Cable guy

Status
Not open for further replies.

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
The grounding connection of a cable TV installation around here is on the line side of the demarc and not subject to the rules in the NEC. Even if it were subject to such rules, there is no possible enforcement mechanism by the local AHJ. There are no permits or inspections for that type of work around here.
 
Saw this and had to at least give a reply

Saw this and had to at least give a reply

Hello all new to the forum, figured I would start my membership off with a reply to something I am fairly well dealing with now, but in reverse.

First I totally respect the opinions, but second being I never really got into the full electrical residential contractor trade and went network engineer/industrial telecommunications, programmer, etc, I do have to take a baby exam for my license for administration of telecommunications in Washington state, which as a note in Washington it's really just about money so yea that exam I was able to pass easily just walking in with the NEC and WAC. Lots of baby exams exist though like most of the first year of electrical engineering bachelors exams or the insanely easy open book exams. Most of the exams, however, I have taken are not baby exams for the industry I work in, yes I went through electrical engineering school and then computer science school and the certification tests for things like Cisco, or CompTIA are not exactly what I would consider baby exams at least the later on ones, the intro ones like A+ and similar definitely are, but I also consider many difficult for other individuals easy or baby exams, I think that is all perspective. Anyone can pass exams or not ever take any and be either great or bad at the job tests really do not make or break whether anyone is good at anything they are there for the administration of the institution to prove their classes work as I have seen my kids or others study, do great on all homework and know the material by heart but get into that test room and fail miserably on even remotely easy items.

Anyway, in Washington permits are required for most Telecommunications that are not residential at least to an extent. The rule is greater than 10 outlets and not residential you have to have permits and inspections: However even for residential anything that is (a) All projects penetrating fire barriers, passing through hazardous locations and all backbone installations regardless of size shall be inspected;
We also have to hold insurance and a bond where contractors for general electrical only require the bond, per the L&I ladies at the desk still wondering about that.

I just had to pull a permit and will be inspected for some simplistic items such as network installation and speaker wiring for the PBX and video cameras of which I designed the entire systems. I will be hooking up since they were PoE I had to have the low voltage guys do the termination of the exact same wire that I will be terminating elsewhere... just not using PoE for them. The loss of data for a company can be greater than the loss of equipment in today's world so my job is very important and needs to be done correctly. As you can see not all electricians can do the job I do, and not all guys like me can do their job. Then they took my PBX line and spliced it... see second picture, which caused multiple extensions to go dead the PBX to restart and then have massive odd issues from data corruption, all while they looked down on my reasoning that the system in question could not have splices like that. Then the lead low voltage guy stood there and told me Cat3 cable was never twisted and never used for data.... Still not sure if that was a joke or not... In addition the tech also stated that the reason for splicing the data cables, (look to the left of the second picture) was to increase the run distance... Which is fine if there was a switch, router, repeater or similar in that mix, but it was just terminated then plugged into a modular jack which then ran the rest of the way to the switch in that building. From 100+ Mbps went down to 35 Mbps due to that connection. To justify the one side I do have to add that the guy that I took over for on this particular site did not know much about servers, or telecommunications either and have spent lots of time fixing a bunch of mistakes such as a network cable plugged into a switch, then plugged back into the same switch nothing in between causing network loops that would take the network offline from time to time and eat up most of the switches ability to hand bandwidth.

Personally I will be using the proper grounding and bonding items, with an inter-system and main TMGB along with a server rack bus bar and other items as needed.

However, I can say that several low voltage and even regular electricians aren't much better at the network side of things, during my current install finding terminations in Cat 5e wire that will mess up my data packets with a jacket pulled back and the UTP's untwisted behind the termination will cause me to have to re-terminate or run the risk of losing network frames. Also for whatever infinite wisdom in this state I can terminate a Cat5e or alike, but if I am going to use it as PoE then I have to have them terminated like the picture shows...

It's absolutely a need both sides thing I think there are need for all of the members of the electrical community and most of all we fail to remember that there are lazy people everywhere and unfortunately the items outside of the walls are much easier seen than the ones inside the walls. I am sure there is almost equal parts both low, high, telcom that do poor jobs and probably should find a different line of work, but then there are members like yourselves and I do consider myself to take pride in my work as well and attempt to provide quality and safe installations.

First Picture Link

Second Picture Link
 

hbiss

EC, Westchester, New York NEC: 2014
Location
Hawthorne, New York NEC: 2014
Occupation
EC
I don't exactly know how to reply because you are so all over the place. If you are complaining about the way electricians do data, keep in mind that it isn't their primary job. While many are knowledgeable and more than capable of doing the work correctly (even fiber), large jobs are usually done by specialty contractors. I have decades of experience in both telecom and electrical and even in my prime, if a job called for more than maybe a couple of dozen drops or more I would sub it out. Just too dang boring.

If you are touting IT people doing data, sorry to say but I have never seen anything done by an IT person that didn't look like an abortion.

If your state BS requires POE cabling to be installed by someone with a LV license, either get one or go back after the guy is done and re-terminate yourself. RE: picture #1- And by the way, I NEVER advocate pressing plugs on cables unless it's absolutely necessary- like the only way to connect to a camera in a camera housing.

Picture #2 is even more interesting.

The Nerd said:
As you can see not all electricians can do the job I do, and not all guys like me can do their job. Then they took my PBX line and spliced it... see second picture, which caused multiple extensions to go dead the PBX to restart and then have massive odd issues from data corruption, all while they looked down on my reasoning that the system in question could not have splices like that. Then the lead low voltage guy stood there and told me Cat3 cable was never twisted and never used for data.... Still not sure if that was a joke or not...

Almost wasn't a joke. CAT3 is minimally twisted and originally capable of 10 Base-T but largely used for voice grade premises wiring because the twisting minimized cross talk. I assume you are talking about a system with IP phones, and while CAT3 could get by, you never see it being used for data. You might not believe it but there are still plenty of analog and digital phone systems out there and perhaps that guy assumed this was one by virtue of the CAT3. I know I would have, and especially after seeing that 25pr CAT5 in the mix. I have never used 25pr CAT5 for data, wouldn't even for analog.

The only way you are going to properly splice that mess for data is with a punch down block-either 110 or 66 and you won't get that in that pull box. So what did you expect him to do?

-Hal
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top