The Home Office

June 1, 2002
Professional Builder

	A basic structured wiring system will be at its most robust in the home office. The wall plate frequently includes room for two voice lines, a data line, a fax line and one RG-6 video cable.

The reality that home offices are increasingly where home buyers earn a living is the biggest reason more builders are offering structured wiring packages. The needs in this room are more robust than those in any other location in the home. Here builders typically offer two voice lines, a fax line, a data line and one or even two video cables.

Integrator Steve Hayes often puts three such fully stocked wall plates on different walls of a dedicated home office. This, he says, lets current and future homeowners change the desk location and rearrange other furniture.

Builders looking to save a few bucks won’t want to go that route. But most ultimately will install wires and wall-plate connections that maximize the capability of the network distribution panel they selected at the outset.

	A more robust package offers a similar “universal” wall plate but in more locations to accommodate different desk and furniture configurations.

J.F. Shea’s Rob Pigg makes the point that very few buyers walk into a sales center knowing about wiring and devices available in a distributed network panel. They can, however, talk at length about the functionality they want from their computers and peripherals.

“Buyers will say, ‘I am interested in a computer network, and I want to be able to place my printer and my fax and my scanner in one spot.’ That’s the way it comes across,” says Pigg. “So what that represents is a challenge to us, to take those needs and turn them into an infrastructure in the home that will deliver and provide for those needs.”