for flooring and roofing.
I am aware of the AmDeck and Speedfloor options, but I am not sure if those are appropriate for sloped roofs. It sounds like poured floors/roofs are a little bit more expensive, and an interesting option would be to build the walls and second story floor with ICFs, but use SIPs for the roof. I suspect this is possible, but thought I'd ask for references, opinions.
potential cons -- it may be more expensive due to having to use 2 different contractors.
potential pros -- being able to pitch steeper roofs compared to ICF solutions (potentially making a live-in attic) and better insulated roofs compared to traditional roofs.
one more question: my parents' house sometimes experiences interference for wireless devices, like a WiFi router and an indoor TV antenna. we think it's because of all the reinforce bars and wafers in the walls. since a house is not that large, a weak WiFi signal is just fine and an outdoor TV antenna is easy enough to implement, but how do ICF walls affect cell phones? their house is not in a covered area, so I can't test if my phone would work.
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Buntly
Registered Users
Posts:95
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| 02/19/2008 7:11 PM |
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What part of the country are you in? I have built two houses next to one another, one icf and the other stick. I get similar signal in both with my cell. Poured floors may be more expensive, but if you are doing in floor radiant, the cost may be very competitive. SIP roof is an option if you are going to do an enclosed attic space. This is not a very common practice in Michigan because many people are unfamiliar with this type of roof, it is not "time proven", and is limited to relatively simple roof designs (from a budget standpoint). There may be others on this site who are much more knowledgeable with sip roofs who can shed some more light on this subject.
Bunt |
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dmaceld
Registered Users
Posts:494
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| 02/19/2008 8:15 PM |
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Posted By mxk1235 on 02/19/2008 5:54 PM
and an interesting option would be to build the walls and second story floor with ICFs, but use SIPs for the roof. I suspect this is possible, but thought I'd ask for references, opinions.
There's a thread here somewhere from not too long ago discussing this option. It's in a longer thread about SIPs, I think. See if you can find it and then if you have more/different questions from what was discussed there come back. Thanks.
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Building house - what a way to spend retirement! |
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budden
Registered Users
Posts:16
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| 02/19/2008 9:10 PM |
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RF interference.
My office is in a reinforced concrete building and students go by the door with cellphones stuck in their ears all the time. Ditto for WiFi. Indeed my colleague in next office over uses his cellphone tooooo much.
You're correct in that the part of the wall that could potentially be RF opaque is the rebar. But 1) you gotta have a lot of it and 2) it all has to be grounded. The wavelength of WiFi is short so it tends to 'squeeze' through lots of places. Unless you go out of your way to make a Faraday cage, you're unlikely to have a big problem.
Non-WiFi cordless phones, your uwave oven, garage door openers ... several things around the house occupy the same 2GHz chunk of unlicensed spectrum as WiFi. Because it's packet switched, WiFi can tolerate quite a bit of interfering noise and keep on working -- a packet that incurs an error is simply NAK'd and retransmitted ... eventually it gets through (like when your oven times out and dings).
But what I'd do in the house construction is wire each room with wired ethernet. That gives you a couple options:
- avoid the WiFi entirely and jack into the wall wherever you want to plug in
- relocate the WiFi access point to one of these ethernet drops (or support >1 access point).
My current house has crawl-space so when the electricians showed up to wire the new addition (120v), they also brought a box of Cat 5 and ran a couple cables to about a half dozen places around the house and brought them all up into a wiring closet (box in a real closet). You'd want that near where your CATV or DSL entry is because that's where the router would go. Pulling Cat 5 cable is similar to electrical (embed in foam, run conduit, same kinds of drop boxes work. But you don't have any electrical safety problems so there's not much inhibition to DIY. In my case, the electricians pulled the cable (they had to get into the crawl space in any event) but I did the rest.
If you do cable the house, don't be chintzy. Cat 5 cable is cheap these days. Off-shelf plenum cable has four pairs if wires inside the casing. Only two pairs are used for 10/100 Base-T; the other two pairs are vacant. But Power over Ethernet (clever convenience) grabs the other two pairs and uses them for 48Vdc. (Gig ethernet uses all 8 pairs). I put two-banger boxes in my house and ran two cables (8 pairs) to each so I can run two ethernets (without cheating and doubling upon the unused pairs) or I can use one of the cables for POTS phone. |
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PanelCrafters
Registered Users
Posts:1329
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| 02/19/2008 10:21 PM |
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Posted By budden on 02/19/2008 9:10 PM
...But what I'd do in the house construction is wire each room with wired ethernet. That gives you a couple options:
- avoid the WiFi entirely and jack into the wall wherever you want to plug in
- relocate the WiFi access point to one of these ethernet drops (or support >1 access point).
My current house has crawl-space so when the electricians showed up to wire the new addition (120v), they also brought a box of Cat 5 and ran a couple cables to about a half dozen places around the house and brought them all up into a wiring closet (box in a real closet). You'd want that near where your CATV or DSL entry is because that's where the router would go. Pulling Cat 5 cable is similar to electrical (embed in foam, run conduit, same kinds of drop boxes work. But you don't have any electrical safety problems so there's not much inhibition to DIY. In my case, the electricians pulled the cable (they had to get into the crawl space in any event) but I did the rest.
Excellent advice, and I'll do it again. However, in areas that receive a large amount of lightning, be careful!!! The EMF/Magnetic field produced by a nearby strike, can turn your electronic devices into toast(via those very same CAT5 cables). And, that is w/o lightning ever hitting the house! In all of my loses(pc's, network printer & network switch) they were all connected via CAT5 cable, protected by a very good surge protector(IsoBar), and powered up just fine. They just didn't work any longer. I love the idea of a wired network, and the security that is somewhat lacking with wireless, but be careful out there! Especially if you live in a place like Colorado or Florida! |
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....jc
If you're not building with OSB SIPS(or ICF's), why are you building? |
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GRickard
Registered Users
Posts:38
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| 02/20/2008 8:41 AM |
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As an electrician that installs network cabling on a daily basis, I would recomend spending a little more up front and install Cat 6 cable instead of Cat 5E. This is just a way to future proof the system because you can't run gig ethernet on 5E. Also, I would opt for the non-plenum cable because it is about 1/3 the cost of plenum and I've never seen a house with a plenum ceiling. we use plenum cable where the space above the ceiling tiles is used as a return air without ducts.
If you want to save some money on the install, you can always use Cat 5E jacks on Cat 6 cable. It's alot easier to upgrade the jacks later than to pull all new cable.
As far as lightning problems are concerned, you can get lightning protectors to go on your incoming cables. Any communications supply house shuold have them. I buy them from Anixter all the time. If you need a part number, just tell me the applicatin and I can look it up for you.
Greg |
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Cattail Bill
Registered Users
Posts:246
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| 02/20/2008 9:32 AM |
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We have been considering using the Hambro system for the ceiling of the top floor and installing brackets to attach a traditional roof system or sip roof system.
We hope to sell our two model homes this year and then we will be trying this method on the next model home.
Theory is that in a wind event we may lose the roof trusses but the remainder of the structure would be unscaved, and you would never have to leave while the new roof is being installed, also the issue of heat escape from the attic would be greatly reduced. |
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mxk1235
Registered Users
Posts:3
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| 02/20/2008 12:21 PM |
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All, thanks for the answers and suggestions. overwiring your house for ethernet upgradeability is definitely a cheap and easy step to take for any home-builder. this makes it inexcusable if you don't do it. fwiw, i've seen systems where a pvc conduit pipe was laid through one wall in each room to make it easy to pull in new cables. great idea IMO.
Just out of curiosity, i started researching whether there's a block using non-metal extenders and possibly non-steel (fiber) reinforcements. since metal is not always appropriate for a building material, it sounds like a product like that should exist now or very soon. this will most likely be more expensive, but, hey, i am just looking right now.
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DallasBill
Registered Users
Posts:119
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| 02/21/2008 5:46 PM |
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Well, if you can't run gigabit ethernet on cat-5e then you better come over to our two offices and call us all idiots. Of course you can and it's in the spec!
That being said, run cat-6 because it costs little more and it has about twice the bandwidth of cat-5e. Bandwidth is what it's all about, Alfie. In future you could stream HD over it, if that ever arrives, for example. We ran it all 2. 5 years ago in our ICF home. You can even add a baluns to each end and use it for cable/sat video if you wish.
We get no cell coverage more than 5 feet from the front windows downstairs in a 1.5 story home with a metal roof. It's not the roof because we get a signal upstairs in the media room over the garage. It's a crap shoot and will depend on where your carrier's towers are. For example, a lot of people that add a radiant barrier to their ceilings suddenly find they have lost cell coverage inside.
We have no issues with wifi in any areas of the house -- no interior walls are ICF. The router is in the wiring closet on the second floor, smack dab in the middle third of the house. Since a wifi signal falls down like a big umbrella, we are covered everywhere. Keep it high, not low. Now, outside in the porch it's a different story. Unless I sit by the door, the signal drops all the time. So, since we wired every room for cat-6, it's easy to install a repeater there.
Good luck! |
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budden
Registered Users
Posts:16
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| 02/21/2008 8:10 PM |
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Ethernet and POTS cabling specs:
DallasBill:
"Well, if you can't run gigabit ethernet on cat-5e then you better come over to our two offices and call us all idiots. Of course you can and it's in the spec!
"That being said, run cat-6 because it costs little more ..."
The second sentence above is indeed correct (as Cattail Bill pointed out earlier).
The Cat 5/Cat5e/Cat6 labels all come from specifications from the Telecommunications Industry Associates in their 589 spec. (Ironically, it's not part of the ethernet standard at all, but a borrowed standard for the purpose). The differences have to do with the number of twists in the pairs in the cable per meter. The reason for the twists is noise cancellation and EMI immunity and the short version is more twists = higher frequency of that immunity.
As has been pointed out many times on this board, workmanship has a bit to do with the problem and as I'll explain below, it tends to be the trumping issue here.
Catalog. Cat 3 wire (aka Bell Wire) is what the telephone company ran down the street and into my residence years ago when the place was built. Most of the twists here get in accidentally in installation;-). For short runs, it'll do for ethernet.
Cat 5 was the first specification in Unshielded Twisted Pair in ethernet. UTP became popular in the early '90s and today most of my students have never seen the coaxial cable versions (slangily Thicknet and Thinnet) that preceded. Shortly after UTP was stabilized in the industry, the clock acceleration in ethernet industry started and 10 Base-T became 10/100 Base-T (the spec has very clever backward compatability). Well, if we can do 100 Mbit, can we crank the spec up even higher? So you see Gigabit and 10 Gig ethernet stuff out there (in both copper and fiber incarnations). The wiring companies (most of whom know nothing about protocols) were not standing still here, so the Cat 5e and Cat 6 specs appeared. Nothing wrong with them and if you're going to cable your house from scratch, there's very little marginal price increase.
But it doesn't make much difference. The key noise factor is cross-talk and the key place to look for it is at the hub in the wiring closet. This is where all the RJ-45 jacks are plugged into the hub cheek-by-jowl. This is the noisiest place in the entire ethernet segment and the name coined is Near End Crosstalk (NEXT). Two noise issues here trump the twists-in-cable issue:
- twists inside the RJ-45 connector itself. The difference between a Cat5 and Cat6 connector is that the latter has yet a couple more twists in the copper traces inside the connector. The only indicator to you the user is the fancy labeling. To be effective, you have to carry the twists all the way into the hub and the weak point is at the connectors, due neighbor proximity.
- workmanship. Applying RJ-45 plugs does require holding your mouth right. You have to unlay the twists far enough to get straight wires into the plug... all the way into the plug. If you don't unlay enough, you won't get a good connection; unlay too much and you defeat the point of the twists.
All that said, the ethernet protocols and the supporting wiring specs are written pretty conservatively and they are highly fault tolerant -- a general trait of packet-switched systems. So your network can endure an awful lot of noise and keep on operating. Indeed, quite likely without you even knowing that it's laboring.
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PanelCrafters
Registered Users
Posts:1329
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| 02/21/2008 9:58 PM |
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Posted By budden on 02/21/2008 8:10 PM
All that said, the ethernet protocols and the supporting wiring specs are written pretty conservatively and they are highly fault tolerant -- a general trait of packet-switched systems. So your network can endure an awful lot of noise and keep on operating. Indeed, quite likely without you even knowing that it's laboring.
What's really funny is that you won't find any provider that could even stress an old CAT5 installation. Cable would probably be the closest, at about 5Mbs to 25Mbs. And Good 'ol CAT5 will do at least 100Mbs.
Of course, on your private network(inside the house) you could find ways to get there(100Mbs), but most installations wouldn't come close.
An 'Off-Air' full HD broadcast with surround sound can't exceed 19.2 Mbs. |
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....jc
If you're not building with OSB SIPS(or ICF's), why are you building? |
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DallasBill
Registered Users
Posts:119
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| 02/21/2008 10:48 PM |
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By golly gee whilakers, budden, I'm simply overwhelmed. Five paragraphs and 9,200 words to say that your original claim that '...you can't run gig ethernet on 5E" was incorrect!
So, while you're here, what do you think about ICF construction and RF interference, anyway? |
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budden
Registered Users
Posts:16
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| 02/22/2008 12:19 AM |
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Wasn't my claim.
ICF probably won't be more opaque to either cellphone or WiFi than foil backing on fibreglass insulation. |
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