Planning IT in a New Build: Why the Electrician Alone Won't Cut It

The electrician runs power, light and sockets. That's their job. But a network is not a power circuit. Mix the two up and you'll only notice once the house is finished and the wifi drops out in the guest room.

The issue is timing. While the walls are open, every cable run is a matter of minutes. Afterwards, it's a matter of chisel, plaster and painter.

Why conduits are the cheapest insurance in the whole build

Let's use numbers. The following figures come from German trade and advice sources and serve as a benchmark – real prices on Mallorca differ, because of labour, material availability and the hardness of the stone, and are not documented here.

Laying a conduit during the shell phase adds around 2–5 €/m. Pulling the same conduit in later runs 20–30 €/m. If the wall has to be cut and chiselled for it, that's 20–60 €/m. That's the factor of 4 to 10 – for exactly the same run.

An example makes it concrete: retrofitting fibre without an existing conduit costs around 1,500 € with cutting, plaster and paint. With the conduit already in place, you pull the cable in half an hour.

The principle holds for any build – finca, villa, office building or industrial hall. Where a conduit is missing in the shell, someone chisels later.

How many outlets, and why double sockets

The standard sets a direction. For residential builds, DIN 18015 recommends at least one multimedia connection per 3.75 m of room perimeter, evenly distributed. The same idea sits behind structured cabling under EN 50173 / ISO/IEC 11801: place enough connection points so that no re-cabling is needed later.

In practice that means double sockets at every important spot – TV, workstation, games console, connected devices. A second port costs next to nothing in the shell phase. Without it, a small switch ends up dangling visibly on the wall.

Why the tech room's location decides your cable length

Copper has a hard limit. An Ethernet cable carries a maximum of 100 m, of which 90 m is fixed cabling and 10 m patch cable. At 10 Gbit/s over Cat6 that drops to 55 m. Beyond that, only fibre helps.

On a sprawling finca that limit comes fast: from the main house to the guest house, the pool, the gate, the outbuilding. Copper breaks down past 90 m. So an outdoor conduit between the buildings belongs in the shell planning – or fibre from the start. Retrofitting means digging.

That's why the tech room goes where it keeps the longest run in range, not where there happens to be space.

The tech room: heat is the silent enemy

IT gear wants it cool and constant: 18–27 °C, around the clock. A network cabinet runs best at 25–30 °C. Above that, it needs active cooling.

The most common mistake is the cabinet in the boiler or utility room. Heat builds up there, and so does humidity – and electronics tolerate humidity even worse than heat. A cabinet generates around 10 °C above the surrounding air. Put it somewhere warm and you've put it somewhere bad.

Fix the location early and you can plan two core drillings for supply and exhaust air, instead of retrofitting a split unit later. With Mallorca's hot summers, that's no side issue.

Why Mallorca has its own rules

Two things differ from Germany here.

First, the construction. Marés sandstone and thick solid walls attenuate radio signals considerably – carrying wifi through a traditional finca on radio alone is, in our experience, unrealistic. Wired access points are a must, and for that you need conduits. (There is no measured dB figure for Marés; this is field experience, not a lab value.)

Second, the power supply. Mallorca reports repeated power cuts and voltage fluctuations in 2025 and 2026, according to reports due to overloaded and ageing grids. Those reports mainly concern the city and the coast; for remote fincas it's plausible but not expressly documented. Planning consequence: give UPS, surge protection and clean earthing more weight.

Law: the ICT project and camera position

Spanish standards apply on Mallorca, not the German DIN. For new builds and major renovations under the "propiedad horizontal" regime, an ICT project (Infraestructura Común de Telecomunicaciones, RD 346/2011) is mandatory and must be submitted to the Ayuntamiento together with the architectural project for the building permit. The tech room is called a RITU here. The standard size is 2000 × 1000 × 500 mm; for smaller properties without common areas (up to 5 units), a reduced format of 100 × 50 × 30 cm is permitted.

The ICT is its own trade. Quietly leave it to the electrician and the building permit can stall.

And the cameras. Video surveillance falls under LOPDGDD (LO 3/2018) and the GDPR, supervised by the AEPD. Public space must not, in principle, be captured – no pavement, no neighbouring property, only a minimal strip at your own entrance where technically unavoidable. A warning sign and naming of the data controller are mandatory, and fines typically run 300–30,000 €. That's why the camera position is set before the PoE lines go in, not after.

This article gives an overview and does not replace legal or tax advice. Have the rules mentioned here checked by professionals for your specific project.

The practical takeaway

Bring in IT planning when the architect plans – not when the plasterer arrives. Everything here costs little in the shell phase and a multiple later. It's not a matter of taste, but of sequence.

IT Service Mallorca

German-speaking IT service for fincas, villas and businesses on Mallorca. Networks, Wi-Fi, security technology and smart home — planned, installed and maintained.