Home Wiring Help

[Drakkon]

My boss bought a house recently and trying to look good I told him I'd help him wire the place up for internet. Well i get inside and start looking around and I see a bunch of CAT5 ports, every single one under a coax cable outlet. there are 4 rooms, each one with one of these style of hookups. I find one more cat5 port in the kitchen (seemed a little wierd) and then a phone port in one of the bedrooms. So a total of 5 cat5 ports, 4 coax ports, and 1 phone port.

I look in the patch panel next and see one of the wierdest things I've yet to encounter. They have used cat5 to wire them all up as PHONE wiring. I take off the little outlet panels to confirm and sure enough, all wired as phones. The extra wires for cat5 ethernet have been trimmed back to the point i cant crimp onto anything for an ethernet port anymore.
Now the second wierd thing. There are also 12 cat5 cable ENDS inside this panel which connect to NOTHING as far as i can tell. Except for they seem to run down the wall and into the house somewhere. Havent hooked anything up to a line tester yet but as far as i can tell they come out nowhere in the house 😕

Obviously I'm no eletrician but this just seems like something is wrong here. No more panels open up so how am i got get cat5 ETHERNET into every room? He doesnt want to use wireless and doesnt want cables showing. It seems like if there are cat5 ports all through the house theres gotta be some way but with the wires trimmed back I'm at a loss.

 

[imported_nocturne]

Well, there's no telling what might occur if an electrician does the wiring either...

To answer about ethernet phone lines, they do exist, along with ethernet phones. Usually businesses will use ethernet lines for their phone system because with 8 wires you can have 4 phone lines (instead of two) or use the extra lines for other purposes (like a messaging/PA system). The only thing is that the phone ports are all ethernet ports, but only the 2wires for the phone are hooked up anyways and most likely he has only one or two lines.

I think what the problem was is either your boss insisted on it being done 'the way it he thinks it should be done' (an epidemic amongst boss-types), or the electrician truly didn't understand the point of the ethernet lines. What should of been done is for all ethernet lines to be wired to one room (preferably one with phone/cable for high-speed internet), and each line needs to be wired to it's own port (so each one can hook up to the router (NO LINE CAN BE CROSSED/DOUBLED)). It's great to be able to have everything hard-wired into the house, since ethernet is usually builtin nowadays and cards are cheaper than wireless by a longshot (and no threat of your neighbor stealing your net access).

The only real way to find out where those spare lines are going is to connect a battery to two of the lines of one cable, and then use a test light (basically a lamp wired up to two probes, available at sears and most auto shops) to test the corresponding wires at each port in each room.

As it's wired up now, the whole system is usless (with possibly the exception of the single phone jack and the coaxial, depending if the electrician didn't screw those up too). What he should do is get his money back. I'm sure the electrician would offer to fix the problem (probally at extra expense, of course), but why trust him to do it again if he couldn't get it the first time?! If it is impossible to get a complete refund, I would call the BBB and count it as a loss, and then call a professional.

 

[Drakkon]

this is how the house came...he didnt hire anyone to do it...it was sold to him under the premise it was wired for internet as a home business would be. Now that "wired for internet" can be taken to mean that since the coax is there its "wired" and thus hes screwed most likely so its just a matter of trying to figure out a good way to work with whats there :/

 

[ch33zw1z]

since the cat5 is already run then all you have to do is put new heads OR jacks on the cables if you want them for network use. The others you can leave alone.

Stick w/ the tone generator to find where the runs go...you can prolly hook him up a nice network. Doesn't sound hopeless, might take some work so show your boss how to wire and let him do some lol.

Edit: RJ-11 plugs will fit into RJ-45 plugs, just a fyi for the jacks already wired for phone.

 

[skyking]

RJ-11 plugs will fit into RJ-45 plugs

But don't plan on using them for a network again. The plastic on the outer edges of an rj11 male will bend and possibly short out the outside pairs in a rj45 keystone jack. I've had to fix plenty of jacks that got 'bent'😛

 

[Brazen]

You can even use one Cat5 wire as an ethernet port and a phone port, or even 2 ethernet ports. Ethernet only actually uses 2 pairs and a phone line only uses 1 pair, so go crazy on it (you can do the googling to find out which wires have to be crimped down for ethernet, but we did do that at my work - split one cat5 into 2 ethernet ports). Of course if you can't pull enough line through to reach over to a second port, you are still screwed (though I think you can get one faceplate with two ports side by side).

I am rewiring my house (phone, ethernet, coax, and electrical). To run new wires, I cut a whole at the base of the wall big enough to fit a drill in and then drill a half inch whole behind the wall to run the cable down to the next level (basement). feed the wire down and cut any new holes (if the basement is finished) if necessary to get all the wires to the central box. Then just stick the drywall cutout back in place and mud and tape around it. I actually have have plaster walls so I cut a new piece of drywall to fit. The parts I've done you can't even tell any difference. This was a snap for me, but then I've also remodeled some rooms completely (tore down to the studs), so this was an easy job for me.

 

[netsysadmin]

Ok first off it is common practice to use Cat5 to wire phone jacks. It is done all the time in residential and commercial wiring jobs. As far as the extra Cat5 lines in the wiring box. It is possible that they are going to the same location at the phone jacks, but they are not wired up yet? I would check behind some of the wall jacks and see if you can find the un terminated wires sitting there. If you cant find them there you could always look in the attic/crawlspace to trace where the wires go.

John

 

[Drakkon]

Originally posted by: netsysadmin
Ok first off it is common practice to use Cat5 to wire phone jacks. It is done all the time in residential and commercial wiring jobs. As far as the extra Cat5 lines in the wiring box. It is possible that they are going to the same location at the phone jacks, but they are not wired up yet? I would check behind some of the wall jacks and see if you can find the un terminated wires sitting there. If you cant find them there you could always look in the attic/crawlspace to trace where the wires go.

John

holy crap you were right...they were hidden in the walls...had to get a coathanger and dig around but sure enough there they were....im still only finding 6 ends...whcih still doesnt make since why there are 12 in the box but at least its a start

 

[imported_nocturne]

Even if your boss wants to switch to normal phone-jacks, it's not that big of a deal. All he'd have to do is switch the plate and use the cat5 for the phone jack (probally better quality than the phone line anyways). The only problem with using the existing jack with a normal phone plug is making sure that the phone line is wired to one of the two innermost pairs of contacts on the rj45 port,

The only problem is the way it's wired up is it wouldn't work for networking. This can be solved by just taking all the ends of the cables (in the telephone junction box) he'd want to be for the network, and re-wiring them into the room closest to the junction box to seperate ports.

 

[MrMet]

Well, there's no telling what might occur if an electrician does the wiring either...

Dont blame an electrician, this seems like a clasic case of Home Depot I mean Home Dopey homeowner syndrome!!!!

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: MrMet

Well, there's no telling what might occur if an electrician does the wiring either...

Dont blame an electrician, this seems like a clasic case of Home Depot I mean Home Dopey homeowner syndrome!!!!

Image if he installs Token Ring ?