Wiring Cabinet

[CAPPER]

I want ot build a cabinet into the wall, between the studs (like a medicine cabinet).
This cabinet will house telephone wires, computer network wires, and cable TV wires.

Are there any electrical codes that I should be aware of?

I'm looking for ideas and suggestions.

[maxparot]

For electrical I'd put a metal Hoffman equipment cabinet into the wall

[jziegler]

I don't know that much about the electrical codes, but as far as I know, low voltage wiring in a house is not regulated by many codes. You can probably do pretty much what you want to, although the metal cabinet suggested might be nice. I have all of my similar wiring running to one place in teh basement, and it is much nicer than your typical TV splitters all over the place teh the installers do and phone lines running from one jack to the next. Good luck with it.

-Jim

[JimD]

I don't think there are codes - just potentially cranky service people from the phone and cable companies who may have to trouble shoot your work if something goes wrong.

I have a wireless computer network and do not see why anybody would want to wire a network these days. Cheap and simple to go wireless. In the office we have both and I can see no speed difference (but you want a "g" not the older "b" wireless). My router cost ~$40 and took about an hour to set up. Make sure you protect your wireless, however. I see a couple of neighbors who presumably did not (they show up as "linksys" which indicates they did not bother to change the generic name so they probably did not engage the WEPP or WAPP protection either).


You may want to find "Parts Express" - they may have a cabinet like you are thinking about. Even if they don't, they have wire and other things at a good price.

Jim

[Hellrazor]

You should keep electric away from phone, cable and network cabling. I am not sure about the exact code requirements. But I do know you are not allowed to have electric lines share conduit with other cabling.

[CAPPER]

maxparot,

Where can I get info on the metal Hoffman equipment cabinet ?


JimD,

Do you have a web site for Parts Express ?

[knotley]

Structured Wiring

Having just rewired my house and knocked holes in the drywall and plaster, I decided to knock a few more holes for RG6 wire and cat5e. There is no wireless cable TV technology. I pretty much followed this:

www.swhowto.com

The site is excellent.

Each of my three bedrooms has 2 cat5e and 2 RG6 wires. I also finished the basement and used more wire there. Out of 1000 feet of cat 5e, I had 12 feet leftover! And that is in a 1200 sq foot home. I used the old electrical panel box for my new wiring closet.

If you must cross 120 volt wires, do so at 90 degrees. Otherwise keep about 1 foot apart.

[maxparot]

maxparot,

Where can I get info on the metal Hoffman equipment cabinet ?


JimD,

Do you have a web site for Parts Express ?

Look for a comercial supply house like Mcmaster Carr.

[Kristofor]

<snip>
I have a wireless computer network and do not see why anybody would want to wire a network these days. Cheap and simple to go wireless. <snip>
Jim

As the "computer guy" who is called whenever family members have trouble I can think of a few reasons.

The big one for me is that short of someone physically damaging them wired just works, all of the time, regardless of hardware replacements, visitors, OS, etc. My 80 year old grandma can plug in a Cat5 cable and tell me if the "blinky light" is on. Talking her through setting ssids/WEP/WPA keys would be another matter.

The second one may not matter for people who simply web browse or have a single computer attached to DSL/Cable, and that's connection speed (throughput & latency). If I'm moving GB of data from one PC to another while playing a game on a third I don't want to share 54MBit of possible speed (lower in real life) between all three of those computers. Instead I want the transfer traffic switched so I can't even tell it's happening and my ping times stay nice and low.

You don't transfer GB of data from one system to another you say? Well, then you don't have linked TIVOs (or other media systems) yet, but it's a good bet you will be doing something like that in the future so it's a race between improving wireless standards and increasing data needs.

Wireless is useful, and for many users with moderate needs it is the right choice. But, if you're building new or you have the walls open I think it's penny-wise not to pull some Cat5 and RG6 today for a couple hundred bucks you're in a better position.

[EDIT]
Oh, for the on-topic part of this post, I have a ~5 year old house and put in a central panel for Voice/Sat/Data while it was still under construction (and I do use wireless too for laptops). At that time the local inspector said they didn't check for any code compliance issues other than the electrical connection (power outlet in the box itself).


Thanks,
Kristofor.

[JR]

I've been a professional curmudgeon regarding wireless until very recently. Of course my experience goes back to 300 bps dial up and 4800 bps fixed modems. I now have a wireless router in my house because we had to move a computer to where there was no wired access. We get good performance with our two computers accessing the internet.

For most configurations wireless is now useful for most applications. Caveats: I note and agree with the exceptions noted above regarding less-skilled users and more bandwidth-hungry homes.

The IP-based living room could change the equation, I suppose, along the lines of Kristofor's linked Tivos. As he notes, though, wireless is pretty close to keeping up with even that kind of bandwidth hog.

JR

[Pappy]

Service for my phone and tv/internet all comes into the attic at the same end of the house. There is an access ladder a few feet away.

When I resided my house several years ago, I removed all the cable and phone lines from the ouside of the house and ran them thru the attic. Easy solution was to put a panel on the studs at the end of the attic to mount splitters for the cable and phone lines. I numbered each wire that led to the house and drew up a floor plan that shows the drop for each line. I later added an outlet near the panel for a cable signal booster.

Every tech that has had to deal with it says it is great.

[CAPPER]

knotley,

http://www.swhowto.com/index.htm

GREAT SITE !!!

Thanks

[lcm1947]

Knotley you mentioned not crossing 120 volt wires unless at a 90 degrees otherwise 1 foot apart. Why? The reason I ask is that I had an electrician hook up 3 difference 20 amp circuits recently but I myself layed the wire out and I did cross a couple of them. Is this a safety hazard?

[maxparot]

Knotley you mentioned not crossing 120 volt wires unless at a 90 degrees otherwise 1 foot apart. Why? The reason I ask is that I had an electrician hook up 3 difference 20 amp circuits recently but I myself layed the wire out and I did cross a couple of them. Is this a safety hazard?

It's because higher voltage can inject electrical noise into low voltage electronics. This can cause noise in a sound system, Snow or ripple in a video system or ghost problems in security systems.

[DaveS]

When I finished the basement 2 years back, I asked the electrical inspector about the "soft" wiring.

He said the only things he checks for are metal plates over the spots where the cables pass through studs (etc), and that the cables are secured every 36" (or whatever it was), just like electrical.

I thought about putting my cables into a metal box - but my location is in the utility room, and they just don't make boxes big enough (or inexpensive enough) to hold:
32 ports of rj-44, 20 rg-6, a 16 port switch, cable modem, wireless access point, network hard drive, backup UPS, phone distribution panel, a dozen patch cables, etc...