I have recently bought a used place here in Japan. Despite its age everything is in pristine condition and I’m very happy (having had two inspectors look at it) to say that maintenance in the near future shouldn’t be a problem. I got insurance and everything zippered up.
I am also having an electrician install new light switches, some new outlets, and a little bit of updated wiring where necessary.
I have plenty of DIY home renovation experience, having been a homeowner in the United States before. While I have access to it I’d like to install ethernet cables throughout the home. While the electrician could do this for me, it is a very simple procedure with a rather steep cost.
Would this be violating any kind of law or regulation that could void my insurance if I were to install these ethernet cables myself?
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I don’t think so. Maybe I’m wrong and other people can correct me, but if it’s your house you can do what you want, it wouldn’t void the insurance.
In my case, this matter was solved by installing powerlink adapters. At the moment they work great. I don’t know if this will work for you, but perhaps it’s another alternative to running through the walls a bunch of ethernet cables all over the house.
Look for regs on low voltage wiring. In most countries, it’s unregulated, other than the type of wire allowed in the wall. A tech who installs cable, alarm, or home theatre wiring would know.
Out of interest how do you plan to run the cables yourself?
Back home I had a double brick house and you could just climb up into the roof and snake cables down pretty much whenever, but my house in Japan is wood and the walls filled with insulation, so it seems impossible to add after the fact (without ripping all the walls apart anyway) unless there’s already a conduit available where you want to run your cables…
Please use Wi-Fi. that is better
Nope, no certification required as long as you don’t touch mains power or anything between the router and the outside. (https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000427814.pdf)
I ran ethernet in my house 4 years ago using unused wall mount phone plates that were conveniently placed in each room. The phone jacks are all connected by flexible pipe to a central utility box in the laundry/changing room. The utility box doesn’t have any power nearby, so I installed a PoE ethernet hub.
Nah, you’ll be fine. Are there already conduits you can use?
Ethernet doesn’t requires anything, it’s not linked to your breaker so it’s fine.
If you have a guy coming, maybe you could ask him to put in conduits for you? or draw a pulling wire for when you wanna run the cables.
I ran ethernet in my home last year (3 rooms connected, 3 to go) and not having conduit for some is a hassle.
I’d recommend putting in CAT6 cabling, as it supports 10Gbps and is not a hassle to terminate. 6a and up are better but easy to fuck up at the outlet. 5e is just too old imo considering the price of 6
If you’re in Tokyo I have 30m or so of wire-pulling cable or ‘fish-tape’ or whatever it’s called. I ran ether cable all through my rental house as well. Was super easy. You can have mine.
Man looking at this thread makes me wish I have the know-how to do this in my own home.
I am happy that me and my family got our own home here in Gifu and no longer have to put up with an apartment, but there is no ethernet port on the second floor and I have to rely on spotty WiFi while working from home.
Have been considering asking an electrician to take a look if they can add ports but Im afraid of the costs
Buy a roll of 200m and keep it around for the future
Another tip is the area above the bath is a good place for the cables to meet and to hide a switch.
I’m a bit out of date wrt. modern ethernet cables, back when the world used Cat5, there were separate “hard” (bendy, but keep shape) cables for permanent installations and RJ45 sockets with self-crimping pins for each wire. Dragging these cables through pipes was kinda hard. And if you don’t have cable pipes, well, I would not recommend that.
I doubt that system can do 1Gpbs or 10Gpbs, so maybe the cables and sockets are different now.
A mate of mine had their house wired by the developer, 10/100 at the time, one box and sockets in every room; and guess what, only 5 years later he switched to wifi within the house, because 10/100 got old and most devices got portable.
Then again, sometimes you just need at least 1 cable. A relative of mine has the terminal in an inconvenient place, let’s say the corner of the house, and wifi just doesn’t really reach to the opposite corner, even with wifi repeaters. They can browse everywhere, but have to go upstairs to make video calls. I guess every house is different.
Edit: come to think of it, my office uses fiber optic cables (soft-ish, but there’s minimum bend radius on these still) for this purpose. The key word is 10GBASE-SR. I hear the price difference is not that huge.
Dangit, I don’t have any awards, but when there’s one, I’ll think of you!
Mostly because I admire you for buying a home you want here, and having plenty of DIY experience!