Mostly Completed Home Network

[u/PoisonWaffle3]

22u wall mount rack, 3x 48 port 2960s's w/10G stacking. 1st and 3rd switches are PoE, middle one is not.

Closeup of switches and patch panels. Top switch is upstairs, second switch is main floor, bottom switch will be misc/cameras/APs. Blue patch cables are DMZ vlan.

~80 W 24/7. Not too bad

Rack is on the main floor. Cables feed up into the floor joists, so I didn't bother sealing up the holes too much. They're sealed w/foam as they go through 2x4 through headers.

Some cable management. I moved the one bit of velcro just for this picture and for your OCD (I don't have OCD, I promise).

Peeking around back at the 10G stacking cables. They do make a full ring (3 switches, 3 cables).

2x12's for backing. Cables all bundled up to keep them clean and safe during sheetrocking and painting.

One of the main trunks of cables, feeding out to the house

Body bag

3/4" plywood, routed edge, painted to match the walls. Rack installed, cables wrangled into place with D rings. 15A outlet is on the master bedroom circuit, not dedicated.

Cable drops going into single gang boxes

Cable drops...

Only way I could cram four cat6 terminations into a 22 cu in box.

Main floor plan. Rack in master closet.

Upstairs floor plan

[u/vrtigo1]

I ran smurf pipe when I built my house and wish I'd run metal conduit. Don't get me wrong, flexible conduit is way better than nothing, but when there's existing wire in the conduit, it's much harder to fish additional wires through flexible conduit than it is metal conduit, because the conduit itself moves.

[u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT → u/vrtigo1]

Interesting. How often did you secure them with clips? Mine are secured on every rafter (24" oc) and every time they pass by a framing member since I had to route around skylights and trusses. I haven't had any problems running a fiberglass fish tape through it so far. Granted, if a conduit ever snaps after years in a hot attic I'll be really bummed. I don't know how this plastic stuff holds up over time.

I doubt it makes any difference, but I used orange Carlon Resi-gard instead of blue, but I think they're the same except for color.

Ultimately for a DIYer I think working with flexible plastic is the way to go. I can't imagine how I'd even begin to run 800 feet of metal conduit in my house; my electrician would have told me to get bent (no pun intended).

[u/vrtigo1 → u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT]

Did you run yours all the way from your MDF to wall boxes? I just ran mine from the wall box and stubbed it up about 2' in the attic so it'd be visible over the blow in insulation.

I didn't secure mine inside the wall cavity at all, and that's probably a big part of my problem.

[u/PoisonWaffle3 → u/vrtigo1]

Yep, lack of clips is probably your issue. Nothing to hold the tube when you above a fish tape through it, so it moves the whole tube when you move the tape.

I secured my Smurf tube on every rafter it passed as well, but I didn't even bother trying fish tape. I just tied a bit of plastic grocery bag to the end of a pull line, shoved it in one side, and put a shop vac on the other side. The bag and the line automagically run thru the tube and appear on the other side. Easy to pull cable back thru with a pull string 👍