How to Properly Cable a Building

hi this is Jim Gibson with cablesupply.com and uh today I want to do a little snippet uh it's going to be a short video and it's going to be basically for those who are new to the cabling industry um possibly some customers also uh might be interested in this and you know you might learn something new if you're been cabling for years uh anyway this is going to be a really short one um when it comes to some techniques and procedures you should incorporate in cabling a building now just give a little bit of background I've been cabling before 10 Bas t uh when there was a coax cable and we used to have to cable that and before that we did twin ax and we did just about everything else is when they started networks I think I'm so old but uh make a long story short I I I learned some things over the years that I see when I go into a situation and I see people cabling I know that one thing they're wasting time uh the the job doesn't look as professional and it's costing that cable contractor and ultimately the customer additional funds so let's look at some things first of all I want to talk to you about this insistence that sometimes customers and cable contractors have on numbering numbering the Jacks in order like uh you know clockwise around the room let me explain what I'm talking about okay so here's our floor plan some people insist and I don't know why they think life is going to be easier when they do it this way it is not easier this way and it takes twice as much work to do it this way but they do this well we're going to number this 1 2 3 4 and they think that's the way to do it I'm telling you right now that's not the way to do it it doesn't matter what the Jack number is it really doesn't matter and uh what happens is you cable it all like this it takes twice three times as long when you're talking about hundreds of cables this is almost impossible uh don't even attempt this but what they'll do is they'll pull the cables and they'll number them on the end of the cable and they'll pull them all the way out to the whatever the the phone room is at let's say this is the phone room and then they have to look through each cable it's okay I guess if you have five cables something like that but when you're talking about a serious install you don't want to do this and uh what they do is they number all the cables and they write the numbers on it things like that then they bring them in here and then they shuffle them you know in in the in the uh uh uh the main distribution area or the data room they're shuffle oh okay here's one oh it's too long so I have to rewrite it on the cable and and cut off the excess and then punch it down on on Jack one and everything else I had a person that that demanded um a customer that demanded that they they do it this way and you know he didn't hire me uh because my prices were too high I guess so he hired uh a bunch of people to help him I think they were friends I don't know but the job was horrendously bad and I'll tell you the reason why is they brought all the cables down and I gave them some direction you know there's there's uh three um levels or three phases of cabling and the first phase is pre- cable you bring the cable down you take it out the wall you you curl it up there and you wait for them to paint the wall well he marked each cable and I guess he had about o 150 cables or so and he marked each one but he didn't Mar it on the floor plan and they came in and they sprayed the building and they sprayed all the numbers and then on top of that he didn't move in for two months and he forgot where he started in each room and how he was going to do it and it became a nightmare there's a lot easier ways so uh first of all don't number your cables you just take your cables put them in the put them on the Jack Jack them right put them on the patch panel and then then put the patch panel port on the jack not the other way around one of the other things he did with his patch panels cuz I told him you're always going to add another Jack in there and you want to keep the patch panels per section of the building and well then he added four extra openings on each patch panel for his additional uh Jacks that he may pull in the future oh it just became a mess not only top of that that they really didn't know what they were doing and the back of the patch panel looked like spaghetti and he wouldn't let me take a picture of it cuz he was so embarrassed about it but I thought you know if I had an add an extra Jack and I had to pull that patch panel around or I had to do anything with those wires he was going to lose connectivity with some computer out there um some voice over IP phone or something because those cables I mean just they just came in from the back like spaghetti and it was like a mess it looked like a hairball out of a cat's mouth it was horrible but he thought it was great so I'll leave it let it be that way I hope he's not watching this video uh but to make a long story short don't number your cables just run the cables right to the spot where you need them take them back to the patch panel punch them all down neatly and then label the Jacks based on the port in the patch panel that will save you tons of time that's professional do it that way uh the next thing you do is um identify the Jacks and we use a little little device and U uh on how to identify the Jacks and and it's it's more necessary the bigger the job you have but it even works with a small job like uh 12 ports 24 ports uh patch panel this thing will help you identify the Jack quickly takes too long with the tone and probe to to go through each slot and Define uh which Port goes to what Jack just takes too long and you're wasting time all this time you're wasting with numbering and identifying with your tone and probe and if you don't know what a tone and probe is that's how you identify a single wire in a bundle it will work sometimes it's hard especially the bleed over in some cables you don't you're not exactly sure which one it is and if you don't know what a tone in probe is then you're probably not a cabler but if you're not we have a section on how to uh tone and probe and it's it's a neat tool it works well but it's not meant to be for a large installation takes you too long you know you got 75 Jacks you got to go through each port on the patch panel until you hit that 63rd Jack and then you're not sure and things like that use the tools that are out there and uh a cable identifier using LEDs is the best way to go so once you do that what you do is you have a uh a pinout just do a pinout test test the pinout and uh if the test passes with a pinout it's good it's good to go if you're using quality cable quality Jacks quality patch panels and they're all under 100 m uh you know I just do 300 ft because that gives you a little extra footage for the patch cords and all if it's all under 100 m then you're absolutely fine uh and there should not be any problems uh or you can buy the $8,000 uh fluke tester which is let me tell you it's a good tester but it costs a lot of money it's going to take a long time to recover that funds and some customers require that that is fine uh if that's what's required but in my case I give a 15-year warranty and if uh something goes wrong we'll go out and fix it parts and labor for free no questions asked unless they cut the cable themselves or something but you know how many times I've gone back zero times in 25 years in business that I have gone back to repair a jack because we check every single outlet and that's the next thing check every single outlet now concerning the testers years ago people used to ask me to certify each Jack well that takes time I got to run the certifier and it takes time it Cooks away it does this it looks at near term and it looks like uh alien cross talk and everything else uh and you know then it comes back and if you have quality Equipment in there it's going to pass every time unless you have your pin out wrong and then I have to go back to the office and print out the thing and I hand it to the customers and some unethical uh uh cable guys you know what they would do they would turn around and just manipulate the tests and uh from another job and just give it to the customer but you're adding about 15 minutes uh to each H maybe less than 15 minutes to each install and generally speaking it should take you about an hour and 15 minutes per location to install a jack so uh here are some of my Snippets and uh we're going to do some more on cabling um this one in particular was for uh new contractors you should give a 15-year warranty on everything you do you should be happy to go back and repair uh parts and labor for anything that you have installed that the customer has not fooled with you don't want to label this way 1 2 3 4 5 you know going in a direction because you know what's going to happen in the future you're going to need another Jack here and that's going to mess up another Jack here that's going to mess you up um and it's just not it's just not the way to do it uh these Jacks the labeling on these Jacks should reflect the port on the patch panel we have the U uh the pinout tester uh that will test your pin out to make sure you've done it right so you don't end up with any crossover uh cables if you there's also another video on that uh and we also have the uh the LED testers um that can identify a port instantly just like that again this is Jim Gibson uh with cablesupply.com thank you for watching our videos really appreciated it like us on Facebook follow us on YouTube and you have a great day see you on the next video hi this is Jim with cablesupply.com hi this is Jim from cable Supply hi this is Jim with cablesupply.com and today I'm going to show you how to cut a hole in the drywall hey guys thanks for tuning in to this YouTube installment at cablesupply.com

Channel: CableSupply.com

Views: 74,042

Keywords: how to, cabling, Telecommunications (Industry), Technology (Professional Field), instructional, educational, wires

Id: 9qyjYYepeeI

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2014