Terminate Cat 5e in furnace room?

15 years ago

Apropos of my question about running cat 5e through my furnace room, I'm wondering if that indeed is the place I ought to terminate the cables, since the furnace room ceiling is open and has access to the various ducts/plenums and what have you that would give me access to wire just about all the rooms in the house.

Leviton make some boxes/inserts that would seem like a cool way of doing it, I was going to get some sort of new (or used) rj45 patch panel and fit it in the room which might eventually be the 'media room' and, as a geek/nerd would be happy with it, but some might prefer it more out of sight, so was thinking one of these boxes with the push-in inserts would do the trick. There are modules for phone, data and video. I had figured on just using cat 5e for phone, Telus here "recommend" it yet Home Depot sells tons of cat 3 still. Are there any perceived issues with me setting up the wiring this way? I kind of need to start on it now, because one of my wireless adapters is a little haywire and I have no desire to replace it, I'd rather just go hardwired, but my options are limited as to location unless I start running cat 5, as I have only two phone jacks and both are in fairly stupid places. My demarcation box outside is old and odd and hard to interpret, I note that Telus offer to change it to the new type for free. I'll be taking them up on that, I will probably leave the original two extensions wired as they are, as I have no access to rewire them, but would like to make a new run from the demarcation box to the distribution box I've described.

It appears you can sort of interchange between phone and ethernet if you wish, the way the box is set up, of course you don't want to make a mistake, I don't know what 100v of ring tone would do to an ethernet adapter.

In my old office in Australia, my phone/wiring guy terminated one of my phone lines to my rj45 patch bay so I could route a phone line to any jack in the office so clients could connect their dialup to it, I used the RJ-11 reducing bushings so no RJ45 could go into it, in a residential situation, however, I think I'm better off with dedicated phone jacks. Will there be any interference issues if phone lines (running on their own cat 5 cable) share a outlet box with ethernet? I have slated 6-jack wall plates (yes, I'll probably use all 6 jacks, one phone 5 data) some of the phone jacks will be 'dry' ie not connected to the phone line, as I have a line feeding out from my all-in-one fax, first phone line goes into it, then it feeds out to all the phones in the house.

Any thoughts on this? Is a furnace room ok for the termination of these wires if I enclose them in a box? Would a regular closet be better? I can manage that too.

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Comments (9)

joed
15 years ago
There is no reason I can think of not to have it in the furnace room.
heimert
15 years ago
But don't think you can run the wires inside the ducts. You may be able to, but it's not necessarily a good idea.

As for phone/ethernet, an RJ45 jack will accept a telephone plug and will carry the signal. Obviously you don't want to intermingle the two, though. What I did was to run separate colored cables to each location, one for ethernet one for phone, but used Cat6 for both. I then terminated with different colored jacks for phone and ethernet. Right now I have phones plugged into the phone jacks, and they're all tied together in the basement with a phone patch panel. However, I expect that phones will be obsolete within a few years and at that point I'll be able to use everything for ethernet.
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pjb999
Original Author
15 years ago
I had considered just RJ-45 for everything but decided dedicated phone jacks were the way to go otherwise. All will be cat 5e so I can always change.

I have engaged in the 'plenum' debate a couple of times with people who insist (and they may be right) that 'plenum' when talking about plenum rated cable means only suspended ceilings that act as a plenum or cold air return.

I do have one section where using a section of the cold air return would be the easiest way to run cat 5 and new coax to one room, however, I don't know if coax is available in a plenum rating.

In the instance of a fire, cable running through any sort of plenum will be the smallest of issues, plenum cable is supposed to not sustain flame or smoke as much. It's also three times as expensive.

The packaging on the plenum cable boxes says (this is BC Canada, maybe its different) it is suitable for use in ducts. I doubt I will, but once the new-cable smell (offgassing) is gone, it would probably not make much of a difference. Like I said, I didn't know what to refer to those dropped sections of ceiling where wiring and plumbing goes, but that's where I'll run my cable.
steve_fl
15 years ago
pjb999-
Yes-coax is available in plenum rated-
and yes, it is more expensive.
pjb999
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks. I will probably have to use a little (plenum rated coax), I suspect I'll have to look around for it.
pharkus
15 years ago
Somehow I actually can't remember where the heck it was, but one of the places I did work had EVERYTHING terminated in the "boiler room". Electrical service, telephone system, cable, eventually computer networking stuff.

I was kinda concerned about heat since they also had their fileserver and such there, but apparently there weren't any problems.
pjb999
Original Author
15 years ago
Those Leviton managed media things actually offer a router, so if you did so, it would indeed be in the furnace room. I wondered about that too. I believe those panels can be flush mounted too so I suppose they could go in your media room or whatever, not sure if people would think that was good or not. I'm going to have to ponder just how I want to do it, also I like the look/idea of the leviton boxes/systems but they're very expensive, but the alternative of a more traditional patch bay type of thing is not everyone's cup of tea visually and would be likely to get dusty.
heimert
15 years ago
I personally would not get a leviton router -- who makes them and are they trustworthy? I would want a router that I know I can configure properly and has modern features.

Also, one could put the router somewhere other than the furnace room. You just would need two ethernet jacks next to each other. You would connect the cable modem to one of those jacks and at the other end plug into the WAN port on your router. Then from teh LAN port on your router plug into the other jack running back to the patch panel and switch.
pjb999
Original Author
15 years ago
I'm with you there. I deal with customers on the phone every day who have routers, and Leviton is not one I hear mention of..so I had pretty much figured just how you described it, besides, you still have to have your modem somewhere.

Of course, for every computer not in the same area/room as the router, I will need to run a cable to a jack (so more than just two, if you think about it), then from jack back to the dist board, but I'd figured on that and assume that's why they make wall faceplates that'll accomodate as many as 6 jacks.

Terminate Cat 5e in furnace room?

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