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njbuilding143

Low Voltage Cat6 wiring issue..

10 years ago

Just wanted to see if anyone on here might be able to give me some insight as to a problem I found.. I am in the process of building a home and had the house prewired by a professional crew with cat6 wiring.. Part of the wiring was for a whole house audio system that consisted of cat6 cables going from a central media closet to a wall outlet for a keypad.. Well I decided to tackle the project of terminating the ends and installing after being provided a ridiculous quote.. Everything was going great and I finished the install, however when I power everything up I found 3 keypads not working.. I started diagnosing and found that the equipment itself is all functional.. The only common variable was the wire.. I put a cable tester on it and it showed as good.. The tester showed that the pairs were all in matching sequence.. So now I am stumped on what the problem is.. I thought maybe a nail tore the wire or something but it shows as good on the tester.. At this point we cannot run new wire.. The locations of the ones not working are in places that are going to be close to impossible to run a new wire to due to placement of support beams and such.. Any ideas what might be causing this? Again, my cable tester is showing that the pairs are matching on both ends AND shows the length of cables which is the same on both ends..

Comments (5)

  • 10 years ago

    Sometimes those ridiculous quotes end up being reasonable after problems are encountered. That being said make sure you used cat6 terminations as the larger wire size can cause cat5 terminations to not work properly. Outside of that I'd re-punch/ crimp the ends of the wires as I'd bet you have a loose connection somewhere. From experience I can tell you a loose connection can show up ok on a tester but not work at all for network/audio/intercom systems.

  • 10 years ago

    Thanks for the input.. I still find that $10k to terminate 50 runs of Internet, 16 pairs of speakers, and 30 runs of cat6 for audio keypads and cameras is ridiculous.. And it's only terminating the ends in basement as I did the rest of house.. That's basically 100 per termination..


    Besides that hat I have already removed and replaced the ends two times and still nothing.. I am beyond confused on this..

  • 10 years ago

    What kind of ends are you using? Do they go to a punchdown block or an RJ45 connector?

    Your tester showed all pairs good?

    A good quality crimper (ratcheting style) will be worth it. Bend and pull on the cables when testing them. They could be good until they bend to connect to the jack.

    Can you swap out a working keypad to eliminate that as the problem?

  • 10 years ago

    Most cheap testers only check the pair continuity. It doesn't do a full speed test (you'd need a TDR or some better tester). Most likely you've failed to properly pay attention to the installation procedures (especially keeping things twisted all the way to the connection).

  • 10 years ago

    Just wanted to update.. I went back over and trimmed a minimum of 12 inches off of the end in the basement.. I left enough slack in the basement in case I ever needed to move the equipment to a different wall so there was plenty to trim.. Anyway, after trimming the end in the basement I decided to redo the connectors and trimmed a few inches at the keypads.. I then tried the system again and I now have the living room and kitchen keypads working which were my main concern.. I am still having difficulty with the spare bedroom keypad, however I found that the drywall installers or someone stuffed some wire through the box and into the wall cavity.. After carefully pulling it all out I found a kink in the wire that I think is the cause of hte problem.. The problem is that the kink is in such a spot that it would be impossible for me to put a connector on it.. It is too far into the electrical box.. I am thinking that the only solution is to cut out a section of drywall and try extending the wire.. I can do this from the back of the electrical box as this shares a wall with a closet so the repair would not have to be perfect as it would never be seen..