We have our way of doing it, but aren't completely satisfied.

What is your plan of attack. This is what I have so far:

* Start with the longest run first, set all your hooks/hangers for that line b/c they will be ready for the shorter pulls.

Always pull from the end BACK to the SP / AV Rack - this way all your wires are the same length and labels are at the same location on every wire.

So, do you take the time to do printed labels when you prewire, then relabel when you trim out the AV Rack / SP?

Do you labe once and use it?

Do you use a numbering method and a sheet of paper that shows whats what?

I'm just hoping to catch any tips/tricks or techniques that we may be able to use to help improve our current process.

Number your cables while your planning the job. Put a little note on each cable with the wire number on your blue prints. Get panduit printer labels & setup a spread sheet. Put every wire number in there. Print 4 sets.

Set 1 & 2 are for both ends of each cable on roughin.
Set 3 & 4 are for both ends of each cable at trim.

These label sets will be helpful because if there are some leftover.. you missed a wire. The spreadsheet is saved as documentation with a notes column to the right of the wire number column telling where each one goes.

It will end up costing less to do it this way if you add up material and time saved. Its like a minute per cable to use a DYMO or ID Expert. If you enter all the numbers in the spreadsheet while your planning the job you basically only have to do it once.

On new construction i mount all boxes & brackets for keypads data speakers tv's whatever. After the locations are signed off on i drill my floor to floor paths from the top floor to the head end.then i begin drilling paths towards rooms then finally paths to locations. Then i put in any hooks and hangers and pull all my cable. I strap it in place at the device so it cant get lost in the wall an di start banging in protection plates to keep drywall screws out of my bundles. I work my way from the top floor down pulling bundles neat and securing them and finally at the head end i try to plan out where the racks will be and pull all cat5's to 1 spot, speaker cable to another etc.

To be honest i dont really care about keeping the lengths the same at the head end as long as the shortest one is long enough im happy. If you do the math its better to waste 10 feet of cable than spend an hour each day trying to keep cables the same length. At trim out i cut them all down anyway.

I always pull from the room location to the head end. Since the head end is typically in the basement gravity is on my side :). Also.. its easier to look around a room and make sure all your wires are in place vs trying to determine it from the head end.

Everybody has their methods that they're happy with.

Me? I'm lazy. I like to set up all of my spools of wire in one location and leave them there. At the rack. In the mechanical room.

For really long basement pulls, through mechanical rooms, I use Arlington "D" rings. I screw the first and last ring to the ceiling using all of the screw holes. All of the other rings I attach on one side only. I pull cables through the first ring and the last ring until I have the length I need. Then I walk back and loop the cable over the other rings and then screw the other half of the rings to the ceiling. That way I don't have to thread the cables through each and every ring.

[Link: arlcatalog.com]

I worked with a guy who did it this way. It was nice not to have to move the cable from room to room.

we always pull from the head end. First we find our main trunk path set rings/hooks. and then pull to each location. I found it saves time and materials doing it this way.

As far as labeling, we always label the cables use. if it is going to be used as the master bedroom cable we label it that. If it's spare we label it the room and spare (cable type and #). that way we don;t need a master list and when trimming a panel or room we can color code or punch/connect where needed.

Are you concerned if your speaker wires are different lengths?

I'm not concerned about lengths, I can always cut them down later, My thought process on having them the same length has to do with something I read about making it much easier to locate a wire when they are all the same length and labeled at the same point.

really, I was just questioning our labeling method. I like Stamps idea of just have all the sheets printed out (4 sets), regardless of whether you using a number scheme or by room name, having everything printed and ready seems very efficient.

In the screenshot you will see the wire number start out with DIN- for Dining room.

To be honest i prefer numbering cables 1 thru whatever and having a spreadsheet that tells you where each cable goes/ what its for. This is how i was taught to do it my first year on the job and IMO its the easiest fastest way to do it and its as reliable as any other system.

What i mean is that @ trim out DIN-008 isnt going to tell you anymore than -008 is. You still have to look at the spreadsheet to know that -008 is a speaker cable for the dining room just like you would if you tagged it as DIN-008. Its personal preference. Either way will work.

Whatever you do.. you dont want to get into a situation where you have a DIN-008 and a LIV-008. IMO this sucks because its real easy to grab the LIV-008 when you mean to gran the DIN-008 once you start getting tired or if the lights are dim etc.



As far as labeling at rough-in i let all the cables hang out of the ceiling above where the racks will go and i try to line the labels up about as high as i can reach. I know this part of the cable will be in the hidden service loop so they wont get cut off. Trim labels go right at the end before the connector after the cable has been routed, cut to lenght & terminated.

39,
what kind of labels do you use? Any special settings for the spreadsheet so the printing hits the labels properly?

I used to use a Brady label with a pin feed printer...obviously eons ago. I haven't seen a good printed solution since then.

Also (continuing on with Ernie's questions) are you just doing a typical excel spreadsheet for you labels? Or is there something in the software you are using to print your labels that correlates everything together?

This is a screenshot of panduit labels. You basically just make the cells match the labels your using. I wish i could offer more information about it but i had one of the ladies in the office make it for me years ago. As we began to use D-Tools more i stopped having to make manual wire lists.

This is where we get laser printer labels that we use with D-Tools. The model number is LSL-78. They give you a nice wide area for text. [Link: connex-electronics.com]

D-Tools basically integrates all the little things you do. Wire numbers (labels & reports), parts & products for your proposal, system design, prints and schematics and a bunch of other stuff i am missing.

So when your dragging in a wire.. lets say the speaker cable in the Dining Room.. DIN-008 is generated automatically and when you print your wire labels its there. DIN-008 is on the wire report.. its connected to everything.

If your doing things manually. Your dragging in a wire.. giving it the number you choose. Now you have to manually create a spreadsheet to go with it. So 1 spread sheet like the example i gave EBG above with the wire numbers. If you stick to simple numbers vs room names you can use the number spread sheet over and over.

And one spread sheet thats a Wire Report telling you what each wire is. I put together this screenshot to try to keep with our Dining Room theme :). Obviously you can have as much or as little detail as you want. You could include wire colors, a notes column that says things like "in cabinet" or "behind bed". A column that says what its for like "Phone" "Keypad". A column that says "Local Loop" or "Home Run".. whatever you want.

Cable pulls are from the device to the headend. This allows you to set up multiple stands and pull multiple rooms at the same time.

I use the same type of system for labeling. We use Brady laser printer labels. In our design process, we assign IDs to individual cables when we create the wire-pull lists. These designations then make their way into the wiring schematics later on down the line. We start our numbering from X000 and work our way up. Every cable in the system has a completely unique ID.

Our numbering convention is as follows:

RR_SS000 where R = Room, S = Signal, 000 = unique number, so for instance Great Room Plasma video signal is

GR_RGB001

Great Room Plasma 232 is
GR_C001

wash, rinse, repeat...

39 cent stamp, here's a tip for you and anybody else that uses a numbering system for their cables. You will find this system in use on commercial plans and it's the system used by the AIA.

Each room gets a number, followed by a decimal point. The very first digit represents a floor level (000 being the basement, 100 being the first floor). Each number after the decimal point represents an item in that room.

For example, a first-floor dining room would be 108. The lighting keypad at one entry to the dining room would be 108.1 and the lighting keypad at the other side of the room would be 108.2. This way, if the client adds another keypad in the dining room, you haven't run out of numbers for the dining room.

You could add a letter symbol to this system to tell the difference between what a particular cat5e does, for example. Perhaps LKP.108.1, LKP.108.2, TP.108.1, SPK.108.1, SPK.108.2, TSTAT.108.1

Keep the leading three digit number the same for every job you do and it won't belong before you recognize a first-floor dining room when you see the number 108. (Since the AIA standard is for large commercial buildings, the numbering system they use starts with the room in the southwest corner and moves clock-wise. If the building has just one central corridor, the numbers ascend with the even numbers on one side of the corridor and the odd numbers on the other side).