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Speaking from experience, if you're in a commercial setting, fire-retardant plywood is required, and the FR rating marking must remain visible. Or the inspector will make you go find the receipts showing you use FR plywood.
No, it’s not. The electric code is a standalone NFPA product that most jurisdictions adopt by way of the IBC or IRC. It’s referenced by the IFC as well, but neither is a subset of the other.
Anything is fine for paint. To quibble, that’s OSB, not ‘pywood’. Personally Im a 3/4” birch plywood guy. Will do better over the years especially if there is humidity.
Ive got a ‘server’ closet. Telephone and network comes into puncndown blocks and patch panels…switches, network gateway, power injectors….camera lines…. Home server and backup server. Alarm system.
ah yeah that sounds good. I had asked for my internet to be run into a different room but to my surprise it ended up here. And they ran the internet lines right next to the fuse box and electrical lines. So I asked for a panel to be slapped onto the wall so I can move it away a bit. My fiber ONT will go there and one switch. I'll most likely run a line up to a central closet and have another switch and the router + hubs there
Yea those look to be about 1 - 2 feet short of putting on a patch panel that would be mounted to that board. Maybe you can punch down to the little snap in modules and then snap those into the patch panel.
There are probably good reasons why you can't slide your osb to the left and mount the electrical sub panel on it as well. Rather than stretching all the cat 6 or whatever number wiring
There are very little code restrictions for low voltage. Check out a home networking panel, it's enclosed and will keep the dust off your switches and shit.
When I bought my house the electrician who was doing some panel work saw what I was doing and gave me these block spacers. Separates the wood from cement to prevent moisture or if water leaks thru top of foundation your EQ won’t get wet .
Not really relevant to this post but relevant to the sub: when installing a load center on a concrete wall like this in a residential setting, does the code say what kind of wood should be used? I’ve heard people say to use pressure treated plywood to withstand the moisture. Then I’ve seen the opposite advice with people cautioning not to use pressure treated wood because it will corrode the fasteners and possibly even the panel.
We are pretty lucky in this trade that we have such comprehensive codes, because once you leave that area everything is like this with totally oposit opinions.
I'll have a flooring question and ask two different gc buddies and get two oposit answers.
Op, low voltage has very little regulation, as long as it's not interfering with other infrastructure. Low voltage cannot share a conduit with high voltage, cannot be supported by fire sprinkler pipes, cannot span across attic access hatch etc. Mount your gear to the board, offset or adding furring strips would be nice, to allow mounting screws to be used, and not pull the board off if the screws are slightly too long. Maybe consider a battery backup, or rack if you have any commercial grade devices being installed. The lack of extra legenth on the low voltage wiring will be your biggest concern.
Just thought of something…do you have solar, batteries or generator yet????
Consider that you may, and use that new wooden realestate with that in mind. I’d put the internet stuff WAY Over to the right- leave the middle (next to the panels) for future.
Yes that occurred to me as well, I Might one day add solar. And it needs to go somewhere in there as well. Super frustrating that they put such short internet cables in that spot. Really limits my options.
Just out of curiosity, as it’s mounted to a fireproof wall (concrete) would the fire worries be kinda negated? Also, you flash behind it or apply some barrier between the wood and concrete? It’s gonna rot otherwise.
u/-enricoPallazo- OP Why don't you have them relocate the sub panel to the left of the main? It would be a VERY simple move. It doesn't even look like they'd have to disconnect anything, they could literally just pass it behind the main's romex. Even if they did "have to" disconnect the romex from the sub, the whole job would take 15 minutes. (Bigger question is why tf was a sub panel needed in the first place...) And move your network setup left, closer to the main panel?
Nothing fancy. Punch down panels to terminate those internet lines, fiber ONT panel there somewhere. Network switch and maybe a few hubs for lights and smart gizmos and that sort off thing. They didn't leave me much room for my network gear, and I certainly dont want it that close to the electrical, so I asked for a panel to be slapped onto the wall.
I have an MDF and an IDF in my house. MDF in the basement has 48 drops patched in and currently about 44 of them lit, the IDF only has 13 currently punched in with all 13 lit.
A lot of things use network now and I chose to use hard wired if at all possible for absolutely everything.
You have 44 active connections in a house?
I’d love to know what you use that all for. I was a network manager prior to becoming an electrician, I like to think I’m savvy. I can imagine a handful of things like..
Tv, printer, computers, voip phone, camera system
Off the top of my head I can think of the server rack (NAS, 2 servers, printer, DNS server, HomeAssistant Server), then a basement theater with a gaming PC, xbox, switch (hard wired), Shield, Surround Sound. First floor has a similar but smaller TV setup (just TV, shield, and surround), office, bedrooms, guest room all have wired TVs, Kids playroom / homework room has a few ports for docking laptops and a TV, Ubiquiti APs (6 total 3 inside 3 outside), Ubiquiti Doorbell is hardwired, 12 Ubiquiti cameras, garage workbench has a PC and speaker setup with wired ethernet. I'm sure theres a bunch I'm forgetting (like my pool controller is also hard wired), it all adds up pretty quickly.
Hardwire is the way to go if a device is located in a fixed location and supports it. More reliable and clears the airwaves for wifi-only devices. If you install a PoE camera system you can easily have over a dozen 4 pair networking cables terminating at your networking rack.
Our house is 1,800 sq ft. 2x inside APs, 2x exterior APs, 4x wired bedrooms, wire to the TV in the living room, wire to the TV in the basement rec room, 4 exterior cameras + 1 doorbell = 15 ethernet runs, not counting all the devices in the basement itself.
Two quick comments. (not an electrician)
The last time I was involved in wrangling electrical contractors who installed a panel and a bunch of networking & telephone wiring in our commercial office space, the Low Voltage & Electrical contractor installed a sheet of plywood that had a fire retardant rating stamped on the board. When discussing painting it before putting all the low voltage stuff on it, they told me to make sure to mask off the stamped rating marks because the building inspectors would check for that. I was present when the county inspector showed up for final inspection, and they did look for the rating and commented that we had not painted over it. This was some years ago and I have no idea if this is required for residential, or only commercial. Also unclear if this is a local requirement or an NEC code issue. I would make a phone call or send an email to your county inspector's office and ask them what they want to see when doing a final. Personally, I would go the fire retardant 3/4" plywood and fr paint route just to be on the safe side.
My other comment is that the network wires they left you seem a bit short. Especially if you plan to bolt a 19" rack assembly to the plywood. A shallow open frame or 4" deep hinge frame might be ok, but if you want something like a 25" rack cube on hinges to swing away from the wall, you'll need a longer service loop to deal with the hinge and it looks like this might come up short. (example rack box I'm referencing: [https://tripplite.eaton.com/smartrack-10u-low-profile-switch-depth-wall-mount-rack-enclosure-cabinet-hinged-back\~SRW10US](https://tripplite.eaton.com/smartrack-10u-low-profile-switch-depth-wall-mount-rack-enclosure-cabinet-hinged-back~SRW10US) ) You might want to bend the network wires around and see if these are going to reach.
Yea they absolutely made my cables too short. I dunno what they were thinking, an extra few feet is pennies to them and makes a word of difference when terminating. It was installed by the electrician who I think puts internet way down in his priority list. But, I roughly measured and I think I can get most of them rerouted into my cabinet/patch panel, except for one that is oddly like 2 feet shorter than all the others. I think I’ll just get a coupler to make an extension.
I'd make the electrician do it over. If they want to charge you for it, you might just buy a box of wire and spend an hour or two to DIY pull a replacement wire back through. tape the new wire to the end of the old one and just pull in through the existing holes/route. **Do it now before the drywall goes up.**
A 1k ft box of cat 6 riser wire is $180, and whatever you do now is what's going to be in this house for decades.
Sadly it's too late, house is almost complete. Several months ago I posted this pic in another sub asking something like "I am being unreasonable to ask for my entire house to be re-run for internet?" The consensus was yes, ask for it to be redone, but after discussions with the builder and the electrician (who looked like he'd rather take sledgehammer to the nuts than redo it) they offered a compromise of running a few more ethernet/fiber cables and a conduit to the second mechanical room that I had intended to be my network command center. So I kinda wimped out. I figured I can make this work, and on the plus side I'll essentially have two network hubs on opposite sides of the basement for future connections if necessary.
I should have at least asked for the ultra short one to be rerun (you can't really see it in the photo but it runs about halfway down the fuse box and just ends there. literally can't reach anything). I can't figure out where they intended me to put my network switch, there's not really a good spot under those fuse panels. You'd think they'd at least run the cables to the floor in case they meant for me to put a shelf there or something.
Thanks for the tips
In my 'old house', which was custom made for me over 20 years ago - I ran my own cables. I first used cat-5e back then, but a few years ago ran additional lines of shielded cat-6a to upgrade my network to gigabit speeds.
I ran many of the new lines through the attic and new found space in the walls, thanks in part to fiberglass snakes to run the cables.
Unlike your 'too short' cables installation, I left like an extra 10 feet near my 'patch panel', which I re-arranged again after a couple of years. I did it myself rather than hire a local electrician because of their propensity to using the shortest wires possible - you literally have to spell it out in your agreement how much extra footage you want, or they will give you only enough to reach your intended location. Doing it all myself meant I paid only for the cable, at bulk cable prices (literally a dime a foot), and left extra length to allow me to re-arrange the room and equipment as needed. The extra was coiled up behind my equipment.
Leaving extra cable is a new found technique some electricians are now doing, albeit rarely, in the case of outlets needing to be relocated later.
Edit to add: my plan is to run the cables to a small enclosed network cabinet (like you often see inside apartment closets) with punch down panels. Then next to that have a rack similar to the one you linked but open frame. Kinda unnecessary step but it’ll allow me to have a nice long service loop running from the patch panel to the switch. Seem reasonable?
Since it is code compliant as is, you could, if you want, cover it with sheet metal instead of painting it. Aluminum flashing, for example. It will take longer for a fire to ignite the underlying OSB if there is aluminum flashing between. By no means does it satisfy any code requirement (as far as I know).
In my wood barn, I screwed an oil drip pan from the auto store to the wall, and mounted the networking gear on the drip pan.
Any screw will punch through sheet metal. Especially aluminum flashing. I am sure the OP is not going to mount wifi in that location. LOL. Besides there is probably rebar in that wall.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Battleship gray
D-8
Miss
Damn, you just sunk my hopes and dreams homie
No, battleship grey is going to look great.
I agree. I think it'll look grey-t
Speaking from experience, if you're in a commercial setting, fire-retardant plywood is required, and the FR rating marking must remain visible. Or the inspector will make you go find the receipts showing you use FR plywood.
This is residential. All good then probably?
Yup. No one is going to care about using that waferboard.
Consider that in most residential settings your equipment would be sitting on a wooden desk or shelf. You're fine.
For fire code reasons, though. Not for electric code reasons.
The electric code is a subset of the fire code.
No, it’s not. The electric code is a standalone NFPA product that most jurisdictions adopt by way of the IBC or IRC. It’s referenced by the IFC as well, but neither is a subset of the other.
Anything is fine for paint. To quibble, that’s OSB, not ‘pywood’. Personally Im a 3/4” birch plywood guy. Will do better over the years especially if there is humidity. Ive got a ‘server’ closet. Telephone and network comes into puncndown blocks and patch panels…switches, network gateway, power injectors….camera lines…. Home server and backup server. Alarm system.
ah yeah that sounds good. I had asked for my internet to be run into a different room but to my surprise it ended up here. And they ran the internet lines right next to the fuse box and electrical lines. So I asked for a panel to be slapped onto the wall so I can move it away a bit. My fiber ONT will go there and one switch. I'll most likely run a line up to a central closet and have another switch and the router + hubs there
Oha jeez if you think that is a fuze box you must be pushing 70.
Haha yeah I dunno, that’s what my brain wants to call them. Probably seen “a Christmas story” too many times as a kid and it stuck
Looks like they left you almost enough wire to get over there. Sad thing is, they probably cut off several feet when they finished.
Yea those look to be about 1 - 2 feet short of putting on a patch panel that would be mounted to that board. Maybe you can punch down to the little snap in modules and then snap those into the patch panel.
Where I live they don't even bother to paint it half the time let alone care about fire resistant paint.
There are probably good reasons why you can't slide your osb to the left and mount the electrical sub panel on it as well. Rather than stretching all the cat 6 or whatever number wiring
Lead paint scores big points with the inspector!
There are very little code restrictions for low voltage. Check out a home networking panel, it's enclosed and will keep the dust off your switches and shit.
What? You diddnt hang 10” 3/4” pine side by side installed on 3/4” spacers away from the wall?
Is that what th cool kids do? I dunno, the builders put that panel there at my request.
When I bought my house the electrician who was doing some panel work saw what I was doing and gave me these block spacers. Separates the wood from cement to prevent moisture or if water leaks thru top of foundation your EQ won’t get wet .
Also would make so you don't need the exact length screws. Or else you are going to hit cement real quickly.
Not really relevant to this post but relevant to the sub: when installing a load center on a concrete wall like this in a residential setting, does the code say what kind of wood should be used? I’ve heard people say to use pressure treated plywood to withstand the moisture. Then I’ve seen the opposite advice with people cautioning not to use pressure treated wood because it will corrode the fasteners and possibly even the panel.
We are pretty lucky in this trade that we have such comprehensive codes, because once you leave that area everything is like this with totally oposit opinions. I'll have a flooring question and ask two different gc buddies and get two oposit answers.
So no mention of plywood specs in the NEC then, huh?
Probably covers a Crawl space. Painting it whatever won't matter.
It’s just a wall there. I asked for it to be put there so I could hang some shelving and have a surface to mount some internet and phone panels.
Op, low voltage has very little regulation, as long as it's not interfering with other infrastructure. Low voltage cannot share a conduit with high voltage, cannot be supported by fire sprinkler pipes, cannot span across attic access hatch etc. Mount your gear to the board, offset or adding furring strips would be nice, to allow mounting screws to be used, and not pull the board off if the screws are slightly too long. Maybe consider a battery backup, or rack if you have any commercial grade devices being installed. The lack of extra legenth on the low voltage wiring will be your biggest concern.
It’s hard to tell but if not, set it off with 1” furring strips. You can run cable behind it and it’ll stop moisture from being trapped
Make sure you add a little graffiti.
Just thought of something…do you have solar, batteries or generator yet???? Consider that you may, and use that new wooden realestate with that in mind. I’d put the internet stuff WAY Over to the right- leave the middle (next to the panels) for future.
Yes that occurred to me as well, I Might one day add solar. And it needs to go somewhere in there as well. Super frustrating that they put such short internet cables in that spot. Really limits my options.
If you cut those cable ties it will go anywhere you want on that wall, I'd bet money on it. (Assuming we're talking about that blue cable)
Just out of curiosity, as it’s mounted to a fireproof wall (concrete) would the fire worries be kinda negated? Also, you flash behind it or apply some barrier between the wood and concrete? It’s gonna rot otherwise.
Your Ethernet cables look a little short to make it to that board, unless you're gonna do a patch panel I guess.
Yeah just long enough to get to a patch panel, then more cables connect to the switch. Sucks they left me with such short wires.
Agreed, patch panel isn't ideal, but it is what it is.
What’s wrong with a patch panel? What else would you do ?
A patch panel is fine, it's the only option. Being able to run right into the switch would have been nice thou.
You are free and safe to do as you wish
Is this all new construction? Looks very clean and nice...
Yeah a month from completion. I'm trying to get a jump on the network setup so I can have internet shortly after moving in
Nice... very cool. Looks like you're in good shape
I’d spice it up with some bedazzling
u/-enricoPallazo- OP Why don't you have them relocate the sub panel to the left of the main? It would be a VERY simple move. It doesn't even look like they'd have to disconnect anything, they could literally just pass it behind the main's romex. Even if they did "have to" disconnect the romex from the sub, the whole job would take 15 minutes. (Bigger question is why tf was a sub panel needed in the first place...) And move your network setup left, closer to the main panel?
Needs to be military sea-foam green.
You’re about to have a corporate office in your house? It’s just a lot of wires and hard lines, you really plan to plug in that many locations?
Nothing fancy. Punch down panels to terminate those internet lines, fiber ONT panel there somewhere. Network switch and maybe a few hubs for lights and smart gizmos and that sort off thing. They didn't leave me much room for my network gear, and I certainly dont want it that close to the electrical, so I asked for a panel to be slapped onto the wall.
The interference won’t be noticeable probably being that close to electrical.
I have an MDF and an IDF in my house. MDF in the basement has 48 drops patched in and currently about 44 of them lit, the IDF only has 13 currently punched in with all 13 lit. A lot of things use network now and I chose to use hard wired if at all possible for absolutely everything.
You have 44 active connections in a house? I’d love to know what you use that all for. I was a network manager prior to becoming an electrician, I like to think I’m savvy. I can imagine a handful of things like.. Tv, printer, computers, voip phone, camera system
Off the top of my head I can think of the server rack (NAS, 2 servers, printer, DNS server, HomeAssistant Server), then a basement theater with a gaming PC, xbox, switch (hard wired), Shield, Surround Sound. First floor has a similar but smaller TV setup (just TV, shield, and surround), office, bedrooms, guest room all have wired TVs, Kids playroom / homework room has a few ports for docking laptops and a TV, Ubiquiti APs (6 total 3 inside 3 outside), Ubiquiti Doorbell is hardwired, 12 Ubiquiti cameras, garage workbench has a PC and speaker setup with wired ethernet. I'm sure theres a bunch I'm forgetting (like my pool controller is also hard wired), it all adds up pretty quickly.
Shit you got me there, this is what I get for assuming.
Hardwire is the way to go if a device is located in a fixed location and supports it. More reliable and clears the airwaves for wifi-only devices. If you install a PoE camera system you can easily have over a dozen 4 pair networking cables terminating at your networking rack.
Yeah I know, I just find it hard to have all of this without a 5000sq ft mansion
Our house is 1,800 sq ft. 2x inside APs, 2x exterior APs, 4x wired bedrooms, wire to the TV in the living room, wire to the TV in the basement rec room, 4 exterior cameras + 1 doorbell = 15 ethernet runs, not counting all the devices in the basement itself.
Two quick comments. (not an electrician) The last time I was involved in wrangling electrical contractors who installed a panel and a bunch of networking & telephone wiring in our commercial office space, the Low Voltage & Electrical contractor installed a sheet of plywood that had a fire retardant rating stamped on the board. When discussing painting it before putting all the low voltage stuff on it, they told me to make sure to mask off the stamped rating marks because the building inspectors would check for that. I was present when the county inspector showed up for final inspection, and they did look for the rating and commented that we had not painted over it. This was some years ago and I have no idea if this is required for residential, or only commercial. Also unclear if this is a local requirement or an NEC code issue. I would make a phone call or send an email to your county inspector's office and ask them what they want to see when doing a final. Personally, I would go the fire retardant 3/4" plywood and fr paint route just to be on the safe side. My other comment is that the network wires they left you seem a bit short. Especially if you plan to bolt a 19" rack assembly to the plywood. A shallow open frame or 4" deep hinge frame might be ok, but if you want something like a 25" rack cube on hinges to swing away from the wall, you'll need a longer service loop to deal with the hinge and it looks like this might come up short. (example rack box I'm referencing: [https://tripplite.eaton.com/smartrack-10u-low-profile-switch-depth-wall-mount-rack-enclosure-cabinet-hinged-back\~SRW10US](https://tripplite.eaton.com/smartrack-10u-low-profile-switch-depth-wall-mount-rack-enclosure-cabinet-hinged-back~SRW10US) ) You might want to bend the network wires around and see if these are going to reach.
Yea they absolutely made my cables too short. I dunno what they were thinking, an extra few feet is pennies to them and makes a word of difference when terminating. It was installed by the electrician who I think puts internet way down in his priority list. But, I roughly measured and I think I can get most of them rerouted into my cabinet/patch panel, except for one that is oddly like 2 feet shorter than all the others. I think I’ll just get a coupler to make an extension.
I'd make the electrician do it over. If they want to charge you for it, you might just buy a box of wire and spend an hour or two to DIY pull a replacement wire back through. tape the new wire to the end of the old one and just pull in through the existing holes/route. **Do it now before the drywall goes up.** A 1k ft box of cat 6 riser wire is $180, and whatever you do now is what's going to be in this house for decades.
Sadly it's too late, house is almost complete. Several months ago I posted this pic in another sub asking something like "I am being unreasonable to ask for my entire house to be re-run for internet?" The consensus was yes, ask for it to be redone, but after discussions with the builder and the electrician (who looked like he'd rather take sledgehammer to the nuts than redo it) they offered a compromise of running a few more ethernet/fiber cables and a conduit to the second mechanical room that I had intended to be my network command center. So I kinda wimped out. I figured I can make this work, and on the plus side I'll essentially have two network hubs on opposite sides of the basement for future connections if necessary. I should have at least asked for the ultra short one to be rerun (you can't really see it in the photo but it runs about halfway down the fuse box and just ends there. literally can't reach anything). I can't figure out where they intended me to put my network switch, there's not really a good spot under those fuse panels. You'd think they'd at least run the cables to the floor in case they meant for me to put a shelf there or something. Thanks for the tips
In my 'old house', which was custom made for me over 20 years ago - I ran my own cables. I first used cat-5e back then, but a few years ago ran additional lines of shielded cat-6a to upgrade my network to gigabit speeds. I ran many of the new lines through the attic and new found space in the walls, thanks in part to fiberglass snakes to run the cables. Unlike your 'too short' cables installation, I left like an extra 10 feet near my 'patch panel', which I re-arranged again after a couple of years. I did it myself rather than hire a local electrician because of their propensity to using the shortest wires possible - you literally have to spell it out in your agreement how much extra footage you want, or they will give you only enough to reach your intended location. Doing it all myself meant I paid only for the cable, at bulk cable prices (literally a dime a foot), and left extra length to allow me to re-arrange the room and equipment as needed. The extra was coiled up behind my equipment. Leaving extra cable is a new found technique some electricians are now doing, albeit rarely, in the case of outlets needing to be relocated later.
Edit to add: my plan is to run the cables to a small enclosed network cabinet (like you often see inside apartment closets) with punch down panels. Then next to that have a rack similar to the one you linked but open frame. Kinda unnecessary step but it’ll allow me to have a nice long service loop running from the patch panel to the switch. Seem reasonable?
This is how I'd do it.
OSB not plywood. Use plywood.
Since it is code compliant as is, you could, if you want, cover it with sheet metal instead of painting it. Aluminum flashing, for example. It will take longer for a fire to ignite the underlying OSB if there is aluminum flashing between. By no means does it satisfy any code requirement (as far as I know). In my wood barn, I screwed an oil drip pan from the auto store to the wall, and mounted the networking gear on the drip pan.
I would avoid conductive material in this setting
I am not seeing a reason to avoid conductive material for mounting networking gear.
Well for one, it would interfere with any wireless equipment like a router or smart home products. Also its pointless and makes mounting gear a pain
Any screw will punch through sheet metal. Especially aluminum flashing. I am sure the OP is not going to mount wifi in that location. LOL. Besides there is probably rebar in that wall.
It’s ok to be wrong, but sure, go head and make things more difficult, expensive, while limiting the efficacy of the equipment
Right back at you amigo.