6 miles of wire (was: RS-232 DB25 Breakout strip)

["Kurt Delaney" <kurt_dot_delaney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote >
> They look to be pretty cheap on Ebay.  Anything that helps keep the wiring
> in line is useful.  I saw an old "This Old House" today where they
explored
> the bowels of a very high end home.  Six miles of wire of all sorts ended
up
> in the wire closet in the basement.  It was an 80 dimmer Centralite-sort
of
> setup.  I've never seen so much wire in a residence.

This got me thinking -- 6 miles of wire sounds like a lot, but it really is
not that much.  I recently built a house and did the LV pre-wiring myself.
This is a modestly-sized home (2200 sq. ft.) single story home.  I used
~1000' of bundled cable (2 cat5, 2 coax), so thats 4000 ft. right there.
Then I used an addition ~700 ft. of cat5.  All of that was just for the
phone, network, and video outlets.  Then I ran a ton more 22/4 wire for
security pre-wire -- home-run to each window, door, and locations for motion
(indoor and outdoor), glass break, thermostats, smoke, heat and CO
detectors, as well as keypads, sounders, etc.  I figure I ran over 2000 ft.
of that wire.

So totaled up, I have about a mile and a half of wire (w/o counting lighting
wire), and my home is nowhere near a "very high end home".  When I finish
off the basement (another 2100 sq. ft.) I will have run over 2 1/2 miles of
LV wire.

Kurt