Keep them coming!

Time for the cut-over... 🤢

Kinda looks like my old work space at the old 230 Congress Street Boston building before I was relocated to 300 Bent Street in Cambridge.

gotta love someone's idea of a new install! yes, the servers are strapped to the wall :X

You're lucky...the servers here are under the pile just below the three patch panels...

Time to revive this fan favorite topic. But, I'm going to post a URL to a website that has pictures of wiring that will make your head spin:

http://discountlowvoltage.blogspot.com/2009/10/66-block-wiring-mess-pictures.html?m=1

Wow, how could anyone consider any of those to be acceptable?

The Merlin Legend picture was just plain sad.

That fourth picture is mine. I wonder where they stole it?

I thought it looked familiar.

While enjoying the link above they had a suggested link ( http://discountlowvoltage.blogspot.com/2009/11/crazy-data-center-wiring-pictures.html ) and when I saw the first pic I knew I had been in that room. It was a few years ago so I can't remember where it was at the moment.

Nice having a table & chair right up against the cables.

Buddy gave me a tour of one of the schools he works at. Seen a lot better and seem a lot worse!
https://imgur.com/a/5LPVIbj

The last picture...66 block. Is that for real...or...a joke that went horribly wrong.

I have see a lot of weird terminations but...

Nonsense. That's either an "I have no bridge clips" or "I have no skillz". It takes a special kind of skill to terminate 25 pairs on the back side of the pins.

Yeah, have you priced two-position bridging clips lately?

100 for $6.20 through Amazon and if I have to go to Home Depot they want $12.70 for only 50! Jeeze they think were made of money...and the project is bid tight!

I suppose I could always find some scrap x-connect on the floor to use.

LOL!!! Now That's a move of desperation!

I still have a hundred or so of the SMBC2-2 (white) 2-position bridge clips and at least a couple hundred SA1's.
I cheated on my last 2 hospitality installs and just ran crosscuts. That's the low-budget way.

The last picture looks like a no skillz scenario. It is a 66/25 block as opposed to a 66/50.

You ran crosscuts?

We always referred to those as Banjo's...when the cross-connect wire goes across a field of 66 blocks because the installer was too lazy or cheap to go out to their rig and grab a roll.

This image that Jeff posted reminds be of a fellow "worker" that could not retain the idea: "When you add cables to an existing run remove ALL old ty-wraps*. Only have ONE SET." Constantly reworking his work. Don't get me started on George's other tricks of the trade.

*Back in the day's before velcro.

I still have 2000+' of XCW to use up! I got lucky on the last one, the Mitel SX-50 had a much larger field and I moved to 2 66 blocks at the beginning of the field so most all of the jumpers were rip off from the Mitel and move to the Yeastar.

I only lost a couple of extensions.

I also have some 2-pair and 3-pair and some Cat-3 (looks more like zero) jumper wire.

I worked on a 1A2 system that had 6000 lines and 8000 telephones. Bridging clips were forbidden except in a few emergency cases. Every feature (button appearance) had its own cross connection. Bridging clips are fine for small systems, but are a PITA in systems where there is a constant MAC going on. Plan it right in the beginning, and it will stay neat, assuming all workers are proud of their work and are on the same page.

Those two schmucks re-doing the yellow patch cords only need to come back in a month and do the whole thing over. That's how long it will take for the job to get ugly again.

anyone know where I can get some spaghetti sauce?
a tenant is in the process of moving out of multiple spaces in a building my friend manages.
https://imgur.com/a/fgRSAK8

I'm also impressed with the sleeves and distribution posts. When you're told a job is bid tight...

sorry they're all sideways. this is... something I've been asked to try to make sense of.

Easy it only take time.

⏲ = 💰

Call bigmoe, he looks like he knows what's up.

Start cutting jumpers and see who comes down to complain.

Those large demarcs look like a cross between a gigantic barrier strip and a punchdown block.
Isn't the white/violet cross-connect wire commonly used in outdoor pedestals?

Does NYT(Verizon) have any discernible labeling on the 66-block covers?

Those are/were made by 3M. Normally seen in crossboxes.
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/687875O/3mtm-new-construction-cross-connect-cabinets.pdf

Thanks Jeff! The brochure has a date of 2013...a fairly recent publication.

Picture doesnt have great detail but it looks older, like it's the plain ol quiet front screw blocks. But that's the terminal you dont need to worry about that anyway


Besides that I see 66 blocks for telephone demarc, and 66 blocks for the building wires. Someone put up a couple krone blocks too, and theres some pretty old pbx/something with power still on, hopefully not still in use

HAHAHAHAHA.

yes, easy, just takes time. it'll take me a long time. but I'm a city worker, so *shrug*

cutting jumpers to see who complains? nobody will complain, nobody knows what most of the stuff in that room does. at all. that's what they want me to figure out.

labels on the 66 block covers? you're kidding, right? there is a label on the block you can see in the 4th pic. on the outside of the orange cover it says "block to other side of building." (there's another "phone room" on the opposite end of the bulding that's just wires wires and more wires.)

the other 66 block between the demarc and the phone system has no labels. the only labels on anything that appear to make any sense at all is in the big screw terminal block, the jumper wires have paper labels attached to SOME of them....

the big block of screw terminals has probably been there since the building was put there by the city... in 1960-something. and you'd THINK that verizon would pull everything over to the 66 block to the right and that'd be where I do my work, right? naaaaa, verizon left the covers off the screw terminal for a reason... because that's where they've decided they're done. there's stuff wired directly from there to the phone system, stuff wired to 66 blocks, stuff wired to little krone blocks, and 1 that's wired to who knows what that goes up into a conduit and off somewhere into the building., somewhere.

and yes, the phone system IS still in use.... it's only... what? 25 years old? toshiba dk96... electronic phones... cards for 64 extensions. they know where 5 of them are, on this end of the building, and 8 on the other end of the building. between the 2 offices, they have 7 analog lines showing up. there's way more than 7 lines showing up in that big ole screw terminal.... they want me to try to make sense of it, get their other lines "hooked up" to the phone system (which appears to have 12 CO lines) it's gonna take me a few weeks (because it's not MY office, so I can only spend a couple hours at a time over there) to figure out what's going on and make sense of it.

some of ya'll have your hobby systems, your special projects... here's mine.

I dunno if I got a good shot of the floor in there... there's boxes and boxes and boxes of "stuff" spilling all over the place, too.

Did anybody notice the cans of 2 cycle engine oil on top of the big screw terminal block?

The screw terminal block is literally the end of thousands of feet of phone company cable. If you go poking around in there you will find numbers that dont belong to you or anyone in your building (or at least you could have back in the day when people still ordered pots)

To clean up that part you should just look around the room and see if the metal covers for it are sitting in the corner. It's not your property or concern really. The demarc is the 66 block and if your active numbers arent in there you can call the phone company and raise hell that you dont even have an rj11 jack to do your isolation testing at, much less tagged jumpers.

It would be faster to just get your butt set out and test all the jumpers you got between the terminal and 66 block, cut ones not in service and pull them, then pull that off any others that those jumpers were servicing.

Your phone room is pretty good tbqh. The 66 blocks with the building cable on them are particularly nice. Dont worry about any of them. If you're putting a phone in for someone's desk just find that cable, theres probably a Jack there already, put tone on it then find it on the building 66 block.

I just looked again, and yeah, the covers are right next to it. Just put them back on. You definitely need to call the phone company though. You need a nid with hi voltage protection, you dont seem to have any. I'm not familiar with that exact terminal, but I dont see any protectors at all, unless they are hiding beneath that metal steel panel below the screw posts.

You could get protectors for the 66 blocks but you shouldnt have to, the utility needs to give you protected lines. If I got it I'd just put up a bid or two big enough to cover your working lines and fill any holes in the terminal with fire. putty and make sure the ground is good.

It's because of the original orientation of the images.

You can always go to the original post in PHOTOS: Click Me and when you open the image on the bottom right is a rotation icon and click on the image to scroll through. That's the way to save from getting a muscle strain in your neck.

A bid or two -> a NID or two

In major metropolitan areas where lightning exposure is low, such as in NYC, DC, etc., Bell companies didn't install protected entrance terminals. In this particular installation, I think that they originally DID install 134 type protectors with dual 100 pair stubs when the place was built in the 60's. The incoming stubs were spliced in a fire-retardant splice closure (usually 20/21 type bolted aluminum ones) to the incoming cable. The output stubs were punched down on 66 blocks. There was probably enough space to accommodate about 600 pairs comfortably.

My guess here is that NYT needed to bring in more pairs and didn't have sufficient space in the "H chambers" already in place. Since protection really wasn't needed, they replaced the 134's with these 3M binding post terminals. These were often used to terminate house cable counts, but not as often for incoming facilities. The fact that the stubs are spliced in a Raychem/Tyco closure leads me to believe that this is a lot more recent than you think. Although it's not legal to use a non-fire retardant closure, who's enforcing the rules these days? Bell did their own code compliance, but they're long gone. No local electrical inspection agency is going to have a clue.

Wow, no posts since August,, things actually getting better out there?






No, no they aren't.

Just when you thought it was safe to peek into a phone room.

Looks like all of the extensions were home run and terminated in an extremely haphazard way.

It's even worse these days, since even the telcos don't hire real telephone men any more. It's anything goes and God forbid if it involves more than a CAT5 cable.

a tenant remodeled space and is moving within a building my friend manages. This was how the phone system was installed. I realllly hope this is temporary.

Gotta love the professionalism of the full installation from the ceiling entry to securing the rack and the Key system mounted to something pulled from a dumpster.

Apparently wire management is not necessary for silver satin. The term "Trunk Slammer" come's to mind...

Is that chipboard?

quality MDF!

It is chip board, and a VERY old panasonic. I would bet that the owner of the company had his neighbor's son move it after hours one saturday.

That is not MDF, it's Oriented Strand Board (OSB)

the guy/company who did this work is shockingly still in business. He did the cabling/phones for a customer 10 plus years ago and they never called him again once I told them I could service everything

That's a very troubling photo, from a professional standpoint. I would have definitely sanded the edge of the board. It's the little things, the attention to detail, that make an installation stand out. What ever happened to pride in one's work?

LOL Arthur. OSB doesn't sand so well. Painting looks like crap unless you seal it first. Maybe a different material?

Maybe some finished product would look better. Giving the installer the benefit of the doubt, It could be that the lease has attachment rules. Especially an old TD-1232. It might be a transition system waiting for "hosted" or IP.

Carl

aaaand it got worse!
[img]https://preview.redd.it/uokdglkeirg...194e5e1a237fc66cd43053d03d9e8962d675e9ca[/img]

Couldn't even spring for a rack-mounted UPS and power strips.

hope y'all are finished with dinner...

I tried those 1' patch cords. They suck, especially when you need to pull the patch panel out to add more drops! What, maybe $19 (tops) for cable management? Still looks better than the rat's next on the top. Oh wait, those are swell drip loops.

Carl

We have moved almost entirely to unpopulated patch panels. To help with the add wires later issue.

Spaghetti central!

The conversation about this picture is happening in the photo forum.

Trying to move it here, is this cabling CPE or just poor LEC cable management?

Looks like a combination of both. I have a couple customer sites that looked like that until we cleaned them up. A job like this is where patience is learned.

Are these blocks intended to be touched by CPE vendors? I've been under the impression that the LEC would cross-connect from here to blocks that run to other locations (risers) and CPE vendors would take it from there.

The wide blocks with 6 posts across are for CPE.

All the customer wires should be punched down on them once and never touched again unless there was a problem on the block itself.

The LEC leaves jumpers with a tag on them, or terminates onto a special 66 block with a LEC cover on it.

This arrangement is almost never followed, lots of LEC techs dont know how to 66 block, and I swear even more customer techs dont know either.

The big black cable on the left going to blocks makes me think this is a big east coast city. The midwest and west coast are way too uptight about lightning/high voltage to allow unprotected pairs like that.

The OP's ID says Racine Wisconsin...so...more north than east.

I posted the photo over on Tek-Tips.

One reply says that AT&T techs in the Racine area were known to be sloppy with their work, and, that there are other buildings in the area with similar wiring.


Tek-Tips

trust me, they are sloppy EVERYWHERE

The days of consistently neat looking wiring/cabling work are past.

Your right again Jeff

here is a mess I spotted yesterday.
https://imgur.com/a/uBNrvw8

I'd happily take those 66 blocks & colored backboards.

still in use!

No complaints over that fact.

The box of FPE breakers in the room adds a nice touch.

Fire Prone Everyday!

Only problem for me is the abandoned cables and the terminal(?) With screw terminals from someone's electronic project?

I like the 66 blocks

What would you do if you saw this at a potential customer's location?

1) run away
2) quote T&M

Wow...is that a 625A jack that has the word COVID on it?

Covad was a dsl clec through the early 2000s

Wow...they predicted Covid in the early 2000's and they didn't tell anyone!

That's the proof I need to post this on Social Media!

Anyone want to take a crack at this?

Chimpanzees?

So...the box without KO's, lock missing, MC going to a 4x4 junction box with a missing cover, bushing missing on the EMT...
Other than that...looks as if it was installed by a professional...trunk slammer.

What even is that? (or supposed to be?)

It appears to be Access Control/Security monitoring stuff with fancy "Normally Open/Normally Closed" relays and I do not see any fire wire involved unless it is elsewhere.

Not sure. The picture was posted in a Low Voltage Group on Facebook. I think Professor is correct.

I enlarged the picture on my computer. The EMT does have some sort of bushing on the end. It is black in color, so it doesn't really stand out.

By the looks of the Install I figured it was black electrical tape.

Oh my, my first visit to this thread and boy do you have some shockers! I'm in Australia and our system is considerably more regulated than yours (in fact I believe we are the most regulated cabling industry in the world). You have to be a "Registered cabler" (it used to be a license) to run any comms cabling here and DIY is totally illegal even in your own home although a lot of people take the risk. We have a certificate that a cabler has to issue on completion called a TCA1 to certify it meets standards and we also have one called a TCA2 (this is the fun one) which is used by a cabler to condem cabling that is not up to standard.

We also are not allowed to make leads (patch or fly) ourselves as they have to carry an approval tick which we can't issue for multiple reasons.

I however am often the one making things messy but only temporarily as I specialize in rapid cutovers of PABXs for places like hotels and minesites. Some years ago I did the Argyle diamond mine and had 15 mins to complete the cutover (I had a team working with me) and if I remember correctly the financial impacts of every minute over run was AU$1million. We did it in 10mins. Another was a hotel in Perth which we changed over in 4 mins (there was only two of us on this) and I have pictures from that one, I did the cutover and my partner in crime did the programming.

First getting started, I had taken the old Krone blocks out and put the new in.....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6548oan9mjwvuqs/Just%20getting%20started.jpg?dl=0

Then it gets messy as I double jumper everything making sure I can strip the old connections later without interupting the new......

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rs2zwk0l9uolyw6/Work%20in%20progress.jpg?dl=0

And finally it looks better after everything is cleaned up....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7vdifj5zgda6ki/Job%20finished.jpg?dl=0

Not sure how long I can leave these on dropbox so if anyone can tell me how to put them here more permenantly, just let me know/

The difference between the first and last picture is like night and day.

More Australian pictures here......

https://www.australiancommsforum.com/?forum=354344

Thank you for the link!

Nice job on the changeover!

Sam

I've seen so many Rats nests wiring in residential and commercial over the years and I've noticed something in common and the local phone companies are guilty of this too! Over the years, phone systems have evolved to where you only need (1) pair of wires for each phone/extension or to where they just plug into an ethernet cable. I guess back in the day, phones needed a 25 pair connector which meant a lot of wiring per station and lots of punchblocks, etc. As systems have been changed over the years to ones not requiring as much wiring, it seems NO ONE wants to demo the old wiring, old punchblocks or equipment, so the newer stuff just gets added on next the years of old stuff with a few tie in's hear and there.
I've gone to locations that I can literally point out the different decades. Like here's the 1970's stuff, here's the 80's wiring & equipment, here's the 90's and so forth!
Having multiple decades of wiring just adds to the confusion, wastes space and make's the comm areas look like a disaster.
The phone company will bring in new lines and add stuff to the demarc, but never do they remove/demo the old wiring that is no longer good or in use.
I like to use the "Rip & Rebuild" approach whenever possible as I don't have time to decipher decades of unacceptable wiring all tangled up and difficult to trace. A lot of times easier to just rip out and start fresh & clean.

There are other times. though, that the extra pairs on an extension cable from an old 1A2 system saves you from an expensive and messy wiring addition in an old building with finished ceilings and layers-thick brick walls. It's certainly easier and a lot more fun to do demolition work, but isn't always the best or least expensive solution.

Just sayin'

I'm guessing that the GC told the alarm people to do whatever it takes to pass the alarm system inspection. That's certainly not the first time I've seen stuff like that done to pass inspections during new construction.

I have taken advantage of that several times. In one old bank building, the owner would not allow us to fish an Ethernet cable between floors for fear of disturbing existing asbestos. Used a StarTech 2-wire extender (basically a point-to-point DSL) on the old 25-pair cables to get Ethernet to a lower-floor office. Still have a couple harmonicas we used there (that company moved out when the building was gutted for renovation).