[Orcnet] Electrical code, low voltage wiring

[Keith Lofstrom]

We get the keys for our new house this afternoon, hooray!  I
won't be seeing you folks tonight - probably not until June.

A big reason for choosing the house is the large basement, where
I will be putting my office and library.  The main floor aka 
basement ceiling has exposed beams.  The power and water run
through the beams.  I would rather not drill more holes for
CAT6 ethernet, low voltage control, CATV coax, telephone,
fiber optic, etc., and I don't want to staple these cables to
the beams (too much abrasion and stress).  I also do not want
to run such rapidly-changing connections through wide conduit.
I will definitely keep all these away from 110/220 wiring.

What I would like to do is build small metal cable trays 
( 1 inch deep, 3 inches wide ) that run on the bottom of the
beams.  Either expanded metal mesh bent to shape, or gutter
screen;  regular wire cable trays cost $15/foot and are too
big.   I hope to run the cables loose in the trays ( or zip-tied
to them if they are going to stay a while ).  I will bundle the
telephone wire separately from the lower-voltage-current stuff.

I will be bringing in a licensed house electrician to work on
the 110/220 wiring, but I doubt they will know much about
running all the other cables.

I hope to use plenum-rated wires and cables, since they will
be exposed to air.  Suggestions for trustworthy sources of
non-counterfeit plenum-rated technical cable and ties?

I will look at a copy of NEC2008 in the library later today,
but I imagine I will misinterpret some of it.  Are there any
websites or books that discuss low voltage signal wiring in
accurate but non-specialist terms that I should be paying
attention to?  

Keith





-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs