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Comment by matthewaveryusa | Hacker News Reader

What we really need are architects that add chases throughout the house so that you can add any matter of cable you want, be that electrical, plumbing, cable, fiber or cat.

I have a chase in the middle of my house which used to be a chimney for a now decommissioned oil burner. I have all matter of cables going through there now, including, but not limited to two cat cables that provide ethernet to my attic and second floor. Not sure I would have been able to DIY it without that chase.

If each house had a couple of these chases that would provide a ton of flexibility in terms of remodeling.

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Yep. This kind of forethought is rare in home design, but magical when present. It doesn’t sell, though (not like the latest color or cabinets do).

I put thought into long term maintenance and upgrades for my current house and for the first few years got nothing from it. As I’ve had to do repairs recently I’ve saved literally thousands of dollars because the wires, pipes, conduits and fittings are all easily accessible.

Similar thought with boats, you don’t appreciate how valuable maintenance ease is until YOU have to do it.

Yes, exactly this. Although, fire codes do create a requirement here. You have to be sure not to create places where fire can propagate. And please use plenum-rated cables (fire retardant sheath). If you have punched holes in your old chimney in order to pass cables in and out, I'd do a fire propagation audit and mitigate any problems that you find.

40 years ago, the U of Minnesota built a new Elec Engg building. As I remember it, every single office for faculty and grad students, as well as every lab, backed up to a secure 6-foot wide hallway that was built specifically to be a cable chase. Brilliant idea. Experimenting with a new technology was a matter of changing out the access plate in the back wall of the office, and rounding up someone with a key to the hallway.

Dedicating a whole hallway sound like an extremely expensive accommodation for hypothetical use.

How does this work with IBC/IFC building code requirements to have a fire-stop between floors? Even assuming the conduit itself is correctly rated, you need to seal the interior while somehow still allowing future wiring to be added without the need to remove a wall.

I guess my point is: You'll fail inspection unless you're extremely careful. It isn't obvious how to add generic future conduit without fire-stops being a huge PITA (since the same thing stopping smoke/fire also stops you running cable).

Keep in mind new construction is held to a higher standard (newer version of IBC/IFC) than grandfathering into existing building.

Rockwool

That won't pass inspection. Ignoring the fact that Rockwool isn't certified as a conduit fire-stop, you also cannot demonstrate its existence to a building inspector.

This is a hard/annoying problem to solve, "shove some insulation in the pipe" isn't in the ballpark of what a solution might look like.

Low voltage wire, to my understanding, does not in most / all US States require inspection or permits.

It's definitely 'encouraged' to put in fire stops and seal the holes you make but very few states in the US, if any, will stop you if you choose not to because they won't know.

There are plenty of easy to use commercial products for fire rated, reworkable cable penetrations. Unfortunately they are rather expensive so you'll want to minimize usage. There's also foam and plaster products that meet latest codes but they're not as friendly to rework (chip them out and replace).

I did what sokka mentioned. rockwool at both the top and bottom. The chimney is still present so there's a cast iron 4" pipe which is my conduit. When the previous owner decomissioned the oil tank they chopped the top and bottom of the chimney off and added caps at both ends and the roof was patched. All the cables go all the way through to the attic and I hit the second floor from the attic. Not sure it'll be to the liking of all inspectors but to me it's reasonable.

I believe if you build with SIP (structured insulated panels) you get these built in often - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfvjvDlVzLs

Saw an ICF house a decade ago where they did some thin channel mounted on the wall & they ran everything through there instead of cutting into the ICF. Can't remember how it worked with the dry wall.

Would be nice to see interior walls built with such a thing.

I've seen this done a couple of times, but somebody has to push for it.

In standard suburban construction, this will never happen. These developers will cheap out to save $15 on a ventilation fan, they aren't going to run anything extra if people aren't demanding it.

To a 1st approximation, nobody (in the buying public) knows or cares.

At the very least there should be conduit between every room in the house and the utility closet. Wi-Fi is a miracle of modern engineering, but it will never truly be able to compete with the speed and reliability afforded by a hard copper or fiber optic interlink.

Higher density housing can be extra frustrating. My single family home is in a community dense enough to require fireblock in the walls on upper floors, and it has made running my own ethernet an even bigger pain in the ass than usual.

absolutely.

when we had an electrician dig new chases to completely rewire the electricity in my grandparents apartment in a century old building, i asked him to add an additional pipe everywhere so that i could wire ethernet as well. every room got at least one or two, some more. the key thing was that even though we didn't use most of those extra pipes, adding them barely cost more than the material, because the work to dig the chases didn't change.

An architect will optimise for liveable space. Whoever pays them can choose less liveable space in exchange for a chase. Most normal house purchasers won´t go for it.

A chase doesn’t reduce living space, it may however compromise sound deadening between rooms.

Does an 8" chase have that much effect on livable space? Would 2980 sqft vs 2979 sqft make any difference to most buyers?

No, but it would add to build time and cost. And generally be one more thing to think about for the designer/builder and we know how that goes.

Why would you need to prioritize one over the other? Plumbing, electrical, etc already utilize the same spaces inside of walls and floors. No reason this couldn’t be done the same way without cutting down the living area at all.

From a spacial perspective you are right, of course.

Perhaps the tradeoff is that for any given house price, the time & money cost of planning and adding "hidden" features that buyers seldom think to prioritize, has to be offset by reductions in other value that buyers are more likely to notice. But, not necessarily space.

Sure, but space maximizing cost efficiency isn’t a major priority in most homes as otherwise they would all end up as boxes with simple roof lines and uniform exteriors. Clearly modern subdivisions simply don’t look like that.

I think most residential homes in the US aren’t the work of architects these days, but designers. The difference being credentials, not diligence/skill.

Either way I suspect they aren’t optimizing for living space, but salability and construction cost. That’s what buyers will actually use in decisions - ability to pay and perception of quality/value.

Idk wtf architects optimize for. Some sort of truisms about what buyers want and builder cost I think because a lot of houses are designed really poorly.

Generally high voltage ( electrical ) and low voltage ( network) should be in physically seperate conduit.

This is both for safety (heat as well as cable breaks) and for actual noise issues.

This is something that should be done by an engineering firm no an architect, the architect should know it needs to be contracted out though.

Most property just isn't built to those kinds of margins.

You might be able to do this for coax, fiber, Cat-N, or other low-voltage (or optical) communications lines, but code specifies minimum physical separation distances between gas, plumbing, sewer, and line voltage.

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