Typically, when I run structured wiring, the process looks like this:

1. Wire rough-in - this is complete while all walls are open. Once done, all wires are inventoried, but none are tested.

2. Wire inspection/testing - once the wall are up, but before they are painted, all wires are terminated and tested to find wires that were damaged when the walls went up. Unfortunately, the termination is only temporary, because the head end is not ready for patch panels to be mounted and the rooms aren't ready for final termination, either.

3. Final wire termination, testing and trim - finally, once all surfaces in the home are finished, all wires are properly terminated, trimmed out and tested.

The obvious problem with this approach is that I am terminating the wires twice, which is lots of extra labor.

How do you handle this? Is it possible to terminate the wires during the first inspection/testing phase in a way that doesn't require them to be reterminated?

Just as a point of interest, how many bad wires have you exposed this way? It seems overly thorough!

The first "termination" might be simplified, might not. Do a quick punch-down on a female connector or two, then test. You don't mess with a jack panel, you don't waste any male connectors, and it's faster than making permanent connections. It still might be overkill.

If you have a good idea of the cable lengths, you could use a TDR and test them without terminating as a way to check for shorts & opens, as well as determining actual use for that job. It won't tell you anything about throughput or resolution, but it's not as time consuming and it won't use parts.

if you wait until drywall to terminate and do a 1st test, why not wait a little longer and go ahead and do the final trim and test? I will put the plates and/or keystones in a baggie at the wall to protect from paint. At the head-end, for a structured wiring can, it is the final termination. If its a rack, I ask the GC / painter to finish my closet. I may go on and put the rack in the project and leave it empty and cover it, or just leave the patch panel there in a garbage bag. It depends on how many drops are involved.

Mentioned above by Chris...At the room end you can put your connectors/keystones on, test, wrap them in plastic and tape. At trim out just unbag them. This isn't always 100% but most of your locations will be fine.

Since your post specifically mentioned labor...In the control room there really isn't anything you can do about it aside from permanently terminating everything to patch panels in a rack or enclosure. But then you have to factor in the labor or cost of all the patch cables you have to make or buy. Then you have to decide whether or not your distribution products (HDMI) will work if your cables aren't continuous from matrix to device.

So you terminate & test all wiring twice? Seems if you're running into enough damaged wiring to warrant all that extra time & money, something needs to be addressed with the way you do your rough-ins or the way the drywallers do their job.

Add another wire or two to the run. That'll be cheaper than trimming twice.

For us cable certification is part of the project. It happens before drywall to catch any mistakes we made and after drywall to catch any mistakes they make.

In 20 years we have had maybe 3 projects with 1 bad wire each. Nothing we couldn't work around with extra cable or conduit. I have had plenty of situations where wires got cut short by drywall or cabinet installers. Having the two step testing covers us and we dont have to eat the additional expense of working around it.

This is how I would like to do it. You find that you are able to do the termination before drywall?

You mentioned wrapping the room side ends in tape/bags.

On the rack side, it sounds like you don't often use patch panels? Patch panels are actually our preferred method of terminating in the rack for all wire types except the shielded cat6 that we use for video/HDMI.

We just do everything twice. We don't try to permanently terminate before drywall. Do i think its possible to do? Yes. Just terminate, wrap cables with heavy duty plastic not a sandwich bag...tape the whole thing up with painters tape and push it in the wallplate/wall.


We use patch panels primarily for cat5/6 & RG6. Everything else wires directly to devices.