doorphone install

Inside wall where wire was snaked for door phone.

As shown in a previous post HERE, I made a small of a hole as possible to snake the wires. First I drilled thru the brick into the building where I wanted to mount the door phone. Then I reamed the hole in the sheet rock enough to send my snake up to the drop ceiling to fish the wire behind the walls.

Door phone installed.

Once the wiring was in place I was able to mount the door phone.

Keypad installed.

 I also had to install a keypad for an interior door. The door was not wired for an electronic door latch so I drilled into the door frame, and made a small hole in the wall to fish the wire from the opening made for the keypad to the door latch.

ATA and relay installed.

As the network room is located in the basement, I just installed the relay and power for the door phone and latches in the office. The wiring going to the door phone and keypad was snaked down the wall behind the relay.

Snaking wire thru wall with minimal damage.

I had a door bell installation recently. The outer wall is brick. First I drilled a hole from the outside in (measuring of course the height of this light switch first). Once that hole was exposed in the wall behind where the door bell was going to be installed, i took my drill bit and angled it up inside the same hole that I had drilled from inside. There I was able to send my snake up the wall to the drop ceiling where the wire had been run. 

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Once the snake was in place I was able to fish my wire down the hole. (I did have to open the hole a little bit to allow the snake with the wire taped to it to pass thru, since my hole was so small) 

Once this was accomplished all I had to do was pass the wire straight thru the hole to the outside so that I could install my door bell. 

I did not take photos of everything else, as I was short on time, and well... I do still have to eventually return to this install when the internet is working to make sure everything is set up properly. Oh yeah, and finish wiring the relay for the door buzzer. 

Patch cord installer ruining my neat rack installation.

This is what everything looked like after the PC guy connected all the patch cords. 

Recently I completed an installation of this rack, and around 41 or so CAT5 runs. It took about a week to complete from start to finish - including all testing, labeling and mapping out where each wire goes to. 

That project can be viewed HERE 

I was called back to the customer to remove the old network cabling since the PC vendor came and moved the switches over and connected up all of the patch cords.

The switches are just sitting on the bottom of the rack, they are not on mounts, wings, rails, whatever you want to call them. They are just on top of one another on the bottom part of the 8U rack. 

The patch cords are sloppy, and make the whole project look like a complete and utter mess. 

I hate when I spend so much time making sure that everything is installed properly, and neatly to have someone come behind me and slop everything together, especially on a new installation. I can probably understand someone working like this if there was already a mess there, and they just wanted to connect everything up quickly and go, but he should have neatened up these patch cords. I was going to strap them up neatly, but I did not have time as I was cutting out old wiring at the customers request, and taking it back with me on the train to throw into my scrap wire pile. 

How to get around cross beams

Wide angle of channel made to get around cross beam. 

Close up of channel that was made to get around cross beam with CAT 5 cabling.

Installed jack plate over channel temporarily until customer can have channel plastered over.

Close up of jack cover hiding wire channel 

Sometimes when you are pulling cables you come across cross beams. Sometimes this is easy to get around, especially when the walls are up, or if you were aware of their presence and you are able to place the jack in an alternate location. 

Sometimes you just cut out your hole for your low voltage mount, try to snake the wire up or down the wall and find out that your snake is not making it all the way past the drop ceiling. 

In those cases you can measure how far your snake is making it up and down the wall and make a small channel. Snake the wire from one side of the channel up (or down) then bring it around the beam and snake the cable the rest of the way. Many times you can get away with a blank electrical plate as a cover. I did not have any blank electrical plates so I used a single hole plate with some white tape to cover the hole (a blank would have required me to make the hole bigger to accommodate the depth of the blank which I do not think was worth it, when the customer can either get a blank plate themselves for about $1, or have someone come and plaster up the hole when the complete the painting.