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I am having a house built and am paying to have a contractor run low voltage conduit from every room in the house to a home network closet under the basement stairs. In an attempt to cut back on cost I am wondering if it is reasonable to have him only run one conduit to areas where the room will be back to back on the same wall, and what the pro's and con's would be. The contractor charges $50 / 1" internal diameter conduit run.

I will need to be able to run at least 3 cables to each room (2 Cat6 Ethernet, 1 RG6 Coax), for a total of 6 if using a shared conduit. From my research so far, it seems I should be able to fit everything through with the 1" conduit.

The left image below shows an example of what I am considering. Doing it this way would save up to 5 runs in the home. The right image would be the alternative if what I am wanting to do is not reasonable.

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person0
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  • You don't want right angle joints in your conduit. The minimum bend radius for cat6 is 1 inch. See [Bend Radius | Comms InfoZone](https://www.comms-express.com/infozone/article/bend-radius/) – DavidPostill Jun 09 '18 at 20:28
  • @DavidPostill There won't really be any true right angle joints, it was just easier to draw it like that. The conduit is flexible pvc conduit. However, there will be twists and turns all over as I will be going from a closet on one end of the home over, and then up to the highest exterior wall for POE cameras. – person0 Jun 09 '18 at 20:40
  • What are the walls constructed of, and do you have easy access to the ceiling cavity (and if so, is there second story above the cables? – davidgo Jun 10 '18 at 10:30
  • @davidgo the walls are 2x4 and OSB. I will have 'easy' access to all first floor rooms from the unfinished basement. The areas I will not be able to access easily are the two 2nd floor rooms, the garage, and the 5 corner points where future POE cameras would be installed. – person0 Jun 10 '18 at 15:45

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In addition to widening out the bends as recommended by DavidPostill, You should be able to fit all of that into a 1" conduit, so long as you're not using excessively large diameter cable (shielded, reinforced, etc.) and you don't plan on adding any more cables to that conduit at a later date. You may want to invest in cable lubricant though as the bends may be difficult to go through. I once managed to squeeze 6x reinforced CAT6 into a 3/4" conduit with just one 90 degree bend, but it was not pleasant even with cable lube.

As far as needing a single conduit per room versus per shared wall, I really don't see any issue with two rooms sharing the same conduit, assuming the conduit just opens up into the wall cavity. You may be able go convince your contractor to give you a small discount on the second conduit though since they are parallel, but it probably won't be significant.

Also, your contractor should know this, but make sure they don't have more than 360 degrees worth of bends in a single stretch of conduit without putting in a junction box.

Matt E
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  • How would the junction box be helpful? Pull everything to the box and then once you've pulled through enough 'slack' for the remaining run finish out via the continuation after the junction? – person0 Jun 10 '18 at 18:45
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    Yes, it's a matter of friction. The more bends you have the more friction there is on the cable and it becomes much harder to pull. Pulling through 6x 90 degree bends in one go would be impossible, you'd likely damage the cable even if you could physically pull it. You don't necessarily have to pull all of the slack through, just pull a few feet out, then feed it into the next conduit, rinse and repeat. – Matt E Jun 10 '18 at 19:24