sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth Equipment rooms/closets

Do any of you ever get frustrated at the lack of space given to vendors to mount equipment? I get so tired of trying to mount equipment in closets that you can't even get your body into (and I am not a fatbody, thank you!), much less the equipment. I just finished a job for a customer (new building) where the closet was 5 foot wide and 18 inches deep and the telephone equipment, burglar alarm, video surveillance and security gate controls had to share the space! Of course there are all the closets where employees stack boxes, christmas decorations, etc, etc,......
I'd like to hear some of your horror stories.

"Do any of you ever get frustrated at the lack of space given to vendors to mount equipment?"


All the time!! We were recently installing a 2 cabinet Option 11 for a customer. The closet was approx. 30 inches wide. The customers data vendor installed the 19 inch rack right in the doorway. The techs had to crawl through the rack and pass the cabinets throught the rack to install

Boiler rooms with leaky pipes and lots of condensation has to be the worst place. But we see it all the time. I saw a system last week installed under the stink pipe and the bathroom was right above the KSU. It's a Service all waiting to happen.

You mean a "throw it away and buy a new one" waiting to happen, and as everyone's heard, __it happens.

In a former life I was an IT Director in a small hospital. We were planning a large, multi-phased, multi-building campus expansion project. At each meeting, I brought up the need for a data closet for the expansion. Finally the architect sent me two drawings of possible alternative spaces, and indicated his first and second choices. I took his second choice, pointing out that his first choice was in the SECOND building, which would not be started until the first buildng was operational! Came time to have a look, and no closet! When I asked why, I was told that the architect "forgot" the building corridor was ending at an elevator shaft and they needed an emergency exit, so no closet. I found a 5' headroom space between the steel girders and the roof deck....so I had a steel grate welded in and built my closet above the corridor. The Verizon tech (still a friend of mine) damn near died laughing when he saw what we did (you had to use a ladder and move a 2x4 ceiling tile to get up there). Of course, the four females in my department didn't think it was too funny when they had to get up there to do any service.

try being 5 feet 8 and weigh 215......

some of them closets are hard to fit my size 42 butt in them........

Mitch

YOU EVER NOTICE HOW THE PHONE SYSTEMS GET TREATED AS SECOND CLASS CITIZENS, UNTIL THEY GO DOWN.

Now they are the most important tool in the company. Its funny now matter how big or small the company is, when the system is down they are always loosing thousands of dollars every minute they are down.

I wish I owned a small 4 man company that makes thousands of dollars a minute!!

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Ditto on the Data Duds ---- er---dudes. Just did an install. The closet was shallow but it was lined with plywood, had it's own light w/switch,HVAC outlet, and two dedicated outlets, one voice, one data. Had the "sparky" (electrician) add a ground bar and it was "sweet".... went back for some CSR work, opened the closet door and couldn't find the KSU, et al, for the home made rack/shelving the data guy had jambed into the closet. What a MESS!!!! Don't ask me how they expect to service the system.

Just do like I've done a few times, move/disconnect whatever necessary so you can get to your equipment. Had an owner come in with the reddest face I've ever seen wanting to know why his network was down. With the kindest smile I could muster, I asked him when he wanted to schedule his network to be down so I could restore his phone service. A few shades of red later, he stomped away and I could hear him yelling at his IT guy for putting everything in the way.

I don't know how many times I've done a nice neat install only to go back to the site and find the computer guys network router/hub on top of the tel equipement (blocking the vents), patch cords that are as much as 25' long (when a 3 footer would do), hanging in front of the cross connect field down to the floor.Wheres the pride in that kinda work?

Heres a partial list of wireing closet contents:

The usuall holiday decorations
Empty(and full) 5 Gal water jugs
Cleaning supplies
Vacuum cleaner
cases of soda
cases of toilet paper
Old furniture
Boxes of IMPORTANT documents
Coats
Shoes
A giant messed up ball of coat hangers
A leaking hot water tank
A furnace thats so loud when it kicks on it scares the hell outa ya

400lbs. of crap stuffed into a 2lb. bag.

Whad I leave out?