The Problem Of Unused Cabling

Makarand writes "Technological advances constantly render functional cable obsolete by demanding data transfers at higher rates which older cabling cannot support. New cables that support higher data rates are laid right over older wires. The old wires are simply left in place and abandoned. This interesting article talks about the problems caused by abandoned cabling. According to an estimate several billion feet of abandoned cable lies unused in the plenum spaces of buildings that allow air to circulate creating a fire hazard. Also, very few firms currently worry about removing cabling when they move out of a building."

Comments

Cost to remove?

[satyap]

Wonder how much it would cost to remove and recover the metals in unused cables, and would it be offset by the sale of the metal?

Re:Cost to remove?

[Interfacer]

I think it is safe to say that the hours you have to spend to remove all cabling are 100 times more expensive than the price you would get.

"Hello sir, i have a few thousand feet of used cabling, you can have it for 5000$ OK?"

kind regards,
Interfacer.

One good use

[GeckoFood]

Several years ago, I took some of that old cabling and stripped out the copper wire. I then used that wire as the loop on fishing sinkers. Saved me a good $0.02 - $0.05 per sinker, and I got to go fishing all summer. Life's pretty good sometimes.

Passing the buck...

[danielrm26]

This is one of those situations where it's just so *easy* to not take responsibility. I think the final solution in the article is best -- require a fairly large deposit when people move in, on top of requiring them to pay to install and remove the cable they use. If they don't remove it for whatever reason, you just take it out of their deposit.

This is the most logical way to handle the problem, but it puts the business using this method at a disadvantage becuase they are possibly requiring higher deposits than competitors.

Taking the article is already /.'ed

[rf0]

I can't RTFM so I will just say that if you look at some of the mess that companies actually leave such as old cat5 cables 1/2 hanging out the walls as well as some of the under floor.

I did work at a DC once where to lay in new cable under the floor you had to physically have someone to push other cables aside so you could get another cable in. There was meant to be 3 ft of room between the tiles and the concrete floor. IT was all full of cables.

They had a lot of downtime as each time your moved one cable it ended becoming disconnected from the switch or the machine. Soon went bust

Rus

Not so sure

[cybermace5]

I don't know if I really believe this article all that much. A couple years back, at the place I work (*cough* will be unemployed from after Wednesday), they upgraded the network to CAT-6 and three times the ports. That meant they had to rewire the entire front office cubefarm, which is two stores with a 6" subfloor each, and wiring columns running between stories.

When all those cables converge on a wiring closet, they start to get bundled up pretty high. There's almost no room to run additional cables, plus it would be a huge unsightly mess. We hired an outside contractor to do the job, so they did professional work and disposed of the old wiring. They almost had to...with a 6" subfloor, you either pull cables through with the old wiring, or rip up every single carpet square and floor tile. I can't imagine this situation being much different for other companies.

Dont buildings come with services over there?

[carndearg]

Judging by my several employers over the last few years the norm here in the UK for newer office space at least is that the building is put up with structured cabling already in place. This is usually cat.5, which happily takes care of any network or phone cabling requirements. This is seen as a major selling point for the office so the landlord is happy to provide it.
It surprises me that landlords over there do not take the same view, though it is possible that there is some liability question under US law of which I am unaware.

We are not without our cabling problems here though, my first job was at a major university, in a 1930s building. The original rubber insulated telephone cables were disused but still in place, and they had coagulated into a malevolent black mass in the risers and cable ducts. I am told they have now been removed, I pity the poor people who had to do it, they must have had to cut them out with an angle grinder.

outsource cabling ?

[Cedric C. Girouard]

In montreal, we have quite a few buildings where several companies are installed, and when it comes to cabling, you just can not install anything yourself. You rent the space, you rent the lines.

You need a new drop ? No problem, a contractor is on site to install them, label them, keep track of them.

It can lead to some pretty conflicts, but overall, when you get used to the fact that your responsability ends at the wall jack, it's a pretty good way to relieve us IT guys from one of the most boring area of the job.

Some Thoughts from an Expert...

[lonb]

I used to run an ISP that was owned by a real estate firm. We wired many buildings in NYC and provided additional services, such as wiring tenant offices and providing Internet access. There are several considerations not pointed out here:

A. Limitation of Knowledge. The guys who do a lot of the wiring work don't know what the cables do -- believe it or not. My two most experienced, and best, pullers couldn't tell you what ethernet was if their life depended on it. Heck, I had one guy who didn't know what T568b was, but could punch down Cat5 to a T568b block in five seconds flat. All they knew was what they were told to install.

In the past I had specifically had discussions with them about pulling cables out. Unless they are explicitly directed by the landlord of the building (who knows even LESS than they do) they will not, and probably should not, touch cables that are pre-existing. This is due to fear of not knowing what they could be doing, and worse, what they are, or aren't, doing.

B. Cross-office runs. In one of my buildings, for example, each floor was an average of 12,500 feet. The average office was 800 sq. ft. Most floors had upwards of 10-12 offices on them. In order to get riser pulls (cabling run in the central, vertical risers of the building) to office drops (termination points for those cables), these typically ran over the other offices. It was typical for the first office, closest to the riser) to have anywhere from 20-40 cables running through their plenum cores that had nothing to do with that office.

Imagine you come in Monday morning, after a neighbor moved in that weekend, to find all your cabling (data, phone, cable TV, leased lines) had be removed by the overly eager data people.

C. Simple CBA. The bottomline for any real estate firm is, well, the bottomline. The risk of fire due to overly full cabling space is fairly minimal compared to the risk of losing money and facing lawsuits -- or worse, losing tenants.

The cost of pulling existing cabling plus the risk of damaging infrastructure minus the value of open space is just not in the favor of making the change. It's really that simple.

When all is said and done, with my engineering cap on, I'd like to see thorough documentation on cables and better diagrams of floors showing what cable goes where -- and it's really not that hard. But try telling a rushing tenant that they have to wait two weeks while your engineering team documents cables, yeah right.

Also, with my engineering cap on, I'd make one suggestion for anyone moving into a new office. If you are going to pull out the old cables, and it is in roughly strong strength, use it to snake your new cables! That's what we often did. There are a few snares with this trick to watch out for, but if you have good pullers they'll know what to do -- if you give them the green light.

Re:creating a fire hazard?

[Overzeetop]

Which is why building codes require special jacketed cables for use un plenum spaces (ie: plenum rated). If you install non-rated cables in the plenum space you are breaking the law, and could be liable to future tenants for remove of the non-complying cabling. Yes, that fact is usually ignored since nobody pulls a building permit when retrofitting low-voltage cabling and therfor there's no inspector to make sure it is done correctly (or, at least, to code).

As a structural engineer, I deal with folks every day who do things "wrong" but they've never had a building fall down. I call it Luck, as defined by the myriad little things which don't have any reproducable/quantifiable strucutral value which - in the real world - tend to help out a bit (friction, drywall screws, adhesive on gun-nails, etc.). Combine that with safety factors approaching 3 and the rarity for a building to see a code-required load (usu. less than 2% chance per year) and builders and owners get away with a lot of $#!+.

The fact is that the actual danger is fairly low, but when it's your family member that get's turned into medium steak - crispy on the outside with a warm red center - suddenly the $50,000 to remove the cabling seems like a small price to pay (and would have been a small price compared to the settlement or jury award).

Well, I didn't mean for this to sound so gloom-and-doom. Remember that crispy human with gypsum and ash crust requires multiple failures - bad/blocked exits, non- or sub-functioning alarm and fire supression, ignition source, flammables. Keep your buildings well maintained and you can handle a bit of non-compliance.