ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Do you do the whole job?

Our main supply house stopped carrying Cat3 and 5, only stock 5e and 6 in CMR or Plenum. And the 5e CMR cost has gone to $50 A ROLL! (Plenum $75) They got a deal somewhere... 6 is up there though! (Granted this is not certification grade wire...)


Oh, and about "future proofing" with EMT, it had better be a 3/4 or 1"

You still have to follow fill for this stuff too! Otherwise you have a really hard pull in front of you.

Fred,
"Sign the change order and move on."

That would be fine if we did the pre-wire job, but we get called in after the job was installed, by some pre-wire company, and the owner wants to know why he has to pay twice, to get what he wants.
Most owners, will tell us none of these outlets are where we need them, So that is why I question the value of pre-wire, If you have a custom job, that you are doing for a customer, then you can present the plans and have them signed off, Then if they want to relocate an outlet, you can issue a change order.
Custom wire makes sense, Pre-wire for the sake of offering a pre-wired wired home, usually ends up requiring changes.

Don't know what wire that is. Brand name 5e riser is about $65/1000ft (roll) Plenum is almost 3 times that and that's from multiple suppliers, not necessarily local. No, I wouldn't expect an electrical supply house to stock CAT3 or the telephone stuff.

The answer to the "the jack is never in the right place" problem is to put jacks throughout a room. You don't need to do as many as electrical but put one on each major wall in each room unless you can say for certain a phone or computer will never be there. We do this in commercial because you never know where desks will wind up. They all go back to a cross connect and a patch panel (for the network jacks) and each are activated as necessary and can easily be changed later.

Yes, I know this is going to add to the cost but too bad. If we didn't have a code to dictate where and how many electrical receptacles need to be installed, the homeowner would only want one or two in each room. You can't leave it up to them. If they have a definite plan then fine but add others on top of what they want. Cheaper to do it during construction and they will thank you later.

-Hal

do i do the whole job?

sure , i can contract for just about anything

and hey, with the 'net one can learn all the buzz words overnight


~S~