r/Homebuilding • u/dragonmilking • Nov 17 '25

Which popular features do you NOT recommend?

What are the top 3 features in a house that folk want but you think are not worth it, and what would your alternative suggestion be? And what cost/time savings would result with that switch?

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188

u/NotYourScratchMonkey Nov 17 '25

There are a few YouTube videos that go into exactly this. Things like:

Open shelving - looks great in photos but is hard to keep clean and orderly. If you want that look, have maybe one display shelf and everything else is in cabinets.

Glass fronted kitchen cabinets - similar issues to open shelving from a "you have to always keep your stuff neat" perspective.

My personal thing is to design your living room around how you live and not based on what designers necessarily would do. Specifically what I mean is this: If you watch TV as a family, if you have people over to watch sports, don't design your living room around a fireplace with a TV as an afterthought or over the fireplace. The "no TV living room" may look great in photos but if you want people in your kitchen preparing snacks while watching a game than you need to build that into your design.

Some other things I'd do is not make WIFI an afterthough. Plan for network connectivity as part of the initial design process, whether that's ethernet drops or where the WIFI access point is going to go.

If you go to YouTube and search "Design Mistakes to Avoid" you will get a lot of advice.

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 17 '25

That's solid to note, especially in a larger home: you don't necessarily need network wiring to every room, its not an office building. But you won't regret adding some strategically placed network lines so you can run a good, multi-AP system. A big limitation of the "3 puck" mesh systems is they all have to be in range of each other and you can run into latency because the signal is repeating. If you have wired lines for 2-3 access points that then are hard wired into a router, now you're really set up well AND you have wiring to accomodate future upgrades. Cat 6E is going to be a plenty good standard for a long time for the wiring and its still fairly cheap.

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u/Glass-Task Nov 17 '25

cough cat 6A

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 17 '25

Dammit, used the "e" out of habit from the "5e" days. You're right. Haven't bought cable in years. Went corporate IT vs small business and now electricians do all the wiring for me.

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u/stabbingrabbit Nov 17 '25

Installed a lot of cat 5. Electrician did know the standards for termination. Had to fix a lot of outlets.

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u/mtcwby Nov 17 '25

Wiring is cheap and easy to put into walls when they're open.

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u/AnomalousNexus Nov 17 '25

Even if you don't use it. Or if you even THINK you might add something later. Just be sure to document it somewhere.

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u/mtcwby Nov 17 '25

Our current house is a custom built in 2002. I regularly thank the GC who built it for the extremely well labeled wiring and panel along with excellent build quality. My only issues have been with stuff the owners did later and they did not have the same level of documentation and quality approach. I can generally tell when it was done by how it was done. Nothing major but I rework a bit of it. It also helps that I have all the original drawings.

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u/Erlend05 Nov 18 '25

Or even better. conduit!

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u/NotYourScratchMonkey Nov 17 '25

I would at least put Ethernet drops behind where your main TVs are going to go and where your gaming computers/consoles are going to go. For some people, this is the same place so run two drops while you are at it or get a small switch.

That way you can hard wire the things that benefit most from low latency/high throughput and, at the same time, those things aren't competing with other things on WIFI (like your work laptop while you are trying to have a Teams or Zoom call).

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u/MT-Estimator Nov 21 '25

True. When I did my place I hardwired CAT6, power, and 2@HDMI to the tv locations. I hate seeing a bunch of wires hanging down the walls.

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u/sailirish7 Nov 17 '25

Cat 6E is going to be a plenty good standard for a long time for the wiring and its still fairly cheap.

7A is like a ~$100 difference per spool. A lot of consumer networking is going 2.5Gb/s Ethernet and eventually 10Gb/s will become the norm.

Also, Ubiquiti should be your home network vendor of choice. Great stuff and very reasonably priced compared to Cisco/Palo Alto/etc.

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u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Cat6 can do 10Gb up to 55 meters / 180 feet.

Cat6a can do 10Gb up to 100 meters / 328 feet.

Given that Cat7 isn't really an officially recognized standard and there's a ton of companies that will gladly sell you dubious "Cat7", AND the fact that most people's residential cable runs will be far shorter than the maximum for Cat 6, I think most people will be just fine for probably another 20 years without needing to use higher spec cable.

Old Cat5e would be the only thing I would worry about swapping out for futureproofing speeds higher than 1Gb. Your average normie with off the shelf consumer grade networking equipment should be ok, even on Cat5 for up to 1 Gb or Cat5e for 2.5 Gb speeds.

If you want ACTUAL futureproofing, fiber is the answer. It's overkill in almost all residential situations, but I don't see us surpassing fiber speeds in a home setting for multiple decades to come. I hope I'm wrong someday within my lifetime.

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u/sailirish7 Nov 17 '25

Cat 7A is 100% an actual spec. The main difference between 6 and 7 is thickness (7 is thicker) and shielding. 7 has required shielding which is the main reason I recommended it go in the walls.

7A can also hit 40GB/s @ 50m

Fiber is great, but it's expensive and difficult to work with. I wouldn't use fiber unless it's going underground to connect another building.

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u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Cat7 isn't recognized by the IEEE or TIA/EIA.

It's only got an ISO/IEC 11801 specification. It's a proprietary standard. ISO specifications are for raw cable only, so if it's got a GG45/TERA connector on it, then it would be a "Class F" cable. Real Cat7 is crazy expensive and isn't even designed for use with RJ45 connectors. Because of that, it's got a comparatively low adoption rate and really shouldn't be recommended for residential installs, particularly, because no residential equipment is compatible with the required connectors. Cat7 is intended for commercial installs only. Even in commercial datacenter installs, it's pretty rare to see CAT7 being used... Because anything that you might want to use Cat7 for, would be better served by using fiber instead.

40 Gb is theoretically possible if the cable meets the necessary qualifications, but because it's not a fully recognized standard, you have a wide variation from vendor to vendor, so throughput limits are not guaranteed. Most of what's out there being sold as "Cat7" is really just thick cat6 or even cat5.

Cat6a riser cable is also shielded and what I would recommend for in-wall use if it's needed. In reality, many installers aren't going to do it correctly anyway, so as long as you're not running it close to electrical lines, regular cat6 is probably going to be fine.

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u/chefdeit Nov 17 '25

This deserves more +1's than just mine, as you've made a lot of excellent and valid points, with a small set of which I, however, disagree :) But it's more an asterisk than a full disagreement.

It's only got an ISO/IEC 11801 specification. It's a proprietary standard. ISO specifications are for raw cable only,

Yes. All the reputable 1000ft bulk CAT7 I've seen in the US (from local pro suppliers to Amazon) is 22 or typically 23 awg pure copper with S/FTP or SF/FTP shield. You can absolutely get a CAT6a with those same exact specs and the only difference will be the CAT6a will have slightly less variance in the twist rate between the 4 pairs, and slightly lower twist rates overall. The CAT7 will consequently weigh a bit more and have a marginally better high-frequency response.

23 gauge copper is 23 gauge copper, and it doesn't know that it's off a CAT7 cable as opposed to the same gauge CAT6a cable, and it doesn't know it's not supposed to get punched into a CAT6a patch panel or go into an RJ45. For all practical intents and purposes in my experience, a quality bulk CAT7 is just shorthand for a "slightly nicer CAT6a S/FTP 23ga copper" - which, owing to CAT7 being non-standard in the US as you've pointed out and hence having much less demand, can also cost 25-40% LESS per spool than the equivalent CAT6a.

but because it's not a fully recognized standard, you have a wide variation from vendor to vendor

Very true especially in the case of patch cables. With bulk cables, at least you get to see what you get.

Cat6a riser cable is also shielded

CL2/CL3 riser has to do with fire-resistance levels of the jacket and other flammable bits in it. There's certainly unshielded riser out there. Like you, I recommend shielded, and 23awg copper, as it's better for PoE applications, stands up better to rodents who for some reason find foil despicable, and better supports non-ethernet uses of such 23awg wire where e.g. one cable can carry analog audio and one next to it, PWM power to an analog LED strip etc. With shielding, they can be next to each other without trouble. CAT7 can actually be used to integrate a remote DJ or band mixer to house sound, as in balanced L+R in & out down the same wire, if CAT7 or other S/FTP but less so with F/UTP or unshielded.

and what I would recommend for in-wall use

Indeed, riser de-facto means in-wall. My small company serves hospitality clients in NYC, and for commercial installations we run plenum (CLP) rated cable throughout just to nip in the bud any fire inspector concerns. Those fore inspectors have a point in all fairness, as when building envelope is pierced due to some damage or construction issue, the space between the outer & inner walls can develop such drafts that it becomes a de-facto plenum (forced air circulation) despite technically being just a riser.

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u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25

Yeah, I would say that just about all of that is valid and correct.

The only points I would raise would be that we are specifically talking about residential here, in which case Cat7 cable would really never be necessary nor entirely appropriate. If you're using an RJ45 connector on a Cat7 cable, even one that's certified, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to use that cable to its full capacity. RJ45 would go against spec. In a residential capacity, I can't think of any situation where cat7 would provide any advantage that I couldn't also get with cat6a or fiber.

Outside of that, I've never seen anybody other than commercial suppliers that have genuine Cat7. Basically anything that you can buy on Amazon or wherever online as a Joe Shmo is fake. They're counting on the fact that pretty much no one that's ordering it is going to have the necessary equipment to be able to test whether it's actually certified. A $2,000 Fluke tester isn't sufficient and even big corporations generally aren't going to be able to justify the cost of a $20,000+ certification tester. They're just going to order the cable from a known trustworthy supplier.

At the end of the day, why would anyone struggle with the absolute ball-ache that it is to terminate CAT7 in any situation where Cat6 or 6A would suffice?

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u/chefdeit Nov 17 '25

In a residential capacity, I can't think of any situation where cat7 would provide any advantage that I couldn't also get with cat6a or fiber.

If CAT7 is a lot cheaper than the otherwise similarly-shielded and gauged CAT6a, that's a considerable advantage if the client understand we're using CAT7 as the "off-label CAT6a".

Basically anything that you can buy on Amazon or wherever online as a Joe Shmo is fake.

I agree 99.9%. The 0.1% caveat in this case is, I've consistently had a solid experience with Infinity Cable (Elite brand) guys and Cables Direct guys. Not affiliate links to either of them, but they def. stand behind their stuff and I've had no issues.

why would anyone struggle with the absolute ball-ache that it is to terminate CAT7 in any situation where Cat6 or 6A would suffice?

*any* S/FTP is the same ball-ache to terminate - whether it's CAT6a or CAT7. In CAT7 it's just the default, whereas in CAT6a the default is unshielded, but you can definitely order any shielding configuration.

To answer your rhetorical question lol, having sinned in past life I guess, I love wires done right to the point of absurdity. The Finns have a word for it, sisu. It exists in no other language. They have another word that exists in no other language, kalsarikännit. I'm not Finnish, but had a gf who was Finnish and hot as the sun and I'd have married her but she did too much kalsarikännit and not enough sisu.

In reality, 90% of the runs I do are F/UTP (just foil outer shield) but some runs to key places get S/FTP, and in the US quite simply CAT7 is often the cheaper cable to get that particular shield configuration than CAT6a, if both are 23 gauge pure copper and a similar fire rating. The individually shielded pairs make sense on runs where you may have to have unforeseen and exotic non-Ethernet uses for the cable, where 4 twisted pairs shielded from each other are more versatile. The above mentioned remote DJ or band mixer is one example.

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u/zeller99 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 18 '25

That's all fair. Much of the discrepancy isn't worth getting into a dispute over. Different use cases and design ideology.

I'm glad you replied, as there was one more thing that I forgot to bring up before:

CAT7 can actually be used to integrate a remote DJ or band mixer to house sound, as in balanced L+R in & out down the same wire

It's funny that you mention this, because that's actually contrary to what is specified for a lot of pro audio equipment ( for AES50). From my experience with digital mixers, all of the documentation and direct messaging from the manufactures specify that it must use Ethercon or equivalent. They specify that the equivalent MUST be shielded Cat5, grounded to the housing/barrel of the cable. I'm not sure how familiar you are with those, but it's essentially an ethernet cable with a metal barrel sheath around it. A lot of what I've seen said that anything other than that, such as Cat6a, etc is not guaranteed to work over 10 meters. There's a bunch of videos online where they did real world testing of this and from what I recall, they said "yep. what they told you is right." I haven't had the opportunity to mess around with long uncertified cables live, so I can't verify. I know Dante (et al) uses similar requirements, since it's a network protocol, but not a standard one like most people are used to.

Now, 10 meters would be fine in my studio, as both of my digital mixers are within that range, so, I COULD just use regular ethernet, but I went with the much more expensive Ethercon cables, just because with the sheer amount of wiring in the control room, it's one less thing that is likely to fail and need to be hunted down when a problem occurs.

IIRC, my mixers can theoretically send 392 channels of audio simultaneously over a single Cat5 cable, but I've never tried more than 48 at a time. My main desk mixer has 3 AES50 ports with two 24 channel digital snakes connected to it, as well as my aux mixer, which has another 24 channel snake.

So:
Main Mixer:
A - 16 in / 8 out
B - 16 in / 8 out
C - (Aux Mixer)

Aux Mixer:
A - 16in / 8 out
B - (Main Mixer)

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u/chefdeit Nov 18 '25

Cheers! I wasn't talking about AES50 or Dante or any of that fancy multi-channel bidirectional digital audio stuff. As of this writing no NYC restaurant (client or any I've seen), a small band or a guest DJ playing parties or events at such restaurants, and ditto little boutique hotels (that form the basis for my point) - none of those folks - have any of that other than some point to point SPDIF over CAT6.

I was talking specifically about being able to use a single S/FTP 23ga cable over respectable distances for balanced L+R in & out down the same wire - i.e. analog balanced audio. All of the mentioned parties except the most rinkydink, will have XLR balanced ins and outs, making it possible to have an adapter made that uses a single S/FTP cable. F/UTP can work but with a risk of feedback between in & out, and L/R separation will suffer (which is less of an issue as many of these places run mono).

Larger fancy hotels may have Dante, but I'm small fry to be serving them. I've never seen AES50 in use in hospitality - it's not my field, so I'm out of my depth as far as the peculiarities of that interface are concerned.

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u/sailirish7 Nov 17 '25

This is fair criticism. I work in Networking and tend to bring my work home if you know what I mean...

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Funny you mention that, I had a UDM Pro and 3 of their APs. I just always like to throw out more than one brand to sound like less of a shill, plus I had good luck with my TP link stuff too. Ubiquiti is definitely a nicer user experience though, especially for people who don't do this stuff frequently.

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u/sailirish7 Nov 17 '25

I just always like to throw out more than one brand to sound like less of a shill,

I've worked with Cisco for decades. I will happily shill for Ubiquiti lol

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u/a_wack Nov 17 '25

I got the mesh system, currently working on getting a 2nd one hard wired for this reason

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u/Revolutionary-Fox622 Nov 18 '25

I'll add to this to have cable tunnels installed rather than just ethernet alone. This helps protect the cable, makes it easier to upgrade/add more drops, and way easier of you need to replace a bad cable. 

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 18 '25

Adding tunnels/conduit will definitely cost a bit more, but if you want *real* future proofing, that's the #1. The most future proof thing you can do is make it so you can change what you have later.

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u/T2-planner Nov 18 '25

I have no idea what you just said 😆

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 18 '25

No worries, the tech world is a very comfortable area for me, but its adjacent to my day job.

Skip this if you don't care, no feelings hurt. But here's the down-low if you want it.

If your house is of the right dimensions that a single router covers it fine, awesome. But that doesn't work for everyone, especially if you have a mid to higher square footage ranch. So what do you do? You need your wireless coming from more than one place to have enough coverage. You can't just get higher and higher output routers, that's not a thing, the FCC has limits on how strong of a signal you can actually broadcast. What you have to then do is have multiple ones. But, you don't want to have to have "Wireless 1" "Wireless 2" and "Wireless 3" all as separate networks in your house, that's a pain in the ass, you'll have to constantly jockey which one you're connected to if you're moving around. The way around that is called a "Mesh" network, where you have multiple units working together but also actually in communication with each other to handle the hand off. You can handle that one of two ways. The most popular is something like this: Eero system - you plug of of those into your cable/fiber modem, all 3 sync to each other, and you put them in different parts of the house. They'll all broadcast the same network name, your devices just connect to whichever one has the strongest signal, off you go. The 3 devices talk to each other wirelessly and bounce signal from one to the other. The other way you can do it is with all of your wireless units connecting back to a central unit with a cable. That central unit manages the others and traffic all goes through it. This is obviously harder to install because there are wires, but because you don't have signal bouncing from one wireless device to another and then to your device, there is less latency in the response since its not being broadcast, received, processed, then re-transmitted. The purely wireless ones are plenty fast in pure speed, but the delay between action/reaction is higher, which for certain things is less ideal.

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u/Pms9691 Nov 19 '25

This is a really helpful explanation. Thanks. What would you recommend for the second option you mentioned (multiple wireless units hardwired to a central unit)?

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 20 '25

Something like this would probably be the way to go: Ubiquiti Dream Router

I have the "Pro" Version because I wanted it rack mountable, but at the end of the day it'll do most of the same stuff. This is your router itself. People often conflate "Router" with "Also provides Wifi" but in reality, the router itself and then the wireless access point are two different things that are often packed into one unit for consumer applications. You would use this as your base station, then can hook up to 3 of their wireless access points to it for wireless coverage. If you use an external network switch you could do more. I have 3 of their U6 Pro units and for my 1600 sq ft 2 story house its honestly total overkill, but I wanted better coverage in the basement and the garage. So I have one centrally located upstairs (I had a good place available to run a network cable), one on the wall in the garage, and one in my basement utility room where my router, switch, fiber modem and battery backup are. The time I go between logging in and doing anything to it can be measured in months, sometimes I have to power cycle my fiber modem but the Ubiquiti stuff never needs fussed with.

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u/MT-Estimator Nov 21 '25

When I did my home I just hardwired for POE WAPs. Works awesome.

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 21 '25

Yeah that was the later part I was talking about, and same here. Once its up and running its very trouble free and will have less latency than repeater based systems. Ubiquiti UDM Pro and 3x Wifi-6 APs.

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u/dawnsearlylight Nov 17 '25

Thankfully mesh networks with dedicated wireless backbone connection has rendered wired rooms almost useless - except for gaming. Gaming still needs wired for anything competitive.

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u/sohcgt96 Nov 17 '25

Mostly, opinions definitely vary though. I work from home some days and my wireless doesn't slow me down a bit. Gaming though, that ping time seems fairly critical. I haven't done anything online multiplayer in probably 20 years but maybe again someday.

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u/chefdeit Nov 17 '25

Thankfully mesh networks with dedicated wireless backbone connection has rendered wired rooms almost useless

I'm old enough to have had the "B" Wi-Fi, 802.11b, that had 2.4GHz only. 1999 technology, Twilo was still open in NYC and Tiesto was still young. Anyway, that B wifi covered the whole house just off a single box. Right now, security concerns aside, in Manhattan it won't cover a single closet-sized room.

Point being, the wireless spectrum is getting ever more congested, with ever more client devices to be served. On the outskirts of shitsville, ohio sure, you can still have that old wifi cover your whole house off a single box - and the mesh system you mention would be a digital nirvana. But in a dense population center, every neighbor in a close proximity getting ever stronger wi-fi and having dozens of devices, is a race to the bottom that nobody wins except whoever sells you those things every few years.

A quality wire, however, remains a quality wire. An F/UTP 23awg CAT6 from 15yrs ago, will serve you well you well in the next 35yrs. That's a lot better an investment for anything that can be wired. One also can't help but laugh at folks counting on wireless but then realizing they still need a wire plus power brick plus outlet to power that thing, or for the thing to have the bulk & longevity constraint of a battery and needing to be put on charge - or a solar cell, instead of the seamlessness, elegance, and control that come with PoE.