Simple document on telecom wiring standards.

[wires]

I have been looking all over the internet for a short and concise document on minimum standards for running wiring for data and telephone drops. I have not found anything that can help me with the following problem.

On Monday I met with a representative of a local telephone company concerning the wiring their contractor had performed for a client. A company I am associated with will be responsible for networking in the client's building once construction is complete. The ceiling tiles are not up yet and in a building with over 150 network drops there are the following problems:

Large bundles of wire run longitudinally across the top of florescent light fixtures.

No systematic support of cables or cable bundles.

Cables tied to electrical conduits.

Cable ties deforming cat5e cable.

The telephone company representative said that since there were no specifications for the job then whatever the contractor did should be acceptable. I don't really want to get in a battle with the guy but would like to be able to give him a simple document showing how the job should have been done.

Any links?

 

[GNDNI]

Maybe this is what you're looking for:

http://www.servamatic.net/cd/5682001.pdf

 

[mikeydidit]

Did the contract state anything about it being done to any codes or standards? If so you may have a leg to stand on. I too have been there and it a shame to have to put that much effort in something to make someone else do their job right. Please check and see if it is. If so post here and we can give you some ammo.

Mike Jones
LSUHSC

 

[wires]

GNDNI:
The document on Servamatics' site only has two relevant parts to the issues I am dealing with:

4.2.3 Pulling horizontal cable in open ceiling
4.2.3.1 General
The procedure for cable installations in open
ceilings is different from that in conduits. Cables
shall be supported according to local code requirements
and manufacturer provided instructions.

and

Table 2. Minimum separation distances from possible sources of EMI

While the open ceiling bit is correct it is not helpful since it passes requirements off to others. The EMI table is good. The document at 44 pages is too complex for the applicable parts to hand off to the phone guy.


mikeydidit:
Apparently there was no contract. The work was done on a T&M basis. While lack of a contract does not in and of itself allow non-code or sub-standard work it does make it more difficult to require corrective work to be done.

Thanks for the prompt replies!

 

[telman22]

you should try pointing out these problems to the Electrical Inspector.

 

[franklin97355]

Check to see what your state/county/city require for building codes. Here in Oregon the state requires that installations follow the NEC code along with current administrative rules. Most cabling here requires a permit and will be inspected.

 

[Sphoneman]

Find out the manufacturer name of the CAT5e cable & jacks they are using. Go to their website. I'm sure you will find good info.

Do as the other forum members advised about the electrical inspector, or get those yahoos off the job.

It is the contractors responsibility to perform a minimum service of a professional installation by Industry Standards,the manufacturers specs & NEC codes.


Steve
tele-dataservices.com

 

[mikeydidit]

I feel your pain brother. In the past I have dealt with electrical contractors that have subcontracted with other vendors to do the voice/data work. If you that the scenario I just laid out was bad, you should have seen the work. I spend more time on looking up codes and standards than it would have taken me to wire the building. Luckily their was one small part in the contract that stated something to the effect of “all applicable codes shall be followed” and they had the TDMM as one of the documents to be followed. Before it was over I made the sub re pull 160 cables, re terminate them, and they were sued by the contractor and are no longer in business. I wish their was something that would be easy for you to give them, but unfortunately there is not. There are many codes and standards books out. I will try to give you a few that may help, but without anything being specified to this being done to code I don’t know it will help.
1. Was anything labeled? This falls under TIA/EIA 606 administrations standards.
2. Were test ran on these cables.
All cables shall be tested in a manner that is compliant with TIA/EIA 568 B.2 specifications. Vendors are required to provide documentation of all test results for all conductor pairs of each cable. Documentation of test results must include all parameters of the above mentioned TIA/EIA 568 B.2

Here are the tests that are included in the above mentioned standards.

• Wiremap
• Length
• Attenuation
• NEXT ( new limits )
• PS-NEXT ( power sum next )
• ELFEXT ( equal level far-end crosstalk )
• PS-ELFEXT ( power sum ELFEXT )
• Propagation delay
• Delay skew
• Return Loss

3. EMI
This falls under TIA/EIA 569-A 8.2.1.5 and 10.3 chapter 21
Article 800-52 of the ANSI/NFPA 70. Special attention shall be given to electrical power supply transformers. TDMM “Telecommunications Distributions and Methods Manual”.
A minimum of 24” between electrical power cables and telecommunications cables is recommended. Sorry for such a long post, But hopefully this will give you something to go by.


Mike Jones
LSUHSC

 

[RandyVSP]

Ive had this a few times, and was told by the local building inspector " I dont know anything about that phone and comuter wire" and he basically ignored any of it unless it was electrical.

Best solution is have the contract specify certain specs. Last one we had was " All wiring shall conform to Category 5 standards".....they actually did a nice job...( for once )

Randy

 

[wires]

An update:

The local building inspector saw no problem with cat5e wire tied to electrical conduit. So much for the NEC...

The phone company finished the job and we went in to verify the 170 drops. The patch panels were not labeled except for the manufacturers numbering. Someone with a sharpie marker had numbered most of the wall plates with the patch panel numbers (1,45,23). Needless to say it is a mess. We reduced some blueprints and mapped the jack numbers which had NO relation to physical location. This is interesting since the phone system 66 blocks are in room number order. We had to tone and label over 50 jacks and had to swap 8 jacks in the plates since they were reversed.

Of the 170 jacks only 80 passed cat5e certification. 8 failed wiremap. Of those 6 would not have supported 100BaseT since pairs 2 and 3 were miswired. Many cables failed Attenuation and Return Loss in addition to various crosstalk errors.

There are 7 cables terminated in patch panels that we were unable to locate another end. Most of the patch panel to patch panel interconnects were not done.

Most interesting will be seeing what time does to this installation since (in addition to the other problems) the 2nd floor wiring runs on top of the bar joists next to the roof decking and above the insulation. It should get real hot up there in wire-tie city!

Currently there is a contractor attempting to finish the fiber work in the building which has finished ceiling, floors and most of the trim. Move in is slated for Sept 15th.

We now have 10 man hours spent on something a contractor should have done. It will be interesting to see what happens to the contractor since this is a government building filled with lawyers.

 

[3rc]

Perhaps you should draft a form for the Contractor and end user to sign that states ,that since normal wiring standards for the pre-wire were not followed,all wiring issues that have to be corrected are T&M with no liability on your part.The cable Manufacturer will not honor an installation of no common sense,in the least.

 

[hbiss]

Unfortunately if there were no specifications provided with the plans and later to become part of the contract you are out of luck. The contractor is free to install the wiring any way they want as long as it meets NEC code requirements. From what you say, about all you can get them on is cables supported by electrical conduits and laying on the top of the light fixtures. The electrical inspector is the person talk to about this, not the building inspector unless they are one and the same. Apparently this is the least of your problems though.

There is no such thing as a short and concise wiring standard. BICSI (bicsi.org) is the place to go for this. It's usual for 15 to 20 pages of their specs to be used as boilerplate for most job specs like this. They address everything you are concerned about and much more. Specs need to be included with the plans and bid documents in the very beginining. Without them you have no say as to how the job will be done and if you get a company that has no idea what they are doing good luck. Most times properly written specs will tend to weed out contractors who don't have a proven track record from the beginning so they won't even be interested in bidding.

Somebody dropped the ball on this and about all you can do now is to let them complete what they have done, pay them and go about whatever is necessary to make it work and the way you want it.

-Hal