On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:53:40 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
None of my customers have ever approved using wiremold.
Whenever possible, i ran it to a corner of the room, then into the
ceiling. I have also removed wood trim along a ceiling and hid wire
under it.
That works if the object of the exercise was to the wire into the
suspended ceiling (for an office) of the attic (for a home). If the
rafters are sitting on top of the stud wall, access is difficult for
going through the wall, so surface conduit is probably a good
solution. The problem is that none of my customers want to see the
CAT5 cable running up the wall. Hiding it behind molding seems to
only be acceptable for baseboard molding. I've milled the back of
corner and baseboard molding for running wires, but that looks awful
on top of a textured dry wall. It's also a problem with walls that
are not quite square or true. Nobody notices until I run something
straight up the wall. Then, everything looks angled or serpentine.
I don't have a good feel for the relative cost of going through the
wall versus surface molding. It's been a long time since I've done
it. My guess(tm) is that going through the wall with wire is about
50% more expensive than surface molding, and structured wiring, about
twice as expensive.
Luckily, I found an abandoned 16 pair '1A1' phone cable between the two
rooms and managed to find a dozen pairs that were still usable.
In my office phone and utility room, I recently ripped out a small
pickup truck load of 25 pair cable from the phone room. Every time
someone would move into the office, the phone crew would add cable
instead of figuring out how to use the existing cable. There's still
about 2-3 more pickup truck loads "stored" in the ceiling. This is
after the cleanup (I'm not done).
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/150%20Felker%20St.html
The Type 66 punch down blocks were fully populated with two Merlin
phone controllers and expanders.
Thick baseboards can be pulled, and then saw a notch off the back
with a table saw.
That solves a non-problem. Horizontal runs, along walls and between
doors are not a problem. It's getting around doors that's a problem.
Incidentally I like to rip out the lower 2-3 inches of the drywall and
baseboard, and use plastic baseboard raceway conduit. I've only done
one such job and it was slick and easy. They didn't have this stuff
when I was doing it, so we made our own out of repurposed vinyl
shapes:
http://www.cableorganizer.com/wire-tracks/installation-wiretrack.htm
However, it still leaves the problem of getting around the doors.
Incidentally, I've also run fiber optic cables through walls, which
has the advantage of being slightly smaller than CAT5 cable:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/fiber_01.html
The downside is the cost of the media converters and my batting
average at terminating the ends.
I had real fun about 15 years ago. I had to run a 25
pair cable into a new studio at a radio station. The entire building was
cement blocks, and the only way to route the wire was to enlarge
existing holes, with cables already filling them. The station manager
told me it was impossible. He freaked the next day when he came in and
the work was done. then he wanted to know how I cut square holes around
the wires without cutting the existing cables. ;-)
I'll pretend to forget about spending a weekend pounding on a concrete
filled reinforced concrete block wall with a star drill (after
destroying TWO Skil hammer drills). I slit lengthwise a piece of EMT
scrap conduit to cover the existing cable, and pounded a hole next to
the existing cable hold. I was lucky and missed the rebar.
I did use surface conduit once when I installed a structured wiring
system. That's where all the communications cables arrive in a single
neat bundle. Same with cube farms, where individual desks tended to
be isolated "islands" with no adjacent walls. However, none of the
surface wiring was ever wrapped around a doorway.
Good old 'Telepoles'?
What's a telepole?
This was vinyl molding on top of the carpet, where everyone walking by
can trip over it. I bought a roll and found myself replacing several
high traffic lengths about every 6 months. The metal versions last
longer, but were much more expensive.
After the wiring was done, someone accidentally discovered that the
floor mounted power receptacles included an adjacent low voltage
conduit raceway that would have been perfect for running ethernet and
phone. The original carpet crew simply covered over the access covers
leaving only the AC power receptacles exposed. Grrrr...
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/SCZ%20Victorian%20wiring%20mess.html
I have never done a job that looked that bad. Even for a temporary
install.
Long story and I'll spare you the details. I was several months out
of surgery for a heart bypass. I didn't want to do the wiring, didn't
really feel up to doing the wiring, but was stuck with doing it if I
wanted the computer networking part of the job. The owner didn't care
what it looked like as long as it was cheap. I didn't do the actual
wiring, so there are some oddities, such as the lack of squared
corners, lack of supporting cable clamps, and bad choice of colors.
Like I said, I'm not very proud of that mess.
I hate to run anything outside, without putting it in conduit and
preferably underground.
I wanted to do outside conduit, but the cost was prohibitive. Note
that this was an old Victorian single wall style structure, with
existing outside plumbing and wiring. Adding some CAT5 didn't seem
like much a problem.
He could use a wireless camera with multiple receivers, but that's
still susceptible to causing and dealing with interference. It could
even let a crook see exactly where the cameras are aimed, long before
entering the building.
If he used a wireless IP camera, he might barely be able to coexist
with existing wi-fi systems. If he used an analog wireless TV camera,
it would obliterate any wi-fi within range because it's on the air
100% of the time and leaves absolutely no airtime for the wireless.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558