My wiring nightmare

Cupofschmoe

Young grasshopper
Apr 13, 2017
80
21
Well, I get the pleasure to figure out how to clean up this mess of a wiring in our new home. I might build out a mini shelf/rack with the leftover MDF I have. I just have to figure out how I am going to reroute all the wiring and mount my huge honking 24 port POE switch.

 
I must have been delirious from lack of sleep but I realized I measured the depth of the switch wrong. LOL. Those rack enclosures are nice but I cannot seem to justify paying that much for one yet.
 
Personally here is what I would consider.

Pickup another cabinet and place it in the stud cavity to the right of this cabinet. Knock out the top and bottom knockouts on the right of your current cabinet and left of the new cabinet. to act as pas though between both cabinets (You'll need to drill 2" holes in the stud for each pass though). Then pull all your RF cables over to the new cabinet and isolate all RF to that cabinet since it looks like you have a good dozen of those you could also isolate your power/surge protector to that box. I would then isolate all my ethernet to the first cabinet. I would then punch a hole and get a brushed pass though wall plate above the a few feet up (above that shelf) and pull the wiring back up to that for the Denon audio boxes getting those out of the way and they should fit on that top shelf. This should in the end leave plenty of room in your first cabinet to house your switch depending on what it is. If it is a full rack mount switch you may want to consider a smaller switch like a Ubiquiti Lite Edge Switch that would fit inside the planel.

Just my quick impression at first look. This will keep 90% of everything in cabinets and what is outside would be up high on that shelf out of the way.
 
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Personally here is what I would consider.

Pickup another cabinet and place it in the stud cavity to the right of this cabinet. Knock out the top and bottom knockouts on the right of your current cabinet and left of the new cabinet. to act as pas though between both cabinets (You'll need to drill 2" holes in the stud for each pass though). Then pull all your RF cables over to the new cabinet and isolate all RF to that cabinet since it looks like you have a good dozen of those you could also isolate your power/surge protector to that box. I would then isolate all my ethernet to the first cabinet. I would then punch a hole and get a brushed pass though wall plate above the a few feet up (above that shelf) and pull the wiring back up to that for the Denon audio boxes getting those out of the way and they should fit on that top shelf. This should in the end leave plenty of room in your first cabinet to house your switch depending on what it is. If it is a full rack mount switch you may want to consider a smaller switch like a Ubiquiti Lite Edge Switch that would fit inside the planel.

Just my quick impression at first look. This will keep 90% of everything in cabinets and what is outside would be up high on that shelf out of the way.
You aren't supposed to drill holes that big in your wall studs. A 2" hole only leaves 3/4" on either side.
 
You aren't supposed to drill holes that big in your wall studs. A 2" hole only leaves 3/4" on either side.

Unless this is a load bairing wall on a main floor you are fine and with in code of most if not all municipalities. Those 2" holes are NO different than a 1.5" or 2" plumbing vent or drain line. This is a single stud and it's not that you would be doing it across a full support span of 10 studs.
 
Hmm. I didn't even consider installing another panel next to it. I'll have to look into that option some more.

The house came prewired for cameras so it came bundled with the RF cabling and some kind of 4 wire cable to each camera location. Seeing that I'm using IP cameras, I'll probably just loop the RF stuff back into the drywall cavity and keep it out of the way and give me more space to work with. The wire locations are not labeled so that's another fun thing for me to do.
The Cat5 cables for the rooms in the house are terminated with the exceptions for the cabling for the cameras.

My POE switch is an old D Link DES-1526. 24 port 10/100 and 2 one gig upload ports.
The backbone will be a Netgear JGS-524-200NAS 24 port gb switch where all the connectivity in the house will connect to.

The Denon boxes were originally on the floor but I forgot to install an outlet down there so I moved them back up on the shelf and rerouted the cabling behind it. They were originally on the floor but it looked kind of messy with the power cords running across to the outlet.
 
I found a nice aluminum network rack stand for cheap locally and thought about hacking it shorter to fit within the shelving.

Rack
 
Hmm. I didn't even consider installing another panel next to it. I'll have to look into that option some more.

The house came prewired for cameras so it came bundled with the RF cabling and some kind of 4 wire cable to each camera location. Seeing that I'm using IP cameras, I'll probably just loop the RF stuff back into the drywall cavity and keep it out of the way and give me more space to work with. The wire locations are not labeled so that's another fun thing for me to do.
The Cat5 cables for the rooms in the house are terminated with the exceptions for the cabling for the cameras.

My POE switch is an old D Link DES-1526. 24 port 10/100 and 2 one gig upload ports.
The backbone will be a Netgear JGS-524-200NAS 24 port gb switch where all the connectivity in the house will connect to.

The Denon boxes were originally on the floor but I forgot to install an outlet down there so I moved them back up on the shelf and rerouted the cabling behind it. They were originally on the floor but it looked kind of messy with the power cords running across to the outlet.

Grab a toner and save yourself some time and headaches.

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Hmm. I didn't even consider installing another panel next to it. I'll have to look into that option some more.

The house came prewired for cameras so it came bundled with the RF cabling and some kind of 4 wire cable to each camera location. Seeing that I'm using IP cameras, I'll probably just loop the RF stuff back into the drywall cavity and keep it out of the way and give me more space to work with. The wire locations are not labeled so that's another fun thing for me to do.
The Cat5 cables for the rooms in the house are terminated with the exceptions for the cabling for the cameras.

My POE switch is an old D Link DES-1526. 24 port 10/100 and 2 one gig upload ports.
The backbone will be a Netgear JGS-524-200NAS 24 port gb switch where all the connectivity in the house will connect to.

The Denon boxes were originally on the floor but I forgot to install an outlet down there so I moved them back up on the shelf and rerouted the cabling behind it. They were originally on the floor but it looked kind of messy with the power cords running across to the outlet.

The four wire cable was most likely for power to the camera locations for cams using coax.
 
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My crimper kit came in from Amazon and I started crimping the ends for the cameras. I also picked up a bare 8u wall mount rack locally for 25 dollars. One set of the holes I had drilled to mount are off a quarter inch or so. Debating gift I want to redrill new holes lower.

The rack will be mounted to the right of the panel and I'll just remove the panel door off. I'll order a pdu and ups down the road.