When to terminate??

ph0n33z

Active Member
Alright guys,

My low voltage wiring is almost complete. They plan on being done on Tuesday. However, I have some issues that need to be dealt with:

Firstly, I want to make sure that all of this cable is in working order. Sure it LOOKS ok, but who knows if it actually functions? However, the only way to have them test their wiring is to have it terminated. This is the problem. I was planning on terminating the wire over a period of time, starting with the most critical areas first. Now, it looks as though I may have to terminate this week! What do you guys think is the best way to go about this?

Should I terminate this week before insulation and drywall, so that they are able to test the wire?

Should I wait until after drywall to terminate and have them test then? (The issue with that is if something doenst work, who did it? Drywallers, or wiring guys?)

Should I stick with the original plan and terminate as I need it? (If I run into a problem, I would then call them up to come out and fix it)

If I terminate most of the drops and both ends, will I not have to re-terminate the homerun cabling since it will be going into punchblocks/elk/etc...?

I am just not sure what the best course of action is. I have over 200 runs, and insulation starts in 1 week.

EDIT: BTW, in the wiring contract it states the following: "R..... Communications will warranty all labor for the life of the cable"
 
Do you have to do formal termination? Is installing temp resistors (whatever value) at the end using cheap alligators an option? If the end of the wire is not stripped yet, may be you can connect the resistors in the home run (panel side) and have them test from the end side (so that they have to do the most difficult part)?

You better drink a lot of coffe and start early my friend. ;)
 
I am not sure what you mean elcano. I have never.....gasp.........terminated before!!

So the whole temp resistors/alligator clip thing went way over my head. Could you explain what you mean?

EDIT: no, nothing is stripped yet.
 
Exactly what wiring did you run? Security, Networking, Phone?

In my friends house I made sure the door and window sensor runs were OK and also installed the sensors before drywall/insulation was up. For other runs I checked the cable and terminated after drywall was up (motions, glass, keypads). This was easier to do and some sensors had to actually mount on the drywall itself. Also for all this wiring I just had the wiring closet end "open". I did bring in a 12 volt power supply to test the "active" components such as motion detectors/sirens/glass breaks/etc... with my multimeter.

For the network/phone, I punched down both ends after drywall was up. It was just easier at the time and I could also just install the wall plates after I was done.

I did purchase a Paladin checker for the networking. You can see the post I recently did for a pic of the patch panel in the wiring closet.
 
BSR:

It sounds like you did EXACTLY what I was planning on doing.

Here is what was run:
Security, video, audio, touchscreens, keypads, intercoms, drops(2rg62cat5e for the "common" drop), security cameras

I do have some questions though:

1) Were you not worried about the wire not working after drywall? What if something failed testing?

2) How did you test the security wiring? What type of contacts did you use?

3) What is your opinion on how to drywall over the motion detectors/keypads/touchscreens/etc....? Did the drywallers just cut a hole large enough for the wire, and pull it through? Did they bury it for you to retrieve later?
 
1) Were you not worried about the wire not working after drywall? What if something failed testing?

Real men actually look forward and enjoy this opportunity to be able to "tear out" drywall with a large hammer!

Actually we used deep single electrical boxes (painted orange) for ALL of our terminations. Thus they would not be covered over by drywall.

If there was something wrong with the wiring we had easy access to the attic and could just use the existing wiring as a "fish" and pull new wiring through the electrical box up into the attic and then run over and drop down the wiring closet.

In some places where I had multiple items installed in the same area I would just use one electrical box, then cut a small hole above/below/beside the electrical box and fish the wire to that hole. You can see an example of this method HERE.

The electrical box is actually under the Elk speaker (on the bottom) and that is where all the wiring was run for those three components (speaker, siren, and motion detector). Then I just cut a small hole in the drywall and fished the wire for a sensor. Then I just mounted the siren in its hole and the motion detector over its hole. The Elk Echo speaker actually used the electrical box for its mount so it made for a pretty neat install.

In another case I had to mount a siren, motion detector, and garage door contact monitor in the same area HERE

There was no way I would drill through all the load bearing wood beams for the garage door contact, so I just ran the wiring on the outside (via the small metal conduit of the garage door sensor) and fed it through a cover for the electrical box, which had all the wiring ran for those sensors shown.

Then as above I just cut holes for the siren and motion detector and was able to fish the wire from that electrical box to those sensors.

2) How did you test the security wiring? What type of contacts did you use?

[yoda voice] Not read the Security Install How-To have you?!?![/yoda voice]

Tsk, tsk, tsk, ...

3) What is your opinion on how to drywall over the motion detectors/keypads/touch screens/etc....? Did the drawlers just cut a hole large enough for the wire, and pull it through? Did they bury it for you to retrieve later?

I think I covered this above. For the keypads I believe you can just mount them "over" the electrical box (I haven't got to this point of my friend's project yet).

Good luck and may the automation force be with you! ;)
 
From my limited Bell experience the drywall guys prefer the outlet wiring pushed into the back of the boxes unterminated as they usually use a drywall router to cut out for the boxes. (and that tool will rip the wires to shreds if they hook onto them).

Best to check with your drywall guy first !

I would take lots of digital pics so you can locate what they might miss ( we used to call them "buried outlets' and they are hard to find later - we used a buzzer and an off-station fm radio to locate them).

Likewise your electrician will normally make most of the neutral connections and hot connections and leave the switch pigtails unterminated.

My son-in -law recently helped with a cottage reno where the owner terminated and mounted all the switches before the drywallers came in and you should see the mess that they left !

Good luck and be sure to check with your contractors first before you decide what to do !

Neil
 
Neil gives excellent advice! That is another advantage of using deep electrical boxes as we indeed did as Neil suggested and pushed the wiring back into the box.

Another thing we did was place nail guards over any wiring that would possibly be in contact with a drywall screw.

Yes, drywallers ALWAYS seem to miss a box or two so pictures help!
 
Thankyou so much for the good advice guys! After seeing your house pictures, BSR, I feel like there is so much I have forgotten. =(

What is your opinion on using Mud Rings instead of boxes?
 
ph0n33z said:
I am not sure what you mean elcano. I have never.....gasp.........terminated before!!

So the whole temp resistors/alligator clip thing went way over my head. Could you explain what you mean?

EDIT: no, nothing is stripped yet.
Please, disregard it. I was thinking about the sensors EOL terminations (assuming you weren't ready to install the sensors yet.

I'm not familiar with drywall and your type of construction. Here it is used inside commercial steel buildings, but for residential we live with plain old concrete. There are several new house developments announcing 'Smarthouse ready' , meaning that it has some structural wiring support (mostly OnQ) before pouring the concrete, but I have not seen any of them from the inside yet.
 
Elcano-

Just curious about the concrete house construction. Are interior walls usually left as concrete or do they put a thin facing of some sort inside that will take paint or wallpaper?
 
It may be too late for this, but for critical areas, my wiring guys (electricians) would pull an extra cable or two if it was going to be a lot of work to get back into the area to add wire later. Most of the work, however, was in business offices, so we almost always had an open ceiling nearby to drop from and extra wires weren't needed.
 
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