AHL: Certs, Conduit, And Cable Math For ICT Pros

We map a clean path from residential low-voltage work to professional-grade practice, tackling certifications, conduit fill math, reel verification, and the often-misunderstood NVP. Along the way, we flag cybersecurity risks in smart homes and share standards that save time and money.

• choosing first certs for residential AV and networking
• CEDIA vs BICSI strengths and how to combine them
• why fiber matters in large homes and crossovers
• conduit fill realities, code vs standards, heat risk
• using calculators, derating for bends, leaving growth
• how to verify reel lengths fast and accurately
• when to use OTDR, TDR, and pulling eyes
• what NVP means and how testers use it
• cybersecurity pitfalls with cheap IoT and cameras

Fuel the future ICT. Donate at tinyurl.com/fuel-ict or use the on-screen QR code to support next year’s trips and scholarships

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Drinks, And Housekeeping
• 3:45 Acronym Challenge: What Is CEDIA
• 6:50 Donation Drive: Fuel The Future ICT
• 11:30 Career Pivot And First Cert Choices
• 19:40 BICSI Basics, Fiber, And Standards
• 27:15 Cybersecurity Risks In Smart Homes
• 29:20 The Conduit Question: Cat 6 Fill

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Wednesday night 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That only means one thing. Live after hours with your favorite RCDD. And you know that's me. You know I'm put it in the chat box right now. Chuck is my favorite RCDD. If you didn't notice, I did not do a live stream last week because it was Thanksgiving. I'm hoping that you guys will uh will kind of look past that. That I didn't do a live stream on Thanksgiving because uh um I was otherwise disposed. Uh couldn't really do a live stream. So there was no live stream last week. So I appreciate each and everybody. Oh, we've got to start off with what are you drinking? Tell us in the chat box, what are you drinking? You know me. It's winter, so I'm drinking my tea. So I've got today I'm drinking roasted dandelion root tea. Roasted dandelion root tea. With one scoop of honey and a throat lotion in it. That's what I'm drinking tonight. Put in the chat box, what are you drinking? Oh, I forgot to put on the chat box so I can see what people were saying. There we go. All right, so somebody's drinking ginger ale. Ginger, another coke, because somebody's drinking uh beer. Must be off work already. Okay, let's do uh wise components is drinking hot cocoa. Uh you guys got a bit of snow up there in your neck of the woods the other day, didn't you? Um Hose D and's in the house, yes. Uh make sure you hit the like button on the TikTok feed because I'm trying to get to, I don't know, some goal or something, arts or something or another. So make sure you check it. Romeo is drinking Coke, Romelio is drinking Coke. T Comstock99's in the house. Acronym challenge. So the acronym for today is CDA. CEDIA, C E D I A. C-E-D-I-A. What does that acronym mean? Tell me uh in the chat box. And the reason it's the acronym challenge for tonight is one of the questions tonight has to deal with CDA. And I got to thinking, you know, I don't know what CEDIA means. So I had to go look it up. Yes, Chuck doesn't know all the acronyms in that in the world, right? G Brown, think fiber's in the house. Hey G Brown, good to see you, my friend. Zati just joined us. He's probably drinking Diet Dr. Pepper as usual. So yeah, that's CD. What does CD mean? That's the acronym challenge. They do a lot of A V stuff. I'll give you that hint. That hint. Uh host D says he's planned on taking his Bixie Tech and his RTPM. Yes, those are both great certifications. Are you coming to Tampa to take a class, host? Let me know. So CDI, C-E-D-I-A. What does it mean? It stands for Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association. Custom Electronic Installation Design Installation Association. And basically, it's kind of like Bixie, but for the A V world, okay? Smart technology. They represent and train professionals. There are certifications you can get through CDIA, you know, uh, for installing custom home electronics and automatic systems. So, and again, that that was one of the questions in the in the uh in the the in tonight's show. In tonight's show. So there you go. And before I get too much further along, let me put up my my text message. It's that time of the year. It's that time of the year. You know, once a year I do a donation drive. So this here's the next one. We just started, kicked it off this week, and it'll go to the end of this month. It's I call it Fuel the Future ICT. Fuel the future ICT. So you can click on that little thing down there or even on that QR code right there, uh, and then go and donate to that. I your donation is not tax deductible. Okay, it's not tax deductible. But if you know, I just want everybody to know that again, the annual drive is starting off, and this helps fund everything that I do for 2026. I've already got on the boards to go to Bixie Winter, to go to Bixie, Costa Rica. Uh, I try, I want to try to do IEC East and maybe IEC West and a couple other things as well, too. So um, so that's make sure you make sure you donate to the to the podcast this month. And and and the beautiful thing about that is I don't keep that information in my head. You know me. I bring this information back and give it to you. So it's like investing in that. And then also, because of the donation fund for this year, um, I'm also gonna give uh uh it's gonna help fund some free scholarships for my study group, my RCD study group. So make sure that you know you do that donation. Okay. So again, the link is uh at the bottom of the screen and the QR codes up there for the people on TikTok and you'll take us in the house. Uh go to tinyurl.com, fuel f u e l-c-t. And then you can donate to the podcast and help fund those things for next week or for next year, so 2026. Because the podcast right now, the bank account on the podcast is$0.00. Oh, Lord have mercy. Oh, hey, uh, did you know that I gave you a shout-out in the last this week's podcast? You, um, Track It Pacer, um, The Beard of Knowledge, and Colonel Dump. Well, you were all mentioned in the podcast that aired on Monday. Yes, I even threw up your little logos and stuff. You guys were mentioned. So the first question, this one came to me from Denver Coder on YouTube, and he asks me, him and I were actually in a little bit of a conversation. Um, I did that video this week was what do you do after your RCDD? And uh he didn't know what an RCDD was, so he a couple questions back and forth, and he finally asked me, he says, I used to do HID installs for HOA management company. Right? I lost my job as a software engineer, so I started a low voltage company. Kudos to you, because starting a low voltage company is not the easiest thing to do. Anyway, he continues on and says, My plan is to do low-risk stuff like TV mounts, hide surround sound installs, dropping Ethernet, and various rooms and stuff. What would be my next or first step certification-wise? He's been in the ICT industry since 1999 doing software and cyber. Ed, maybe you should chime in on this one as well, too. Um anyway, so here, here, here I'll be the first to tell you. I am not fluent enough on the current progression of the CDIA certifications, the CDIA credentials. I did just reach out to them because of this question and invited them to come on the podcast to talk about CD, what is CDIA and what is the progression for certifications? What certification is good for these types of people and stuff. So I just said that today. So hopefully they will send me a message to come on the show. But for me, for what sounds like what you're doing now, and because of your software and your cybersecurity, it seems to me like the first certification you really should go for is the is the CD certifications, right? Especially for residential work where you're focusing on TV mounting and cable hiding, hiding the cables and surround stuff to like that. And so look at their certifications. And if I can get CD on, we'll talk about certifications. I can answer that question. But you also might want to think about, and we have a couple people in the in the chit chat box, the tic-tac, tick-tock box tonight, who've gotten their Bixie certification. So you might want to consider trying to get your Bixie installer one, installer two, because that's gonna teach you standard-based installations, okay? Code, standards, best practices. So it's gonna teach you the standards and the best practices. And they do have sections in those books that talk about residential cabling, and it's gonna tell you how to properly handle that cable, how to properly terminate that cable, how to properly test that cable. It's also going to uh tell you how to do fire stopping and and make sure that you seal those things up, and that's gonna help you build some solid habits right from day one because uh Anthony's in the house. Hey Anthony, um that helps you build solid solid habits from day one because since you're a software guy, you probably don't know that you're not supposed to pull harder on a four-pair cable than 25 pounds or 110 newtons. You're not supposed to exceed the bend radius of four times the diameter of the cable. That kind of stuff will absolutely help you. And one of the things I've seen recently in a lot of residential installs is people start to do are people are starting to branch into doing fiber for the hard for the for the high-end home integration systems. Now, yeah, my house, yeah, fiber's not a not a good idea for for me and my little house, but Eddie Tech guy will tell you, he does some of that stuff, and some of them houses he works in are huge. You know, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 square feet. So, you know, there is a bunch of home integration stuff that does use fiber. So you might want to consider looking at the FOA and the certified the CFOT, certified fiber object technician. If you go through the installer copper course, I mean installer fiber course with Bixie, you will also get some some fiber training as well. And that's going to help you a lot for do commercial crossover. Because, see, you said you wanted to start off small, so I'm recommending you stay with the AV with the home networking stuff, and then what you do is you work your way up, build up the skills to be able to do commercial work. Commercial work. Now, the beautiful thing is you don't you may not realize this, but you've got a good advantage right now because there's a lot of people out there like Chuck, who's just a knuckle dragging cable guy. I I can I can pull terminate and test cable and and all that good stuff. But when it comes to setting up her you know servers and routers and and all that stuff, that's beyond my skill sets. So you've already got that. So why not leverage your skills in software as a software engineer and cybersecurity if you couple it with you know being able to do the cabling? You already said you already understand networks. You already, and that is a huge edge, especially in residential cabling. My cousins in the house, hey, because um, because a lot of homeowners, again, they're like you know, they they got AV and a lot of AV stuff is IP based. You need to know networking for that. And homeowners are gonna trust you, especially if you can explain that tech in a level or a manner that they understand. Let me take a sip of my dandelion tea. That will build that trust. And then as you're building, as your as your as your business grows, then you might want to start considering maybe taking a design class or a project management class. Now, now Cedia does have a design track for residential work, but this is where Bixie kind of outshines CEA. They've got the RTPM, the Registered Telecommunications Project Manager. They got the RCDD. Those are design and project management certifications. So that's gonna really help you for that line because sooner or later you're gonna start bidding larger and larger and larger projects. I met with a guy who was in my RC study group, and I've known him for about a year now. He's got his own low voltage company. He lives about an hour from me down in Lakeland, and uh he's bidding larger and larger projects. So you might want to consider looking at one of those. The bottom line is Cedia is a great fit for you right now. And once I bring them on the show, watch out for that. If they don't come on the show, I will tell you they didn't come on the show. Oh, let me do this. Anybody who's watching this video, right? Anybody who's watching this video, if you know somebody at Cedia, right, if you have a contact at Cedia, reach out to them and say, hey, look, you need to get on the Let's Talk Cabling podcast because he wants to talk about CDIA. So that'll help with that, that'll help with that, right? And somebody just said in one of the uh one of the chats, cybersecurity is growing, is a growing trade. That's oh that's Tyler, hey Tyler. Um yeah, absolutely agree with that 155%. And that's also a thing that a lot of people don't understand is cybersecurity and don't understand the risks. You know, people are going out and they're buying these team moo cameras and these video surveillance systems and all these other electronics that that connect to your network that's coming from who knows where. They can hack into your network and connect to your devices. Yeah, yeah, think about that for a minute. Question number two. Now, this question was actually posed to me on the live stream two weeks ago. Because remember, I didn't do a live stream last week because it was Thanksgiving. So, this question, the guy asked during the live stream, he actually asked him on TikTok, and he said, How many cat six cables can fit into a two-inch conduit? I'll I'll repeat that question. How many cat six cables can fit into a two-inch conduit? If you think you know the answer, put the answer in the chat box. Again, don't forget, you know, fuel the future ICT. Don't forget, click on that QR code right there, help donate funds to the podcast for 2026. So here's a short answer. Here's a short answer, right? Romelio, yes, you're exactly right. It depends on the size of the cable, right? There is no universal answer here, and that's exactly what I was trying to say. There are three factors that you really want to consider. Number one, the inside diameter of that two-inch conduit. Now, there's there's sections in the code book that talk about inside diameters of of conduits of cat, and that and that's so that's where you can get that information. Or you can get the uh the Ugly's Uglies electrical reference manual, that kind of helps as well, too. Right. The second thing you want to know is what is the outside diameter of cat six cable. Hey, if you think you know what is the outside diameter, uh just joined in drinking Mountain Dew, right? So there you go. Beard of knowledge is in the house. Yes. So here's the thing: here's the rub, as Shakespeare would say, right? Here's the rub. Cat 6 cable can come in different sizes depending on which manufacturer it comes from. And even if you look at just one manufacturer and you look at cat six, the difference of the OD can be different between plenum cable, riser cable, and outside plant cable. And each one of those is going to affect the number of cables that you can put in that conduit. See, a lot of people don't realize this. A lot of people don't realize this. When you if you take a cat six cable and you look at cat six riser cable, that is the smallest cable, cat six that that has. The next bigger size is gonna be the plenum cable, and the biggest one's gonna be cat six outside plane. Just to kind of give you an example. I look up one of the manufacturers, I'm not gonna say who it was, but I look up one of the manufacturers. So, and I look at their their um their their their everyday cat six cable. Their everyday cat six cable riser, the outside diameter is 0.205, 0.205. The plum cable is 0.230. So it's it's just a little bit bigger, right? A little bit bigger. Outside plant cat six is 0.25. 0.25. Okay. Now, if you just want to use, let's let's just use the 40% fill ratio number, because that's the one a lot of people like to quote. I'll I'll get I'll dive more in just a second. So if you use a if you have a if you have a 40 inch, if you're using 40% fill ratio and it's two inches, right? That means let me look at my notes. For the for the uh for the riser cable, which is the smallest, you could put 40 of them in there. 40 of them. 40 cables at 0.205 will fit in a two-inch conduit at a 40% fill up. If you go to the plenum, remember the plum's a little bit bigger, 0.23, you can only put 32 cables in that conduit now. And if you have outside plant cat 6a, which is 0.25, you can only put 27 cables in there now. Okay, so the real question is how conservative do you really want to be? If you if you fill it up to the 40% fill ratio number, what's gonna happen is um somebody uh imagine Steve says uh uh he look up the Belden numbers today, the Beldon third 3633 Cat 6A is 0.235.235 OD. So yeah, exactly right. Um how conservative you want to be? Now this this the code does say maximum 40 percent. But if you're at 40 percent, you can't put any more cables in there. That's the thing. Now, if you've got two conduits and you're only filling one conduit, the 40%, yes, you got room to grow. If you've only got one conduit, you don't want to fill that the 40%. Because if you fill it the 40%, you're not gonna have room for growth down the road. Again, the 40% number is from the code book. The code book. Now, Bixie and Anzi, their best the standards in the best practice, from their perspective, they use they they take a more conservative approach. So if you actually look up in the the TDMM, which is sitting back there behind me, the T DMM, um, there's tables for 40%, tables for 30%, there's tables for um 40% with 190 degree bend, 40% with two 90 degree bends, 30% with 190 degree bend, 30% with two 90 degree bends. See, every time you go through a 90-degree bend, you're supposed to derate that cable by 15%. So if I've got going back to my numbers, okay, so my cat six uh plenum is 0.23, that's 32 cables. If I got to derate that by 15%, that means I can only do about 29 cables now because I've got an add I've got a bend in that cable. Now, again, that 40% fill ratio is that one everybody loves the quote. And see, most people don't know where to go find that 40% fill ratio. That 40% fill ratio is table 9.1, 9.1, and it says if you have three or more cables, the maximum fill ratio is 90%. Now, technically, though, at least up until the 2023 code book, which that's what this is, this is the 2023. I got the 2026 sitting up in the pod, the new podcast studio up on the hill. Haven't read it yet, but I've got it. But up until the 2023 code book, right? Um, all of the low voltage stuff is found in 770 and article 800. See, the stuff in chapter 9 was really written for power conductor cabling. But even though it's written for power conductor cabling, um, what page in the TDMM? Oh, that's a great question. I don't want to break out the TDMM right now because I would just send me a DM, Romelio, and I will find those tables for you. Okay. Um, but even though the table 991 was written for power conductors, a lot of AHJs, a lot of electrical inspectors still lean on that 40% number. So you'll they'll still hold you to your feet to the fire for that 40% number. Okay. Now, the ANSI standards, again, the ANSI is not big on tramming pathways full. They are they always talk about leaving room for growth. 30% growth, actually, what it says. So the theme here is do not max out your pathways. In this scenario, we're talking about conduit. And another reason you don't want to max it out to that 40% is number one, you're the most obvious, you're not going to be able to pull more cables through it. But number two, what about PoE? Power over Ethernet. PoE tends the heat of the cables, and now they're inside a conduit. That heat can't dissipate. You know, in the Bixie best practices, you know, generally that the the it's a manual and the TEM, the one common thing you're going to hear through the entire document is avoid overfilling. Avoid overfilling your pathways, whether it's conduits or later rack or jailks, because you want to make sure that you keep those pools manageable and you allow room for future cabling. Don't be that guy. Don't be that technician who who fills that conduit to 40% fill and don't leave enough for the next person to come in, okay? Just don't be that technician. Now, when it comes to you know calculating it, there are online fill ratio calculators. As a matter of fact, for my people in the chat boxes, what is a good online fill ratio calculator that you use? Because a couple of you were talking about how you've looked up um you've looked up these distances and stuff. So what tool do you use? I know there's several of them out there, but I want to know what ones do you use to see if there's one that I don't know about. There are quite a few, by the way. You can put in the cable OD, the conduit size, what fill ratio you want to go for, and it'll tell you how many cables. Oops, I'm bumping the camera there. How many cables can that be? So Romelio says Belden has an online calculator. They do, absolutely. I think so does Hilti. I think Hilti has one as well. I think Hilti has a spreadsheet. I think I've got that spreadsheet. I think I've got the Hilti spreadsheets, as a matter of fact. I'm gonna have to go look at my my my documentations afterwards.

unknown: 22:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 22:34

All right, so here comes the the third and final question for tonight. It says, this comes from Marvin, and he's a YouTube subscriber. And Marvin says, Hey Chuck, when I get a new reel of cat category rate cable or fiber cable from my distributor, how do I make sure that the length on the reel is actually correct? Right, is actually correct. Um, I've been burned before with reels that were short and it cost me a whole afternoon. What's the right way to verify the length so I don't get stuck again? You know, that Marvin, that's a that's a fantastic question because a lot of people assume that when they buy a box of a thousand feet of cable or a spool of a thousand feet of cable, they're getting a thousand feet. That's a bad assumption to make. I have had spools before where I had two 500-foot pieces of cable on a thousand-foot spool. I've had that happen before. I've had other times where I've had more than a thousand feet, right? So the the great the great thing here is because of you really want to be careful because bad real lengths will absolutely wreck your day. Absolutely wreck your day. And that's gonna cause you extra time, extra money. So verifying the length is not optional. It's something that you need to do. It's that's what the professional does. Are you the are you a professional, low voltage person? Tell me yes or no in the in the chat box because I bet I bet that you are. Um Hilty Easy Path has a fill ratio. The good thing about the Hilti Easy Path, uh, Imagine Steve is is um it has a 100% fill ratio. Imagine beautiful thing about that. So, okay, first thing you need to do is understand how does the cable arrives. The cable comes, it comes in spools, it comes in boxes, and sometimes it comes in a reel in a box. Now, commonly, I'm not gonna say all the time, but commonly fiber is gonna come on spools or reels. Now, the reels they can be made out of steel, they can be made out of wood, uh, it just kind of depends on the size of this cable and the number of the feet. But some of the reels that and you might even find a lot of people don't know this, but when sometimes when you order less than less than footage numbers, let's say that you call up your local gray bar, erringster, CSE, whomever, uh, whomever you buy your cable from, and you order 450 feet of OM3 fiber. Well, a lot of times, those distributors they buy a 5,000-foot spool, a 10,000-foot spool, and if they know you want a 450-foot spool, they'll get a spool and they will literally spool up 450 feet for it. They don't go order 450 feet spools from the manufacturer most often. They might, but most often they got a big master reel. And what if the person who's doing it did it on a Friday or he did it on a Monday? We all know what happens on Fridays and Mondays, right? People don't pay attention to details, right? So always verify that length before you start pulling the cable. Now, one of the easiest ways is to check the jacket markings. A lot of the cables nowadays have footage markers on them, right? So you can you get the you get the footage marker at the beginning, the footage marker at the end, you subtract the two, and you will find the physical length of the cable. But the problem is you don't always have access to both ends, right? You don't. Sometimes the other end is is underneath all the wraps, or sometimes it comes out and it goes in the center hole, but the piece that goes out doesn't expose the the port of the part of the jacket that has that number on the footage number. Yeah. Um, now that is the vote the most accurate way to get the the physical length of the cable. But what again, what if it was respooled? Again, you need to be super, super careful. If it's a fiber optic spool, you can actually hook up uh an OTR to it and shoot it, and it'll tell you exactly how long that that route that the cable is. You can do the same thing with testors. You can even take a you can even take a volt ohm meter. Listen to me now, you can take a volt ohm meter and put it on two conductors and measure the resistance and figure out how long that cable is. It's gonna involve a little bit of math, but it can be done. It absolutely can be done. Now, you know even if you don't want to do that math, a lot of the cable certifiers can tell you that that that length two with it with the TDR function on it, the time domain reflectometer. But you do need to know the nominal velocity of propagation, the NVP of the cable. Sometimes it's on this on the label on the spool. You might have to go look it in the catalog, or you might even have to call the manufacturer to get the MVP because you need the right NVP for that tester to determine the length of that cable. And you need it, you just do. Now, for your large large pair count cables like your 100 pair, your 400 pair, your your 800 pairs, 900 pairs, make sure that you order the cable with factory installed pulling eyes whenever you can. Because uh it's called Kellum's grip, uh, because that allows you to attach your cable to the the the Kellum's your pull string to the Kellum's grip, and uh and that's gonna help help you with a lot. I would also suggest, especially if you're doing again high paracal copper cabling, that you use a um a uh the Kellum's grip with the breakaway heads. You can see the maximum pulling you can pull on a on uh on uh outside plant fiber optic cable is 600 pounds typically. So you can buy a 600 pound head. So if you actually pull too hard, the head will break, but you won't break the cable. If it doesn't come or they won't put a pulling eye on it, you can buy them separately and put them on. Okay, you can, you absolutely can. But never never start your pull based on what the label says. Always verify that length as soon as it arrives and make sure that uh you've already that um that when you do it, let's just try to do your longest runs first, but also watch out for if you do it too short, because that's gonna cause you all kinds of problems. All kinds of problems. All right, those are my three questions for tonight. Let me see. Did anybody have any other questions before I shut down the live stream? Uh, if if you have it that if you have time at the end of the show, can you break down cable NVP and what does it really do? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Great question. Let me put that question up on the screen. NVP. NVP stands for nominal velocity of propagation. Okay, NVP. So every cable has an NVP value. The NVP value for most communications cabling is between 0.65 and 0.85. So the deck, the textbook definition of NVP NVP is the speed of electron compared to the speed of light in a vacuum expressed as a percentage. So let's let's break this down. So I got a piece of cable. Let's say this cable is 0.71 NVP. That means the the signal travels down this cable at 71% of the speed of light in a vacuum. Now the speed of light in the vacuum, that speed is 186,282 miles a second. So if the MVP is 0.71, that means the electron travels down this cable at 71% of 186,282. So if you want to do the math, right, I believe that's about 132. 2,000 miles a second. Okay, now why is that important? Because what happens is the tester is going to send a signal down the cable. When it gets to the end of the cable, because of a mismatch of characteristic beans, some of the energy is going to get reflected back to the originating point. So once it gets back to the originating point, the tester stops the timer, it divides that time in half. So now it has the speed and the time. Now determining distance is simple math. I'll prove it to you. If I tell you to get in your car and drive for one hour and that entire hour, you have to do 70 miles an hour. How far do you drive? How far do you drive? You drive for one hour at 70 miles an hour. You drive 70 miles. Right? So if you change the speed to to 80 miles, you're gonna go to the initial 10 miles. So if you put the wrong NVP value in the cable, you're gonna get an incorrect physical length on that cable. That's why you need to put in the correct NVP. Great question. Great question. Alright, before I sign off, remember, don't forget, click on the fuel for future ICT, click on the QR code up there. Chuck's doing the donation drive for podcast funds for next year. So make sure that we can uh go to these vents and then bring that uh that that information back to you. Right? There you go. But DPMS allows for five miles over the limit. Uh DPS, Department of Public Safety. Is that what that is? Do you live in Texas, beard of knowledge? So you drive 75. That's funny. That's funny. All right, everybody. I appreciate everybody coming on the show tonight. Let's go ahead and click this uh this closes uh this uh this show out, and we will see everybody next week. Next week, all right? Take care, everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 31:48

Let's talk, let's talk, let's get away.