Hi guys, good morning.
When wiring up offices for voice/data/video with cat cable,
How do you guys protect your wires that protrude from the Low Voltage boxes getting damaged by the sheetrockers? I loop my wires cleanly and strap them with tie wraps and hope for the best, but I've gotten burnt one too many times and I want to avoid issues before they happen going forward.
Thanks in advance for your help and insight!
Good luck with that. Sometimes I have pushed the the wires up into the conduit so there isn't as much in the box. If you have a good loop above the ceiling that is tied off then you can usually pull the cable back down. I'm sure there are some people on here with better ways than mine though.
Have you considered buying the sheetrock installers pizza from lunch on their first day/month on the job? Also have you looked into getting wire labels or stickers with this printed on it?
Otherwise I think you're doing all you can short of leaving all your wire in the ceiling and just leave a jetline/nylon line in the box, which seems like a terrible hassle to me.
Sean, thanks for that tip. that rotozip though...
The sticker might backfire. I've seen some egos on the job site unfortunately. (Ha! I'll teach this guy...)
Not all job sites have drop ceiling. so I don't really have that option. The current job I'm on is all about open ceiling design (makes running the wires to the endpoints a little more difficult, and forces us to get a bit creative)
Yes, please don't use that sticker, it was merely a joke.
So your primary issues are the wires getting nicked or cut when theyre cutting the holes for the boxes?
You can maybe try to talk to the sheetrock foreman and give him a quick tour of the wire runs, box locations, and paths to be aware of.
Brian,
It's really the wire at the box locations that I'm worried about. Rotozips make quick work of cutting out for high voltage and low voltage boxes. The rockers love them as it makes their life a lot easier. Electricians can bury their wire in the back of the boxes and keep them out of the way of the dreaded spinning blade. Us LV guys don't have the same opportunity.
For pre-wiring before sheetrock, we've have good success using short pieces of painters tape to secure the wiring in the center of the stud - all the way down to the bottom (adjacent to the mud-ring). When we are ready to trim, we reach in and grab the slack and terminate. Never been hit yet by the drywall guys.
I like that idea, but that would require that we cut the wire at the floor. Giving us around 12" to work with once all is done. Pretty tight but doable.
Try looping the wire back up from the bottom and tape in place, when you pull on the end of the wire the tape breaks and you'll have plenty of slack.
We make sure to put the slack in the jbox at the end of the run, close it up with a blank. Let them do their thing then open it back up and pull the cables back out.
Maybe you need to pull your cable after they have been and gone. As long as the EMT is there, you would have pathing.
Thanks Michael, we aren't using J boxes. Just wiring to the mudrings. we can't wire once the walls are rocked as this job (any others these days) call for a "modern" open ceiling design. Even if we would use conduit and j boxes, we couldn't put blank covers on them. being that blanks are larger than the mudrings and overlap the sheetrock.
Are your wires contained in conduit, and is that conduit attached to the box? Are the boxes the low voltage type with the open back? If low voltage, with open back, I coil a few loops in the wall, behind the box and once the drywall is finished and painted, I reach through to my undamaged wire.
If it’s just a conduit drop attached to the box, and there is a way to coil some wire in the ceiling that is accessible, I use nylon pull string to the box, and I don’t worry about that being damaged. I pull the string that feeds the wire into the conduit from the ceiling after drywall is finished and painted.
Worst case is all conduit, back to the head end, attached to the box and no access to ceiling, meaning if the wire gets damaged you’ll be pulling a new wire. Pull a nylon cord through, do not pull the wire until after the drywall is installed.
I've used steel mud rings too, and coil wire in the wall higher, or lower, than the ring so anything penetrating the wall through the ring, like a Rotozip, saw or knife, won't be in range. I use a heavy wire to hook my coil if I can't reach through to the wire.
The idea is to keep the wires out of reach of the cutting tool.
Or as I do often, let the drywallers bury the wires and cut the holes myself and then use LV-1, or similar, and cut a clean straight properly sized hole that never has to be repaired with compound.
We dont usually do this type of work but I remember being in an apartment building being built and the guys doing the data/coax etc ran their line down the wall to the floor, then came back up into the box. I think it was loosely stapled to the stud under the box. I can't remember exactly but I remember it looking pretty flimsy so it would come loose when they pulled from the box during trim out.
I think this is similar to what UI2 already said.
I have seen people put a small piece of card board in the opening to help keep the wire towards the back to help prevent this. Also if you use a 1900 box, 4 square, with a single gang mud ring this helps as well. I forget to put this in my first response.
The worst I ever had was a house I did a couple years back and one of the cable outlets was behind a stack of sheet rock which was on the exterior wall of a basement. My box was already there but I hadn't run the cable yet. I wasn't going to move 20 sheets of rock so I draped the cable with a large piece of cardboard asking to please stick the wire out of the box. Well I come back a couple of weeks later and they managed to get my coax glued between the stud and the sheet rock. I would assume when the sheet rock bulged over the stud and started cracking they would have realized what happened, hell no the didn't. At that point the only option is to start cutting as many holes has you can to get the wire free. At that point they have to pull off a section of sheet rock and scrape away all the glue they used. Good thing is I knew the GC very well and hit the rockers with the charge back. Needless to say that didn't happen again on that job either.
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