telephone drops?

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melanconelectric

melanconelectric

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West Monroe, LA
What is the best way to run phone drops in residential? I always looped them, you know, in the house - to every jack then back where i started. Is this good or should I make seperate drops for each jack?
 
Personally, I do a home run to each location. If you daisy-chain, and there's a problem, every jack after the problem is dead.
 
celtic said:
Here is a rather lengthy thread on the topic:
Why ECs shouldn't do voice and data wiring
Click to expand...

Hbiss is a wealth of knowledge on the subject - and is well within his rights to be bitter after watching a specialized trade be bastardized by us EC's. However there are a number of low voltage contractors out there that should stay away from line voltage for the same reasons.... But if your going to do it - may as well learn as much as you can about before starting into it.
 
You're very welcome - I compiled that after having to go fix every phone job done by 15 guys in one company who could wire the death out of 277/480 distribution, but could not get a door-bell nevr mind a phone to work right.
 
melanconelectric said:
What is the best way to run phone drops in residential? I always looped them, you know, in the house - to every jack then back where i started. Is this good or should I make seperate drops for each jack?
Click to expand...

In residential, you could go either way.
 
phone drops

phone drops

2 ways we do it.
1. home run from every phone
2. loop the entire system including back to the main board. Also we loop the cable in the box. If a box is covered up, no problem. If a cable is cut, no problem, we have 2 main's back at the panel.

Doing #2 we have never had a problem...
 
dereckbc said:
You will eliminate a lot of tehnical headaches if you homerun them. :grin:
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It's a waste of wire. 99% of residences will install a cordless base station and multiple remote handset rechargers which will not be located where you placed jacks within each room.

The drive behind a "tele-data" shop or an "AST" (Low voltage tech) is to buy as much as possible. The telco industry is in too much flux for there to be a rule of thimb or any pat answers.

Many homes, begining in the 90's started with "structured wiring" all of which now is wasted money, because everyone has Wi-fi on their mobile, cordless laptops and 5.8 Ghz or better cordless phone systems.
 
dereckbc said:
You will eliminate a lot of tehnical headaches if you homerun them. :grin:
Click to expand...
Agreed. I always home run every port. Wire for phones is cheap and there usually are not that many port locations in a typical residence.
 
I've had a lot of people recently tell me that they don't need to pull wire everywhere for data because they are set up for wireless. The problems that I encounter is that wireless routers go down, the transmission speeds aren't as fast and they aren't as reliable. Also if you live in a densely packed area you run into secutirty problems with wireless.
FWIW I always run HR'ed Cat 5e and an RG-6 to every location and in some homes I'm running 2 of each. Never been a fan of the daisy chain concept especially after having to do remodels on homes built in the 70's when they ran the ?pair wire (seems like about a hundred) w/o an outer jacket. Trying to patch that stuff back together again after a wall has moved is an exercise in frustration.
 
JMHO.

I am not always offended if to save money you loop all the phone circuits. I think in a budget conscious environment it is perfectly acceptable. In a higher end environment, home runs are more appropriate.

Coax, audio and data should almost always be a home run.

In a higher end environment, it may be appropriate to run PVC or the corrugated tubing so that down the road you can replace it with whatever happens to be the cabling of choice at that time.
 
If you run multi pair cable it would be like running seperate lines you can tie together the ones you want but also have seperate lines for things like fax or kids or DSL for that matter.

No different than running a MWBC.
 
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
The drive behind a "tele-data" shop or an "AST" (Low voltage tech) is to buy as much as possible.
Click to expand...

Name a business that is in the business of selling things that this is not the case at.
 
I homerun every phone FWIW. We daisy chained them in the 80's and early 90's though.

How long until the phones are obsolete, though? When we all use our cell phones? I was talking to a friend who works for the phone company and she said her boss said that their services will be obsolete in 10 years.
 
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