| The basic connector package for the kitchen organizing center wall plate: one voice and one data connection, plus any other voice connections in the home. |
These days the kitchen is always a central focus for technology. Regardless of whether a desktop or laptop computer will be used by the home buyer, the wall plate in the kitchen organizing center should accommodate one voice line and a data line. This is the bare minimum, agree Rob Pigg of J.F. Shea and Mark Flagg of Estridge Communities.
But system integrator Steve Hayes, a past president of the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association and owner of Custom Electronics Inc. in Falmouth, Maine, argues in favor of also running two video cables — one with a computer-friendly S-connector and another with a single-pin screw connector.
| The better package for the kitchen organizing center wall plate: a connection for each voice line, a Cat5E data-only connection and two RG-6 jacks. |
The video feeds, Hayes says, accommodate a host of applications available today. Most new computers come with software that enables cheap videoconferencing via high-speed broadband Internet connections. Also, voice-over Internet Protocol telephones are now available for business use and soon will come to the home — first to the home office and then to the kitchen. That said, the benefits of these connections to the average production home buyer are marginal at best, which is why Shea Homes chooses to keep it as simple as possible, Pigg says.
“We’ll just wire the kitchen with the Category 5 wiring,” he says. “Then we will trim that out with a voice outlet as standard, but we would have the opportunity to go up from that to a data and voice outlet. We are not suggesting that you need to run more than that to the kitchen.”
