On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:58:19 GMT,it is alleged that buzzbomb
d spake thusly in
uk.d-i-y:

I'm going to be moving into a rented office space soon, and would like
to save some money by putting in the network (Cat5) cabling myself.

The space is open plan, with some heavy duty plastic trunking around the
edge that carries the mains wiring. The are numerous 13amp sockets flush
mounted on the ducting.

I'd like to run the network cables through the same trunking, and mount
the network sockets on it as well.

I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me (or point me to somewhere I
could find out)...

1/ Do I have to maintain any physical separation between the main wiring
and the low voltage network wiring.

2/ Should I be using a particular type of cable (I've found low smoke,
zero halogen Cat5 cabling on screw fix - its more than 3 times the price
of basic Cat5 cabling).

3/ Is there anything else I should be concerned about. I've done bits
and pieces of network wiring over the years with no problems. I'm just a
little worried about contravening one or more of the many building regs
we seem to have these days.

Thanks

B.

Not sure about the building regs and LSF Low halogen cable
requirements, but usually that kind of 'skirting' or 'dado' trunking
has a separate compartment for comms wiring, sometimes even 2 (top and
bottom). If you remove one of the cover sections you should see if
this is the case. It's definitely good practice to keep mains
separated from comms wiring in trunking like that.

For what it's worth (not much as the info is 10yrs+ out of date, we
used to install normal PVC wiring in that trunking and it complied in
95. YMMV these days though, especially with cat5's internal insulation
sometimes being polyethylene [and thus flammable].

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