sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Pull box or reel

We use CommScope Webtrak Ultra II for just about everything. Since it comes on a reel in a box, we open the boxes and put up to 10 reels on a Greenlee 910 cable rack (for our large installs), and carry a couple of boxes in the truck for MAC's & smaller stuff. Ed's right--CommScope's boxed stuff is, in general, pretty good about not getting tangled.
Bill

General cable in boxes sucks. Reel in a box might feed smoother, but backlash is even more of a pain than open reels, I prefer boxes. We use all cat5e, makes a good selling point even if we've never used a voice cable for data.

I was looking for this topic; almost started a new one about it. I prefer pull boxes for cat5e, though the brand makes a big difference: the smaller the box, the tighter the wire is packed and the more likely it is to kink. Commscope coax in boxes is great stuff, though they take up a lot more space than a reel.

Reels are fine as well. It's nice when they have the cutouts on the side to tuck in the end of the wire... tape always seems to come off.

Reel-in-box makes me want to hurt someone. It's like the worst aspects of a reel and a box in one. If the box gets damaged in the slightest, the drag on the reel is hideous and makes payout a PITA. Some of those reels aren't even one-piece or a true reel, so if you have to take it out of the box you are going to have a bad day.

I use Rack-A-Tiers for reels. Anyone have pics or a description of their set-up for pulling wire?

We have a couple of the Greenlee 910 mobile cable racks. They hold 10 spools each, so we open the Commscope boxes, take out the reels, and set them on the racks. It's good for us, because we can pull whatever we need, up to 10 at a time. Makes material handling easier, too, since we don't have to carry and set boxes or have an extra wagon or dolly with us. We use Rack-a-Tiers for things like coax (where we're probably only using one spool at a time). For the "quickie" single pulls, we just go from the box. Our average install is 400-500 drops.

I like boxes better for voice/data cabling. I prefer reels for alarm/coax cabling and absolutely hate reel boxes.

I prefer reels, however if it's just one short pull then I can just grab a box and pull it in. More than one pull and I'll set up the tree.

Reels, IMHO, certainly pull easier and tangle less.

We use CAT 5E or 6 for everything. It's what my valued customer spec's. (But, as I've stated repeatedly - my personal preference is for cat 3 and 66 blocks for voice).

Sam

Depends on the job.

If it is a large job we order 3000' reels and I have two carts I built to hold six reels each.

For something smaller running a few lines or short runs across an office just use a box.

We have a pretty good stock of reels, but if we need to order we generally have a wait time to get them. But we find less waste from the 3000' reels compared to three 1000' boxes and on larger jobs it adds up.

We generally use cat5 for voice, seems that's all anyone wants to have and if they are paying for it we'll do it.

I dont do much cabling myself anymore but when I do, its always pull boxes. Yes they probably snag a little more than a reel, but reels aren't "snag-proof" themselves so IMO its a moot point. Haven't used Cat3 in years, its all 5.

Its funny that the 3K reels were brought up. I used to work for a guy who had the greatest idea one day. Instead of ordering 1K spools and end up having a bunch of 100' partials laying around at the end of the job, he was going to start ordering 3K spools which, in theory, would end up a 300' partial which would be good for another run. Great theory it seemed. Until the day came that the techs had to carry these spools into a building, up a couple of floors, etc. Then, you had 1/3rd less spools for doing multiple runs, and still ended up with a bunch of 100' partials on extra large spools laying around. In short, it seemed like a good idea and everybody agreed, but it ended going over like a lead balloon.

I'm an ahole when it comes to making my guys use whatever they can off the 3k spools. Guess it goes back to the electrical side of the company. Most of the guys wanted to carry 500' spools rather than a 2500' spool, so my old man had me keeping some used up spools and rewinding them with the 2500' spools. I'll make guys check footage and see where we can use partials.

That Greenlee 910 rig looks quite sturdy, and a *bit* portly at a listed 213 lbs. How do you guys get such a rig up the stairs? Do you hoist it up the side of the building? There's been at least two sites I've been on where the stairs weren't complete until we were done with the upper floors :grrr:.

Re waste: my own goal is 3% or less (I don't know if that's good or bad), though, imho, it's hard to get that when running anything but phone and speaker lines. No matter how much I plan or calculate, I always seem to wind up with 50-60' pieces of CATV, CCTV and internet cat5e.

I suppose most of the better brands of wire are sequentially marked every two feet down from 1000'. I made the mistake of getting a box of cat5e from lowes/home repo once, and the starting number was like 16936'. :bang:

Does anyone know where to get empty wire reels? I've tried my local supply houses and none carry them. I need some small reels, like what 250' of 18 gauge speaker wire would come on.

Is there any chance you could post of picture of that set-up?