Network Conduit In Place
Ok, this has been on-going for a while, but remember last Monday's post about conduit? Well, here it is in place. Top half of the photo is the downstairs room and the bottom part is in the cellar, where the conduit ends.
It all came from B&Q in the end and is part of Tower's range. The long run from the loft down to where you can see here is made up of two 3m sections of 20mm solid conduit. There's then a 90o inspection cover bend and another stretch that takes it in to the cellar - via another 90o bend, which turned out to be one too many bends!
Thing's I've learnt: 1. Avoid bends! It's almost impossible to pull wires through all of this with anything more than one bend. It looks like I will have to simply have a straight run that ends above the cellar, where you can just make out the second bend, and then let the wires hang down in to it. 2. Avoid the corrugated flexible conduit. It makes a nice finishing touch but is impossible to feed wires in to. You can see there's a bit in the cellar still (lower part of photo) but that I've taken it off the other run.
Ok, that's the easy bit done. Tomorrow I need to tax your collected knowledge and work out where/what my network infrastructure will be...
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When I fitted up my home-net, I had the same problem with bends, but whipping the inspection covers off the bends allowed my to pull thru each section easily. I managed 2 network cables plus 5 6-core telephone wires (I have a digital PBX system). Howebver, I used 25mm conduit and wouldn't be surprised if you could get your 2 lots of 20mm conduit contents into one 25mm run!
As for infra-structure, my approach was to fit an twin-net router ADSL hub near to tel-point, then two single feeds to switched hubs - 1 downstairs and one upstairs, each with a further hub off the main one. Works fine. Bought wireless too, but got brain-damage trying to find out how to bridge it to the main network, so parked that one for a while. Looks like I can live without wireless, but would be nice.
Good luck +Tim+
Well we did a complete cabling troughout the new part of our house 2 years ago. As it was brand new and we did everything from plumbering to electric installation by ourselves we managed to build a complete structured Cat5+ Cat6 copper network that gives access to the network from every single room.
Each room (only the bath has none) has two fully patched network accesses so that we can run up to two computer devices or phones or mixed environment. The center where the servers reside has a wall mounted rack with 4 HE that is filled with one switch panel for 24 Units (needed some reserves) one 100Mbit Network Switch, the DSL Modem and one FW/Router Unit.
That fits my current needs and has some reserves for the future too.
What i'm planning right now for the old (1936 build and 1996 renovated, without networking gear, stupid me) part of the hause is using some of the power line adapters. A test installation worked great, better then WLAN does. Oh and Wlan is planned for the outside. Think i'll be doing this next year.
Bends, shmends.
Got a fan? Then blow a piece of cotton through the pipe. It's light enough to get round any bends. Once it pops out the end, tie a piece of light string to it and pull it back. Then once that is through you can tape or tie your cable to it, and pull the whole lot back again.
We did this when wiring up a tropical fish house. The cable piping was buried underground (with about 10 tons of cement on top) it was afterwards that the "Doh" factor hit us. Actually we used a compressed gas cylinder to force the cotton through. I dread to think how many bends were in the pipes. But it all worked in the end.
Good luck!
Thanks guys. All good to know stuff. Hopefully, tomorrow, when I describe my requirements you'll be able to point me in the right direction...
I'd use dental floss instead of cotton: it has a much greater tensile strength.
Looking at the pictures, I have to say that this does not look like conduit for electrical work. The right angles look to tight the kind for water and gas lines. Electrical conduit has "sweeping" right angles - very wide which allows for the pulling of wires. Also, the main trunk of the line should be real width conduit that then tappers off at the drop points. In my application the main trunk is 1 1/2 inch PVC that tappers down to 1/2 at the drop points. There is also a wire grease that I used when pulling the wires through. I also place junction boxes along what I figured were key point for future access or expansion. Another point, when assembling the conduit the joints should follow the direction of the wire pull. The PVC I used has one flared end for the connection that fits over the non flared end. Most time you will not get a get solid connection inside the PVC and if this is against the direction of the wire pull, the wire will bind against it. Another trick I learned from expericence is if possible pull the wire through has you assemble the line.
Good luck, looking good so far