atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Cable Direction Markers

We have also used colored ties to mark cable direction. It's what we were always taught.

Blue -- towards CO (or feeder)
Orange -- North
Green -- East
Brown -- South
Slate -- West
Red -- Subscriber/Drop wire

As Jim said, we place them on the cable as they enter the pedestal or enclosure. On a fiber splice case, I will place them on the cable just before they enter the case. We have used tags in the past as well, but not as extensively.

On pair binders, I have used both scrap wire of the appropriate color, or colored ties.

Very interesting...I never heard of tagging the cables by direction but that makes sense. A few months ago we had a cable cut at our branch office and when the splicer repaired it, he did use pieces of wire wrapped around each binder (100 pair).

Jeff, that may have been more to just keep the binders together and not a directional thing.

I don't think it was for direction, just to ID the binders...it was a straight splice anyway.

If its not a filled cable, the binder markings that are manufactured in the cable are very light weight and easily lost. You can take these (white and blue strands, for example) and wrap them around the cable group, wrapping white one way and blue the other way, then tie them off toegether. Hard to explain in text, but easy to do.

The colorer ties or scraps of conductor make a better marker.

ffej010 - I forgot about Red for drops. I didn't use them much. It was usually pretty obvious which one was the drop!

I will also place the same directional colored ties on the bonding strap of each cable in the ped as well. That way when you need to get out your locator to mark a cable, makes it much easier to determine which lead to connect the locator up to.