# growing pile of cable in attic/phone rooms



## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

berkey said:


> Does anyone have a tip or trick to determine if a cat5 or phone cable is still being used. The huge amounts of phone gear and blocks left by previous tenants and phone companys is driving me nuts.


Cut 'em off and see who complains?


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## BuzzKill (Oct 27, 2008)

berkey said:


> Does anyone have a tip or trick to determine if a cat5 or phone cable is still being used. The huge amounts of phone gear and blocks left by previous tenants and phone companys is driving me nuts.


I wouldn't touch it with 10 foot pole. Not my worry.


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## Shockdoc (Mar 4, 2010)

Call Scrappers , give them a key to room and then wait for the call on who needs to get refed.


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## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

Our local hospital still has phone wiring and such from when it was first constructed, back in like the '60s or something. They've upgraded the system roughly 23,420,980,893 times since then, but no one has ever removed any of the old stuff. In the attic space it is literally a carpet of thousands and thousands of old wires. Impossible to tell what's used and what's not.

The hospital engineering department has contacted us in the past about identifying and removing all the abandoned wiring, but we told them it would be cheaper and easier to build a new hospital. It's _that_ bad.

I, for one, wouldn't want to be the guy that cut the wrong wire and killed some guy in the ICU 

I dread getting service calls there because the seemingly simple act of popping a T-grid tile is almost a job unto itself.


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## BBQ (Nov 16, 2010)

Hospitals always suck to open a tile in, and if it is an old building just shoot yourself.


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## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

BBQ said:


> Hospitals always suck to open a tile in, and if it is an old building just shoot yourself.


Not to mention they have a "dust mitigation" program in place so you have to set up a tent thing around the tile you're opening.

God forbid you pop the wrong tile out


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## ethaninmotion (Sep 28, 2010)

erics37 said:


> Not to mention they have a "dust mitigation" program in place so you have to set up a tent thing around the tile you're opening.
> 
> God forbid you pop the wrong tile out


Wow pass on that, I open tiles almost daily here. Can't tell you how much dust I've had on my head lol


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## McClary’s Electrical (Feb 21, 2009)

ethaninmotion said:


> Wow pass on that, I open tiles almost daily here. Can't tell you how much dust I've had on my head lol


 

Often in hospitals, they'll have you raise the tile, spray with disinfectant, lower tile, wait 20 minutes, then take tile out.


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## MarkyMark (Jan 31, 2009)

I sent some guys out one time to demo out all the old phone wires in about a 10,000 sq foot office space. They ended up hacking up some of the fire alarm wires, and some data lines that were still in use. It took us more hours to fix the issues created by cutting the wrong wires, than we had in the job altogether. It also kind of pissed the customer off pretty badly. I won't touch another job like that with a ten foot pole now.


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## kenc (Aug 15, 2010)

As previously stated, this is not something you want to do if you don't know what you are doing, and IMO even if you do know what you are doing, I'd think about it real hard.

The only way to hunt down what's in use is with 1) a tone/probe set, Butt set, and lots of time (Line tracing isn't fast especially in an environment with multiple un-managed runs). 

Don't cut the cabling back, fully remove unused cabling and hardware. If you're removing internal cabling, I'd personally remove the associated jack(s) as well. Once a block has been declared dead and the internal cabling removed I'd either loop and label the CO cabling or completely remove it as well. Note: doing so may come back and bite your customer should any additional lines be needed in the future.

The hard part isn't going to be identifying lines in use, but rather removing old cabling which is surely in knots and/or intertwined with other cabling.

Have fun :-D


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## Grounded-B (Jan 5, 2011)

kenc said:


> As previously stated, this is not something you want to do if you don't know what you are doing, and IMO even if you do know what you are doing, I'd think about it real hard.
> 
> I'd either loop and label the CO cabling or completely remove it as well. Note: doing so may come back and bite your customer should any additional lines be needed in the future.
> 
> The hard part isn't going to be identifying lines in use, but rather removing old cabling which is surely in knots and/or intertwined with other cabling.


All abandoned accessible cables shall be removed or tagged with their source and destinations per NEC 800.25

The real hard part is getting the customer to pay what it will cost to clean everything up.


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## Handy Andy (Jan 11, 2011)

Grounded-B said:


> All abandoned accessible cables shall be removed or tagged with their source and destinations per NEC 800.25
> 
> The real hard part is getting the customer to pay what it will cost to clean everything up.



So True. It is a killer of a job, but at the right price it can be a smooth sailing job...  Obviously there is quite a bit of time involved. Plus the added obstacles of ceiling tiles, crawling in the attic, constantly having to go up and down, up and down, and the strict hospital rules will require a lot of patience. 

It would be great if all cabling had an extra wire or better yet an extra 2 wires that can be used to either tone and probe, or continuity check which one is which. Sure, that idea would make cabling cost more, but in locations such as hospitals it would be worth it!


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