Question: electricians and data wiring

[mas90]

My parents are having some major work done to their house, and have been persuaded (i.e. whenever they mentioned the project I pestered them) to flood-wire the house with data cabling at the same time. The construction firm has no expertise in such matters, and luckily are well aware of this and are happy to defer to someone who does. My parents

Comments

[gerald_duck]

From my experiences, albeit with Cat5/Cat5E rather than Cat6:

• Make sure all the cable runs are tested for conformance rather than mere continuity before signing off.
  
• Make sure they don't actually kink the cables. Other than that, ignore turning-radius issues.
  
• Insist they leave a metre spare when terminating at the server end, so you can subsequently move the patch panel around.
  
• Check that the person making the wall cutouts understands that you get two RJ45 sockets in the same space as one mains socket. (Otherwise, you need a lot of silly-looking blanking plates to fix up the mess.)
  
• Ask them not to do long runs parallel to mains wiring, and especially not parallel with lightning conductors or things that might act like one (TV or satellite aerial downleads).
  
• Either get the kind of terminating hardware that is colour-keyed, or make sure they know what to do. Maks sure they know pair polarity is important. Double-check the first cable or two before they proceed.
  
• Bear in mind the professionals cost about £40-£50 per run, fitted, tested and

[gerald_duck]

Oh, and make sure they understand about strain relief so everything's still working a decade later.

[anonymous]

A non-specialist electrician will get confused if he's to perform a complete cat6 installation, even if hes been "trained" in it. That said, the specialists can do some clangers too, but are slightly less likely. As a previous poster said, everything should be tested functional before people get paid.

A cost-effective option is to get them to pull in the cable and do the terminations yourself - less than a day's work - but you have no comeback if they wreck the cables during installation, so you could end up in a pickle.

aes