Very few commercial low voltage wiring contractors are willing to run ethernet cable in a residential house. None of the wiring guys I know will do it.
The reason is drywall. In the commercial sphere you need a wiring guy, a drywall guy and a painter. In residential sphere you need a guy that does all 3 of those things well enough to get by. Basically you need a "handyman" There's literally no money in it. The one time I agreed to do one of those jobs it was a 3 million dollar house and I had to run an ethernet cable 6 feet up inside an exterior wall that already had an ethernet jack on it to go to a camera. Sounds simple. It took 6 hours. There was a mahogany wainscoting, and a horizontal 2x4 halfway up inside the wall. The job looked perfect when I finished but I had spent 4 hours standing on a slanted roof, and had to buy a bunch of stuff besides the ethernet cabling and ethernet fittings including paint and sealer. And it was a job that literally there was no room for error, and I was drilling blind into a wooden siding wall that would not have tolerated any mistakes. At least an hour was spent measuring and fishtaping and whatever else to even get a guess done properly of where to cut. I did guess properly, fortunately. My advice is if the quote is under 1k pull the trigger on it. Or, run it yourself but then you have to have the carpentry skills. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Galen Seitz Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2025 11:25 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: [PLUG] LV wiring recommendations? Hi, I'd like to have some ethernet runs installed in my house. Does anyone have any recommendations for a contractor? I've gotten a quote from PDX Hardware, but I'd like to get at least one or two more. thanks, galen -- Galen Seitz [email protected]
