sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Had to smack around a sparkie.

Man I hated that stuff, thank goodness it has improved

Are you talking about the clear cable?

What I remember of the original Teflon cable was that it was so tough it took the edge off your knife every 2 or 3 cables that you stripped.

I brought a stone to work and used to regularly have to resharpen my knife.

Sam

Another 'sparky' story (no offense meant to electricians in general)...

An existing customer of mine was recently adding a dozen new workstations and contacted me about adding the telephones. I offered to install the voice and data wiring, but he said his electrician had already installed it.

When I arrived onsite with the phones, 'sparky' was still there struggling to terminate the cables to the patch panel - with only a screwdriver and scissors!

Furthermore, he terminated the 'voice' cables on bisquit jacks and the 'data' cables on mod plugs. Turns out he had a plug presser, but no 110 blade for his punch!

I had to tone out everything (he didn't number the cables) and fix some mistakes and later my customer bitched about my bill!

I often struggle to protect my customers from themselves, not always successfully.

Jeff; Yes. Sam; Me too, I'd forgotten about that part, altho I recall that it was so hard that if you could nick the jacket and bend it right at the nick, it would BREAK! dwflood; We've all been there. And the customer doesn't want to hear that he screwed up, would you? John C. (Not Garand)

Some of those young sparkies have the problem of running their mouths--too bad!

The electrical inspector "surprized" the voice/data installer the other day. Told him any unused cable in the ceiling had to be removed. Also told him he needed to fasten in place his wire--and he would be back to check it out!

Apparently there has been complaints on this guy before...

We installed 3/4" EMT (1 1/8" diameter) stubs for him to drop his cables to each service point. He was whining the pipes weren't big enough...go figure.

That shouldn't be a total surprise to the installer, around here they want you to remove all unused cable too.

Fastening wire in place should be the norm too.

3/4" EMT not big enough?... they must be putting a lot of cable in per location. We struggle to get 3/4" here... half the time they stick us with a 1/2".

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We get the occasional call when people remove unused cable... i.e. - "get snip happy" and take people out of service.

I had one electrician cut out a 50 pair feeder. His excuse "I thought they didn't use that type of cable anymore"... so he cut it out. Luckily he only had about 40' removed by the time we got on site.

When I was with GTE we installed a large Xbar PBX (NEC NA-1000) for one of the big advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. It was in for quite a few years and then we upgraded them to an OMNI Digital PBX. The switchroom was in the basement and the firm had 10 or 12 floors scattered throughout the building.

The Xbar sat there in the the switchroom, taking up one long wall. The customer asked if we would take it out and we said "Sure, for a price." They finally found someone who would take it out and pay them some small amount.

This outfit sent two kids over to do the disconnect. They knew next to nothing about Telephone and for all I know they were getting paid in mungo (scrap wire).

I was working plant there then, filling in for the regular guy who was on vacation. I told them that they could cut anything BELOW the level of the ladder rack, but nothing on the rack.

This obviously ticked them off (probably cutting into their salary) so one night (they stayed after hours to do the disco) they wacked all the feeders going upstairs. Now mind you - all the tails from the Xbar were 25 pair and the feeders were all big count Alpath (600 pair was probably the smallest!) so they really had to work at whacking those bad boys, but whack them they did.

I came in that morning and found the whole place down. They had cut out about 30' of all the feeders! We had to rush in cable and piece out the feeders. The agency was mostly closed that day (It was Good Friday as I recall) so it wasn't the complete disaster it could have been, but it was pretty bad.

Cost the agency HUGE $$$$ and they never did get the Xbar out of there.


Sam

Out of curiosity, does anyone here follow the recommended standard (EIA-606-A) for color coding/labeling? I try to, in larger installations. For smaller jobs I fall squarely into the blue&white cat5e camp.

Perry

That's what the color coded backboards are for. It's the same color scheme used for many, many years. May be better for a new topic for discussion if needed.