sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring data wiring procedure standards

I just has a bit of a misserable experience doing some work for a telecom company who is only one person. He sent me to a site to terminate 15 connections which could have been done in less then a day.

Well, this was no cut and dry install. First of all, the cables were poorly labeled. All the cables would have white electricians tape scribbled with black ink and be labed R-1,R-2 M-1 ??? I'm saying what the?? There is no labels on the other end. Okay nice, now I have to tone out ALL of the cables. So I start toning, and In the first few cables, I am receiving no tone at the patch panel. I said great! cut cables maybe?
About a few hours into the patching down and toning, I get a call from the telecom who issued this work to me said the installed cables also have installed loops. It took me about three minites to even have a clear understanding of what he was talking about. He is from the middle east and his explaination was not clear.

Well there are voice loops and data loops in these rooms. He only told me there was voice loops. It caused me such grief and LOTS of wasted time finding which is the real cable and which is the looped cable. After I figured out which is the loops and which is the real cables, it helped me to speed up. But there were issues with the keystone jacks which I have never used. some times they were crossed, some times they did not make contact when testing. I wasted LOTs of times going back and forth between the wall jack and the patch panel. Now, I find today, perhaps part of the problem was with my Landromer battery was dieing and giving false readings. So had to walk to the nearest store and buy a battery. Problem resolved with Landromer. So this added to the time troubleshooting the rest of the jacks. I had 1 maybe two rooms left and the one jacks cable for the xerox printer went to no where. IE, no toning sound at the patch panel.

Ive never seen such a screwed up cable install as this one. No floor plan, no marked cables or mismatched cables, Phantom or ghost voice and data cables mixed in and crap jacks.

The telcom owner gave ME hell for the time it took me to install all of this. He started to criticize me first, for not labeling the patch panel "for which it was" to instead to use the numbers on them. I said well, if the cables WERE lablled! sure, no issue.
He said that you just rapidly punch down the cables on the patch panel then label the numbers in a out of order sequence in the rooms. I said, that makes absolutely NO sence. IF you want to find D-05 then its a mere guessing game, moving furniture to locate it in random office if there is no floor plan. If the cables are punched down in the RIGHT order in the rooms ie, terminated D-01,D-02... from the secretarial desk into a clockwise fashion it would be a snap finding the jack in the future. He was pissed with my reply.

Tell me, how do you terminate from room to room and number is sequentially?

I ran out of cables and jacks near the end of this install and waited at least half a hour for him to show up.


I went by Bell and IBM standards and did dozens of sites like this with no issues. Usually there is a site survey and a floor plan. And this is how we did it in my last company.

Just wanted to mention there was two wall mount access holes and 5 cables coming out at the xerox printer/copier.

Good lesson for you to preview before accepting. That being said, even when you walked in & saw the mess would also have been an excellent time to leave.

I would only terminate for one guy and that's because we think & work alike, at least for the most part. For any others, if I'm not good enough to run the cable, I don't waste my time working for crap installs like that.

In your case, I would also have insisted on using only my stock that I'm familiar with and can trust....Panduit for the jacks, Panduit or Nortel for the patch panels.

Ah well live and learn.

"data loops" = fail. Even the dumbest sparkie or trunk slammer has to know data is never looped.

unfamiliar keystone jacks can waste a great deal of time. A while back, I got a few samples of some cheapie tooless types. After about 15 minutes of messing with one, I pitched it and the rest in the trash.

As for running out of batteries, I always keep fresh spares on my truck. It's a Murphy's Law.

Running out of jacks/cables - whoever is responsible for the materials failed here.

While it would be nice to have a sensible layout at the patch panel, sometimes it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes the best you can do is punch down the cables on the panels in the order they fall, and then mark everything on both ends. I'd rather have the pp out of order (4,13,7,2,11,10,5, etc) and have the jacks in a somewhat logical order than the other way around, though everything ordered and numbered logically would be best.

"Tell me, how do you terminate from room to room and number is sequentially?"

Well, in hotels/motels, most of the wallplates and data jacks are in guestrooms, which have a room number. It's just a matter of marking the pp, and yes, I do all of those in sequential order on the panels.

Drops that do not have a numeric designation (other than by blueprints, which are forgotten the moment the building is occupied) will be labeled by their location on both ends, and, in a clockwise fashion from the main entry of the room.

"Just wanted to mention there was two wall mount access holes and 5 cables coming out at the xerox printer/copier."

If I had to take a guess at this, I would say that three cables are homerun to the patch panel/phone blocks, and two are loops from that location to another. You'll have to tone it all to find out for sure.

Sorry you walked into a crap job, surdel. I've been there too, so much that I automatically include extra labor on any job that needs t/t work where I did not run the cabling.

Jack

I just don't care anymore. Any install if left long enough will become a mess. You start out with an office with 2 wall plates, 2 voice, 2 data. Over time that becomes 2 wall plates with 2 data, 3 voice on one, a fax line, on the other a SLT wireless on one, plus another FAX line and a CC terminal on another. 4 pairs used to be a lot, hell now you need 8.

As long as I can easily find the wall plate and match it to the block I am happy. The block or PP is what I need to see organized. As long as the wall plate has a number that matches the other end I can deal with it. I figure I'll have to tone it out or pull the wall plate off anyway so I just add it onto the bill. I always assume I'll be mapping out lines with every new job. Best to have a cheap assistant and radios.

The bottom line is that a properly-trained technician with the appropriate tools can work with any installation, organized or not. Even many of the IT guys can sort things out reasonably-well.

It is the inexperienced IT guys who lose their minds when everything isn't labeled 1 to 1. This is because they are the ones who lack the tools and expertise.

Thanks guys.

I just had to reaffirm my sanity on this install. The last install I worked with him, all the cables were terminated with different phone standards. He nor I did not know that and what could have been a 3-4 hour job turned out to be a 7 hour job fixing all the screw ups from the cable install. The telcom contractor figured out after calling the cable tech that he wired the office to Nortel standards and we installed the Panasonic PBX to the office.

I was also thinking of a cable layout similar to how street numbers are layed out. Start with the front entrance/secretary desk then terminate in a clockwise fasion. Label the left side of the hallway even numbers and right side odd numbers. And keep the even and odds very close to each other.

I know when we did work for IBM or Bell, we were provided a floor plan. We labeled all the cables with ink on the cat5 box box as D-01,D-02... @ 120Ft starting. Then charge according to feet pulled. And label both ends identically or, write the cable number often 2 times up from the end of the cable if, there is no labeler. We also install the labels one foot back from the end in the event the cable has to be trimmed.

Are you an independent and sub to other independents? you must charge appropriately and risk loosing the job or agree on a discounted labor rate and then bill on an hourly basis. Depending on the job, you might offer a Not-To-Exceed cost. When he under-bids a job or when someone makes a mess, it shouldn't be your loss. It's a tough lesson to learn.

What the hell is "wired to Nortel standards"??

The only standard for telephony is a home run cable from each location to the backboard.