3

I am having a house built and am paying to have a contractor run low voltage conduit from every room in the house to a home network closet under the basement stairs. In an attempt to cut back on cost I am wondering if it is reasonable to have him only run one conduit to areas where the room will be back to back on the same wall, and what the pro's and con's would be. The contractor charges $50 / 1" internal diameter conduit run.

I will need to be able to run at least 3 cables to each room (2 Cat6 Ethernet, 1 RG6 Coax), for a total of 6 if using a shared conduit. From my research so far, it seems I should be able to fit everything through with the 1" conduit.

The left image below shows an example of what I am considering. Doing it this way would save up to 5 runs in the home. The right image would be the alternative if what I am wanting to do is not reasonable.

enter image description here

person0
  • 133

1 Answers1

1

In addition to widening out the bends as recommended by DavidPostill, You should be able to fit all of that into a 1" conduit, so long as you're not using excessively large diameter cable (shielded, reinforced, etc.) and you don't plan on adding any more cables to that conduit at a later date. You may want to invest in cable lubricant though as the bends may be difficult to go through. I once managed to squeeze 6x reinforced CAT6 into a 3/4" conduit with just one 90 degree bend, but it was not pleasant even with cable lube.

As far as needing a single conduit per room versus per shared wall, I really don't see any issue with two rooms sharing the same conduit, assuming the conduit just opens up into the wall cavity. You may be able go convince your contractor to give you a small discount on the second conduit though since they are parallel, but it probably won't be significant.

Also, your contractor should know this, but make sure they don't have more than 360 degrees worth of bends in a single stretch of conduit without putting in a junction box.

Matt E
  • 24