Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
I've used old cabling to fish through the new cabling. I'm lazy like that.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
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.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
1. Feed loose end of cable out of building, into carpark.
2. Attach cable to axel of bosses car, and forge email from CEO's wife saying she wants him now.
3. Watch boss drive off at great speed.
4. ?????
5. Profit.
The standard practice is to recover assets when leaving a building. Just like a company takes it's servers, desktop computers, chairs, and desks, it also takes the relatively expensive network hook up equipment. This generally means the patch panels and the network racks. One rack, 6 or 7ft high, entirely populated with patch panels could easily have cost $4,000.
Now, in some cases, people are jerks and do not take the time to cut the wires as close to the patch panels as possible. I have seen some cut where the wires enter the room (ussually through the ceiling). This makes re-using the wires impossible since there isn't enough left to do the hookups.
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.
...
Leaving ethernet points in = $0
Unfortunately, when the tenant moves out they're going to want to take all their switching equipment with them. That leaves a load of loose wires which may or may not be labelled.
Come time to use wiring in an office you have to search through bundles of cables to find the ones you want. If the cable you find doesn't work you're left wondering if it's incorrectly labelled and comes out somewhere else, or is simply broken. If it's broken you've got the expense of laying in replacements, if it's mislabelled you've an expensive analysis job to undertake.
So, no, using someone else's second-hand wiring is not zero cost.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Any place with a decent set of fire codes, and people who are actually following them, shouldn't be worrying. FT-5/Plenum cable is simply not a danger.
Now, if residential "wood burns faster so who cares" FT-1 vinyl cable is used, you get what you pay for. That being said, if the fire inspector ever sees that stuff, you'll probably be looking at a really juicy fine.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
What else are they going to do, break the bloody windows?!
:)
Bill G already took care of that.
The logic being it's their cabling. The last startup I did, the previous tenants had done exactly that. The cabling was cut within about two feet of the ceiling. There was a bit of slack in the cables, though, and we were cheap, so we wound up with our patch panels right up at ceiling level. Saved us a bunch of time and money upfront though any work afterwards had to be done on top of a ladder.
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.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
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.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
I've considered this idea more generally in the past... paying a 'disposal fee' up-front on new goods to pay for their end-of-life costs. There are two problems with this idea:
1: Technology changes, and those end-of-life costs are going to change, sometimes up, sometimes down. This in itself isn't a terrible problem, but it couples into problem 2.
2: Disposal escrow would wind up creating some huge lumps of money. IMHO, whenever there's a huge lump of money, there's also a class of people who will find a way to attach themselves to it and start sucking it dry. In other words, that lump will never survive to do what it was supposed to do - pay disposal costs. Relative to item 1, someone (from that class) will find a 'new technology' to handle disposal and use the fund to develop that new technolgy. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but odds are that the point will have been to gain access to the money, not to develop technology. Let's presume that 50% of the time the technology falls through, and the money's gone. We're right back where we started, only with a broken promise and either an environmental mess or the need for another government bailout.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?