Installation Habits That Protect Data Cable Performance

We answer rapid-fire questions that separate pretty cabling from high-performing structured cabling systems, from tie-wrap pressure and bend radius to the real reasons links fail certification. We also get practical about project realities like crushed schedules, scope creep, testing expectations, and the skills that keep techs and PMs valuable as AI and fiber adoption grow. 

• choosing Velcro or tie wraps without crushing the jacket 
• quick bend radius checks that prevent hidden damage 
• diagnosing certification failures beyond “clean” terminations 
• protecting pair twist and performance over rack cosmetics 
• balancing speed and quality with mid-project checkpoints 
• avoiding new PM mistakes around handling limits and testing types 
• stopping scope creep with documentation and change orders 
• when to stick with one manufacturer for headroom and warranty 
• angled patch panels versus flat panels and rack space tradeoffs 
• running a real site walk with ladder flashlight PPE and access questions 
• where AI hits first and how field work changes later 
• why copper and fiber both stay relevant plus the top future skills 

Make sure you come back next Wednesday night. 

Transcript

Live Start And SCS Basics

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wednesday night six PM Eastern Standard Time. I can leave me one thing. Live after hours with Chuck Bowser TV. Do it right. Your favorite RC. Anthony's in the house already. He's uh relaxing with the kiddos. So good Chef and I got about 10, 12 questions. Some installation, some project management, some design, some estimation. Lots and lots of great stuff going on. Let's just get right into it. First off, what are you drinking? What are you drinking? Chuck is drinking Ginger Alexevia with a throat lozenge in it, because I was teaching today. And I gotta keep my uh my voice when I'm teaching because I tend to project. Tend to project. Acronym challenge. The acronym for tonight is SCS. What does SCS mean? I'll give you a few seconds to figure that out. It's really pretty easy. You're doing most of it most of the time. SCS. Structured cabling systems. That's everything from the patch cord to the connector on the face plate to the horizontal cabling to the backbone cabling to the patch panels, everything to the demarcation point. That's the structured cable system. Structured cable system. Let's just get right into the questions unless somebody has other questions in advance. First question is from Mike on TikTok. And Mike wants to know how tight is how it how tight is too tight when it comes to Velcro and cable ties. I don't want to damage the cable, but I also don't want the sloppy install. And that is such a great question. Such a great question. So let's talk off. So first I'll talk about cable ties, right? So cable ties should be snug, but not so snug that it deforms the jacket. You should be able to spin the tie wrap on the jacket. Velcro, same rule applies, but it's a little bit harder to get over snug with Velcro. Okay. So you still should be able to rotate it. And and and just hey, put in the chat box. Do you prefer to use Velcro or do you prefer to use tie wraps when dressing your communications cabling? Put that in the chat box. I'd be willing to bet you most people prefer Velcro. Most people prefer Velcro. Now here's the problem, you know, especially with over tightened tie wraps. Hey, cuz, how you doing? Um, it usually doesn't show up during the installation, it shows up during the install. During the install. And that is where people tend that's the last place that you want to do that because now you gotta fix it after the fact. So there you go. Uh I'm a giant. Steve is drinking Mountain Dew. Nice. Mr. Jackson drinking water, coffee for rovers, Javier, and uh there you go. Oh, so boat uh Mr. Jackson got that. Structure cabling systems. Yes, excellent, excellent. Oh, this is it. Let's show it on the stream there. There we go. Show on the live stream. Bingo. So there you go. He got it. I think I know who that is. If I'm correct, that person is a Pixie instructor. K-Man's in the house. Hey K-Man. How you doing, my friend? Uh soon number two. This comes from Jessica. She wants to know how do I know if I'm exceeding the bend radius when pulling cable in a tight ceiling? Most people don't know bend radiuses. They they could they can quote the numbers four times the diameter for UTP, eight for um um for uh bonding grounding, ten for fiber at rest, twenty while you're installing fiber, but most people don't really know. So what you do is you look at the cable's OD. You can find that on the cut sheets. Find the cut sheets and just multiply that by number. So if we're talking about four-pair UTP, which is four times outside diameter, so let's say the OD for this cable is 0.25, that would mean a one-inch bend radius. A one-inch bend radius. Some people say, Chuck, it's a 90. Yeah, okay, so you know, well, technically that's a 90, that's exceeding the bend radius. I just damaged my cable. Whoops. Here, a simple way to figure out bend radiuses for copper cabling, is take that cable, flip it into a loop, slowly pull them apart. At some point, it kicks out by itself. That's the bend radius for that cable right there. And I didn't have to calculate anything. I didn't calculate anything. What happens is when you exceed the bend radiuses, um, what happens is it creates a flat spot, sometimes even create a what's called a stress line on the cable, and that's a silence a silent performance killer when it comes to when it comes to high performance data cabling. And you also have to watch out for the fillerless cat 68 cabling. Most cat 68 cable has a has a crossweb separator or spline inside of it, and that helps protect the relationship of the pairs. Again, fillerless cat 68 doesn't have that, so exceeding bend race can cause even more damage. Now think of it this way if you have to force it, you're probably already doing it wrong. Doing it wrong. Question number three. This comes from Lewis on Facebook. Why does my certification fail even when the terminations look clean? Because it's not just the terminations, it's it's also where's that cable installed? Did you see bend radius in the ceiling? Did you uh um are you running near potential sources of email? There's a lot of things. Yeah, it could be a lot of things, and it's not just the terminations. It might be failing because of length, right? Looks don't equal performance. This isn't drywall work, man. You're not putting up uh drywall, and the better it looks the better performs. With cabling, and this this causes a lot of controversy in our industry because you'll see people out there who like to do the the uh the cabling, they like the cable comb and dress it. By the way, watch for a video soon on me using this beast. Look at this the honeycomb, the honeycomb, yes, and comes packaged really well. I'm gonna be making a video of this soon. Uh so the thing I really like about the honeycomb is uh so it has the cables on there, actually it has the numbers on there, so you know exactly where you need to put the cable so that way when you dress the cable, it lines up right. Really good for patch panel stuff, packaged really well. Um, it you know, like any cable comb, you're gonna spend some money on it. But what the deal is is you're gonna save money on the long run. So watch for a video with the honeycomb coming up soon. So, anyways, um I want to say uh I want to say it's like 75 bucks, 80 bucks, something like that. But the panda was that ex is that expensive too. So, you know, there you go. Um, so let's talk about, you know, the probably the number one killer, number one killer for for high performance data cabling is untwisting too much of the pairs of the jacks. I just had this, I just had this conversation with somebody on one of the social media groups. I want to say it was low voltage nation, but don't hold me to that because I can't specifically say that it was. Um, and they were untwisting the pairs, and I said, look, yeah, it could cause crosstalk issues at the jack. And they're like, ah, no, no, well, we're gonna cut it back to a half inch afterwards. Okay, but still you shouldn't untwist it. You know, untwisting can cause the problems. Pair integrity matters more than the neatness because the performance happens inside the cable. And the testing is the truth. The testing is not your eyes, it's or it's not your pride, it's the it's the it's the characteristic of the cable, the electrical characteristics of the cable, to make sure that they are compliant with the standards. So it's not just that, but it could also be because of excessive length, water in the cable. You didn't really specify what you were failing on. So I have to go with what is the most common cause. Question number four, and this is from Danielle on LinkedIn. How do you balance um is my splicer a single or multi-strand? It's a single core alignment fusion splicer. Uh so Danielle, uh, how do you balance speed versus quality when the schedule is getting crushed? Let me ask you this. Tell me in the chat box. When is the schedule never being crushed? Right? We're always given a certain amount of time to do the work, and then it always seems like they they they they compress the schedule and give us less time and less time. All right, hey, do you see my shirt? Yes, go Richwood. Richwood, yes. Uh, that's a school in West Virginia that I went and does uh QA at and where they put in uh some fault managed power stuff. Really, really, really cool stuff they were doing out there, man. Um I the thing I like is you know it's it saved the school money and they're able to get high performance results out of that. So there you go. So here's the thing. How do you balance speed versus quality? Okay, speed without quality equals rework, right? We rework, meaning you have to go back and redo it, kills the profit. So be super careful. Super careful. And yes, it's not it's not going to be oh well, you just work faster. When you work faster, you make mistakes. I guess one of the one of the tips I could give you here is set the expectations with set them early with the GC, the general contractor, and the customer. Not don't do it when you're behind, but at that point you're behind the A ball. And they're gonna say, you're just saying that now because you're behind. You get the feeling right up front. You know, you you should have your estimator, your designer, should have created a schedule for that project. And uh so you should already know what that is. The first thing you need to do is balance that with the schedule on the job site. And if it doesn't match up, raise those quickly. Matter of fact, you should be attending the weekly, the weekly construction meeting with the GC and all the other trades and bring that up on day one. Day one. Okay. Um some things you could do, building quality checkpoints in that schedule in the middle of the project, not at the end of the project. So what times what I used to do is if uh, like example, let's say we were terminating jacks, uh, and um I was a project foreman, I would go back and I would look at 10% of all the jacks done that day, looking for any mistakes. If I didn't find any mistakes, we were good to go. If I found a mistake in that 10%, I'd go look at another 10%. And then I kept doing that, kept doing that until I was under that 10% mark. And the key is when you start doing that, you gotta track. I know people don't like to hear that, you have to track what work people doing where. Right. So you might, there's lots of different ways you can do it. I had some people um actually would have them in it put their initials on the back side of the faceplate so that way I could pull the faceplate, look at the backup side of it, and I knew who did that jack. The problem with that one is if you get some people who are less than honest, they might put somebody else's initials on the back of that thing. So another way around that is you can actually, you know, when you got that floor plane out, you can say, okay, you're doing this quadrant, John, and Harry, you're doing that quadrant, and then uh uh Danielle, you're doing this quadrant, and then Trevor, you're doing that quadrant. So that way if you get mistakes in certain quadrant, you know who's making those mistakes. And that gets rid of that yeah, that gets rid of the uh of the whole people putting other initials in there, right? Chuck, I'm coming from a fiber design point of view. Can I I can design a pawn and figure out the distribution and feed spice closures for some reason? I can't understand a feeder cable that well. What are your tips on understanding feeder cable for pawns? That is a really involved question, Mr. River. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a screen snapshot of that. Okay? And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna answer that on next Wednesday nights. Uh next Wednesday night. So I've already got questions for today, and that's a deep, involved question. So make sure you come back next Wednesday. Uh it if you if you message me, I will give you a response in writing to your email. If you message me your email, don't do it here in the chat box. Look me up, send me a message, and I'll do that there too. So that's a big, big question. Getting back to how do you balance speed versus quality without getting crushed? And I know this is you hear this a lot in the gun community, and I know it seems kind of cliche, but there's this thing: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. But the thing is, it's true. You gotta build that muscle memory, you know, and and you actually gotta do it with different jacks too, actually. You know, so you might be doing, you know, um uh a Lebanon jack on one project, a Pandua jack on the next one, maybe a VC jack on the next one. And each one of those has a little bit different uh muscle memories to them. So you you gotta do do it nice and slow till you get that process figured out, and and you'll find you'll start getting faster and faster. Okay, question number five. This comes from Trevor. What's the biggest mistake new projects managers make? On low voltage time. What fibers are you seeing long lead times with? TJ's in the house. Hey TJ, um, pretty much anything outside the normal, anything uh uh above 24 strands. I'm starting to see some long lead times. Um we'll we'll just see what kind of happens there, right? Uh so what's what's the biggest makes PMs make? Treating it like it's electrical and not a performance-based system. See this a lot with electricians, especially people who come over from the electrical field as project managers, and they think, well, it's just cable, it's just wire. That is not the case. Not the case, right? Um, it's different. You have to understand you can't pull as hard on high performance data cabling as you can with electrical cabling. You know, 12-2, it's pretty resilient stuff. You pull too hard on a Cat 6A cable, you're going to change um, you're gonna change twist rates, you're gonna stretch the copper. That affects the uh the resistance, it affects the cable all the way around. Okay. Uh TJ saying six months on 216 fiber right now. Again, that's that's above that 24 strand I mentioned earlier. It seems the higher strength, the higher strand counts right now, and also stuff in single mode, seem to have longer lead times right now, and I think that's because data centers. I can't really say that for a fact, but I'm I'm I'm seeing seem to think it's with data centers. Um, so another mistake is not understanding the testing requirements until the very end. Do they want certification testing, qualification testing, or are they just doing simple verification testing? Right? Understanding that because if you think it's just gonna be a simple verification test, and then you go to test it and you find out later it was a certification test, that's a different tester, and that takes longer, and now you're gonna go back to retest everything. And then the other mistake I see is assuming that um it'll be fine instead of verifying. Always, always, always verify that. Always verify that. Um, because you can trust but verify. Who said that? I thought I'm gonna say it's colin Powell, but don't hold me to that. Trust but verify, right? Question number six. This comes from Alicia. How do you handle scope creep without damaging the customer relationship? Well, number one, there are some customers. I I've said this on a gazillion times, there are some customers you have to fire. Remember, when you're in a relationship with a customer, you know, for a job, it's to it should be mutually beneficial, not a one-way street. Not them always beating you up, not you always beating them up. It should be a relationship with this give and take, right? Give and take. So if it's not one of the types of customers, make it a one-and-done customer. Done. We're not doing any more work for you. You can go find somebody else. But there are some tips I can give you. There are some tips I can give you. Uh so Daryl, the RCD, was said he was just told 18 months for 432 ribbon single mode platinum. Thanks for that, thanks for the number there, guys. Uh the first thing I give you is it's not pro my my pro tip list, pro tip number one, document, document, document. If it's not written down, it didn't happen. So make sure that you, you know, make sure that you read through the scope of work. Hopefully the scope of work was there was a schedule and uh and then list all that stuff. So that way when you have to start doing stuff and you find that it's maybe doing more work than you were than you were asked to do, you can document that that's not wasn't part of the the the scope creep. And again, if it's scope creep, that means change orders. Change orders. And then also you need to separate the helping from giving away margin. Uh yeah, this happens a lot, especially with technicians. They they they're aimed at customer satisfaction. Customers say, hey, we want one more drop on that wall over there. And uh, and you might be thinking, well, okay, there's 500 drops in this job, so that's 501. Ah, we'll just give them that one. Yeah, that's not a good thing to do. That's it, that's it, that's what causes scope creep. Little and because it's not just one thing. Daryl say this it's not just one little thing. The customer always says, Oh, it's it's a bunch of little things. And that's that whole Chinese proverb, you know, that uh cause of death is a million small little cuts. So you gotta document so that way you can eventually say, Look, you know, here's 55 cables that you we added onto the project over the project period, and all that they were all done one at a time. So you weren't thinking that were that bag of an impact, but now there's 55 cables, and now I got scope creep and it's compressing my schedule. Educate the customer, right? Because most customers don't understand the impact, you know, especially just if it's just one thing, but um educate the customer. It is absolutely fine to educate customers, right? No one little thing pipe, cable, boxes, etc.

Standardize Hardware And Rack Choices

unknown 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Question number seven, this comes from Raj on Reddit. Yes, I'm on Reddit. Why shouldn't I mix manufacturers if everything else is the same category rating? Oh, this is such a great question. Right. So again, theoretic, I talked about that, I think I talked about this last week. Um, I'm starting to get repeat questions here. Um, yeah, if it's cat 5e, you should be able to use manufacture A Cat 5E, manufacture B uh connectors, manufacture C's passports, and you should get that performance level out. But manufacturers engineer their systems, they match the the NVP under the other electrical characteristics, so you get more headroom. So even though technically you can do that, you really want to try to stick with one manufacturer, and when you do that, you're gonna get better warranties, longer warranties, and uh it's gonna help make sure that you uh design any kind of that risk into that project just to stay away from saving pennies. Pennies. Question number eight this comes from Kim on LinkedIn. When should I spec angled patch panels versus flat panels? So the angled patch panels, you don't need to have a horizontal wire manager above or below it. So there's less cost in the project. Um, it's also that's gonna save you rack space. So rack space means a more dense environment, means you can put more switches in it, less racks. You know, a rack is several hundred dollars just to buy it, several hundred dollars just to install it. Um, flat panels, they can create congestion if you don't think about wire managers, horizontal wire managers. Um, when you look at the rules in the ANZI standards, it says for every rack unit of wire manager, you should have an equal number of rack units of wire managers plus one. So if you have six RUs of horizontal patch panels, you should have seven RUs of um seven RUs of wire managers. That we end up with a wire manager on the below.

unknown 20:10

Okay.

Site Walk Must Haves

AI Impact Fiber Future Career Skills

SPEAKER_00 20:11

And sometimes it comes down to just preference, but it's usually it's usually space. You're dealing with a customer who doesn't want to go into another rack, or they're trying to work within existing racks, right? That's that's what causes it the most. Question number nine. This comes from Marcus. He says, What should I always look for during a site walk up site walk other than miss? Okay, so first thing you're going on a walkthrough, bring a ladder, bring a flashlight, bring PPE. Okay, bring all that stuff. Because a good a good designer, a good estimator is going to pop ceiling tiles and go up into the ceiling and look to see how much space there is. Because if you don't, you know, you could put in the terms and conditions that your price is based on free and clear interstitial space in the ceiling, but that's going to cause you problems if it's not. Just get up in the ceiling and look. Because it's better to put that in the price and have it at the very beginning than dealing with a scope creep like uh the previous person was doing. So get up in the ceiling and look at that stuff. What are the conditions like it? Is there is there heat? Heat causes attenuation. You might have to go to um other types of cabling. I did a project once for a government facility where we did cabling in the steam tunnels. We had to use very specific cables, very specific hangers. They had to be stainless steel so they wouldn't rust. All that stuff kind of works. And you won't know that if you don't go look. You gotta go look. Right? Um make sure that you um ask what what are the workouts, what are the available hours? If it's a new construction site, what time does the GC allow trades on the project? If it's uh if it's a existing office space, what time can you get in there? Do you have to be out by five o'clock? They lock the building down. If they do let you work after hours, here's the one you might want to know. When do they shut off the HVAC system? Because tell and trust me, it gets extremely warm in a building very quickly when the HVAC system is turned off. Ask me how I know that one. Right? Right. And then also, what are there going to be any other trades there at the same time? And if they are, what are they going to be doing? What areas are they going to be working on? Is there, is, do they have schedules? Because that balance is out between you and their work, so that way you can stay out of their way, and then they can stay out of your way. And that's going to be kind of important. Okay. So those are the uh the things you should always look for when you're doing estimates. Question number 10. This comes from Aaron. Aaron, is AI actually going to impact field technicians or just office roles? So, you know me, I'm always looking at AI stuff. I was just watching a video just the other day with um who's that podcaster? Sean Kelly, I think his name is. Um he's a former SEAL. I think his name is Sean Kelly. And uh he went to this place where they had a stand-up AI robot, and he did a show around and stuff. Initially, AI is going to impact the all the field people. I'm sorry, the office people more than the field people, you know, because it's gonna make faster to create paperwork and process paperwork and and request for quotes, requests for proposals, you know, estimates and stuff like that. That's where we're gonna see the first impact, right? You it's gonna be in the office. But the field is absolutely gonna be impacted as well, too. Um it's gonna be a little bit later than the office, uh, because even though even though they got robots that can stand and walk, one of the issues there is the battery life, because the one that I saw on on that Sean Kelly show was uh the battery life was only, I think you said five hours. So that's five hours, but is it five hours climbing up and down ladders all day long? I don't know. And do are the batteries interchangeable? Is it like a Milwaukee? Can you pop the battery out and plug a new battery in? That's that's what they should do. They should make an AI robot that's a Milwaukee robot. That would be cool. Um, so it is gonna impact the field. It is gonna pack the field. But the people who are gonna be successful with with AI are the people who embrace it, the people who learn it, the people who use it. Okay. AI is an accelerator, an accelerator for those who are to do it, right? Question number 11. K-Man is leaving the house. See you later, K-Man. Um, are we heading towards more fiber or is copper still going to dominate? Oh, that's a great question. I've been hearing I I've been in this industry since 1982. That's why all the gray hair. Oh, 1982. And I heard from day one in this industry copper's going away, fiber's gonna take its place. We are still installing fiber. We're still installing copper, right? Um, fiber, at some point, maybe fiber will be everywhere and do everything, and we'll get rid of copper, but I still think we're decades away from that. Right now, I think fiber's still gonna be limited to the backbone, limited to longer runs, limited to areas where there's um extremely high EMI, right? Um and then also I think we're still gonna see PoE predominantly done with copper cabling. Now, there are some manufacturers out there that can do, you know, um fiber and PoE over hybrid cables. Yes, that that that's there, that's real, that's gonna be there. But I still don't think it's going to replace everything yet. Knowing both, being proficient in both copper and fiber, is gonna make you a better technician. It's gonna make you a better project manager, better designer. Because they're both still gonna be around for a long time, and they're and the copper's not gonna die off and go away. Because yeah, when I first got in history, people was like, copper's going away, everything's gonna be wireless. Yeah, those wireless access points need copper cabling. Just saying. Just saying. Question number 12, and this comes from Samantha. What skills should somebody learn today to stay relevant in five to ten years? Well, hopefully in five to ten years, Chuck will be retired. Retire. I don't know yet. I'm still still trying to figure that whole thing out. I may not be. I may I may keep doing this until I put me in the ground. Just if you put me in the ground, just make sure you run a single metal fiber to my to my coffin so I can keep working. So five to ten years, right? So Daryl, the RCE says we're transitioning 100% fiber for security reasons. I understand that because fiber is is uh it's harder to tap into. And there are fiber, you know, black people don't know this. There are fiber systems out there where you can put fiber on a fence or bury it in the ground and use it as intrusion detection. A lot of people don't know that. That's kind of cool. I saw that, I saw a thing like that in Bixie. So, where can you stay relevant? Understanding systems, not just components, right? There's lots of new stuff coming down the pike, fault managed power systems, digital electricity. Um, Dash has been around for a while, but I really expect it to start taking off more later on. Um, you know, there's lots and lots of stuff that you gotta be knowledgeable in all that stuff because it's gonna be what's gonna make the difference between somebody who's average or somebody who's gonna be the best, right? Testing and certification knowledge, that's gonna be a huge differential. This see this argument all the time. I don't certify a cave unless the customer pays me for it. Do you want to be known as the best? If you do, you're gonna want to certify everything. That makes you different than most other people. That makes you more worth more, you're more valuable, and you can also charge more for that as well. Um, we use a type of solution for protective distribution system for our secure fiber. Excellent. Um, also, basic networking. How does data actually move? I was able to get through 40 plus years in this industry being just a wire monkey, pulling cable, terminating. But the really successful people I see are the people who can do who understand the OSI model and how that all works and how to set that system up and maybe do basic networking. Not maybe not a full-blown IT person, but knowing basic networking. If you can do that on top of pulling cable, dude, you could write your own check. Write your own check. But I think here's the biggest one. Here's what I think was the biggest one. Communication skills. People who communicate the best, who can explain, they can uh make people understand value, they're gonna win big time. So I I would focus on that one first, right? Um where is a link where we can chat with you? Um you're you're chatting with me right now. Uh I see I see your thing right there. Um just we want you to say say it quickly because I literally have two minutes and then this live stream is done. Uh I do have to start prepping for um for my RCD study group tonight, uh, which we're talking about uh uh copper connectors, and then next week's rings, we're gonna be talking about fire stopping. One of my favorite subjects. The challenge for me to next week is to be under that 90-minute time frame because I love firestopping. But uh so any other questions? Let's go ahead and put that out there. Any other questions? Type them in real quick. I'll give you a few seconds. I'll take another sip of my ginger ale Xevia while you guys are typing. Because I only had 12 questions, and I am going to look up this one question for uh Rover Xavier. Because that's a great question, and I need to be a little bit more about that. So there we go. Alrighty, so I don't see any other questions. And my timer says I just hit the 30-minute mark. The 30 minute mark. Until next time, everybody. Remember, knowledge is power.