Data Cabling - who does it themselves

[Oaktech]

As many others have said, we do small runs and minor modifications, but we leave the big stuff, cabinet hangs and fibre to external contractors, mainly because it's easier and we don't really have time (or in the case of fibre, the gear.)

[Boredguy]

I've got over 60 new runs to install all over the site this year as we replace our WiFi. Now that's going to be fun, I just can't decide if I will double up the cables ready for AC in the future.

[southhamster]

Worth getting a copy of the 17th edition onsite guide as it has a lot of useful info. Useful for planning installs and check ing sparkies work. My pet hate is seeing network cables shoved into trunking and with no separation barrier. Grrr.

[Oaktech]

Worth getting a copy of the 17th edition onsite guide as it has a lot of useful info. Useful for planning installs and check ing sparkies work. My pet hate is seeing network cables shoved into trunking and with no separation barrier. Grrr.

 

Yup... I spat my dummy out a while ago, we had some guys come in to add an extension to the fire alarm (which is low voltage according to the regs) but the cable is capable of taking full mains, they just jumped between our data containment and surface clipped and the mains trunking. I ended up in a meeting with the boss of their company, our site manager, our site sparks literally jabbing my finger into the page about separating low and high voltage cables and explaining to them that I really didn't want 240v up my switches, PCs or users. They re-did loads of it and we haven't seen them since.

[john]

Yup... I spat my dummy out a while ago, we had some guys come in to add an extension to the fire alarm (which is low voltage according to the regs) but the cable is capable of taking full mains, they just jumped between our data containment and surface clipped and the mains trunking. I ended up in a meeting with the boss of their company, our site manager, our site sparks literally jabbing my finger into the page about separating low and high voltage cables and explaining to them that I really didn't want 240v up my switches, PCs or users. They re-did loads of it and we haven't seen them since.

 

I had that joy in the refurb found my data trunking full of fire cable and I got rather arsey over it as it had space left to allow it not to be squashed and also for our next phase... needless to say the LV/HV argument came up so I threw in that fire cable has a tone on it which I didn't think would be good in with data and to prove it held a tone tool to a call-point and the purring pulsing tone was heard. In the end they removed about 95% of it from containment as it came down to X said I could use it, but when X was asked they were no way I'd never say that etc... I had mentioned before talking to X that if they didn't remove it I was chopping it out of the containment I fitted which also helped move them quickly.

[m25man]

Does it have to be ZS0H if its a patch cable going from a network port in the room up some trunking and along the top of the ceiling tiles to a AP

 

LSOH is recommended anywhere it becomes concealed eg. out of sight or where occupied for obvious reasons.

This may be stipulated in the building or zone regulations.

Edited March 1, 2014 by m25man

[IWDave]

We tend to get people in to do ours; some of it is done in house, but only short halls; fibre runs are again done by 3rd parties.