Cat6 to every room, camera position, door and the garage – plate locations set with the architect, run before the drywall, tested and certified after it.
Cabling sits in one stage of the build, between electrical rough-in and insulation. The walk that sets plate locations happens earlier than that.
Cable costs almost nothing until the drywall is up
A run to the corner of the porch is a few dollars of cable and twenty minutes while the studs are exposed. The same run afterwards means opening a finished ceiling.
The decision is not which camera or which access point. It is whether a path exists to the places those things will eventually go.
Pulling cable to positions nobody has specified yet is the cheapest part of the whole build, and the only part that cannot be revisited.
Where to go next
What the runs are there to carry
Cable is not the point; what lands on it is. These are the systems the rough-in is sized for.
After the framing, mechanical, electrical and plumbing rough-in, and before insulation and drywall. The walk that sets plate locations happens earlier, while the drawings can still absorb a change.
Both. The builder or GC owns the rough-in window and the site schedule; plate locations, camera positions and where the panel lives come from the owner and the architect.
Yes. The camera position is an architectural decision – sightline, mounting height, which way the light falls at four in the afternoon. A run to the corner of the porch works for whatever ends up on it.
Wireless still lands on a wire. Every access point is a cabled run to a specific ceiling or wall, and where those runs went is usually the difference between coverage that works and coverage that does not.
Conduit and pull strings go out to them while the ground is open and the trenching equipment is on site. Nothing has to be specified yet for the path to exist.
