Color coding your structured wiring can make it easier to install and maintain. It can also help mishaps like having a contractor cut into the wrong wire by mistake. Unfortunately there's no standard for structured wiring jacket colors so let's come up with our own residential structured wiring color guidelines.

Structured Wiring Cable Color Convention

Here's an example of what a structured wiring panel may look like using this configuration.

Video Wires

The wires you run for your video distribution will generally be coaxial cable (RG6 Quad Shielded preferably) and it really is only easy to find in 2 colors, black and white.

Black

White

Phone Wires

Gray

Green

Blue

Orange

Purple

Fiber Optic

Red

Wall Jacks

If you purchase a newer home (or office) that already has structured wiring installed it's important to figure out how it works and where all those wires go. In this article I'll provide some tips to do just that.
I recently received an email from Jon who is trying to make the best use of one of these structured wiring panels but is having a hard time figuring how it's all connected. Jon writes:

Hi Tom,
We recently moved into our home that was built in 2000. It has a patch panel in the mechanical room/closet and we're trying to decipher what's going on here. I've made an album on imgur and described everything and I was hoping you could just let me know if I'm on the right track with my current thinking.
http://imgur.com/a/7Xrxa
Thank-you so much!
Jon

Jon included a lot of pictures of his setup. Unfortunately it's very difficult to figure out what's going on without actually being there. There are some standard ways of doing things for some aspects but not all and some installers will do things their own way, sometimes the wrong way.

I can provide some tips however on how Jon can help figure things out himself with a bit of work. These tips will also help you even if you have a different brand of structured wiring cabinet.

Step 1: Review Labels/Documentation 

Step 2: Identify the Manufacturer

Step 4: Trace Wires Between Panel and Jacks

That's the top portion of the panel. It shows the patch cords connected to the ports that lead to the in-room jacks.

And here's the bottom portion of the panel that has the distribution modules.


The patch cords we see here should be the other end of the patch cords in the first photo. Remember, fixed lines are generally punched down in the back and then patch cables are usually used in the front to connect fixed wiring to services.

If you want to send a video signal to zone 1 wall plate B for example you'd add a patch cable between an output jack in the Coax Distribution HUB and the port on the right of the first row of the top of the panel. Same for data and phone using their respective distribution modules.

In this Honeywell system you can connect multiple inputs to distribute them over the same wires as long as those signals don't overlap. For example you can have a CableTV input as well as input from something like an over-the-air TV antenna or the output of a DVD player together. Satellite however doesn't tend to play well on the same cable as other feeds. The Honeywell Coax Distribution HUB Jon is using is also amplified. Signals lose their strength over long runs and many splits so the amplifier boosts the signal to ensure the signal at each port is strong enough.

Next the voice jacks need to be patched into the incoming voice services somehow. This can be done in a number of ways (patch panels, 110 blocks, 66 blocks, etc.) In Jon's case it looks like the module underneath the Coax HUB does just that. Looks like a 4-line telephone distribution module which can distribute up to 4 incoming lines on each cable.

There are also some 2 line distribution modules but it does not appear that they are used.

Finally, the data jacks need to be patched into the network. Unlike video and voice that can just be tied together, networking requires a network switch to deliver the best performance to the network. This is a smart device that routes network traffic to the specific port that the traffic is addressed to.

I haven't seen a networking switch in any of Jon's photos but I assume it must be there somewhere.  Either a Honeywell Switch Module or an external network switch mounted outside the panel. Patch cables will need to be used to connect the jacks (top part of panel) to the ports on the switch. One switch port for each RJ45 jack that you want to enable for data. Also connected to the network switch will need to be the incoming internet connection.

Label and Document Everything

If you're a professional installer there are better choices that really save time and create nicer cable labels but they also cost a lot of money. The Brother costs about $20. You might need to trim some of the labels to get them to fit nicely on patch panels but it's much better than trying to read my chicken scratch.

Summary

One of the most difficult tasks in planning a structured wiring project for your home is identifying the location to install your wall jacks. You want to find a location that will minimize the use of long patch cords for safety and aesthetic reasons while still allowing you to move furniture around. Here are some of my tips.

How Many Wall Plates Per Room?

Step 1: Determine Furniture and Traffic Patterns

Step 2: Put a Wall Plate In Each Traffic Zone

If you're dealing with old home phone wiring, messy phone jacks, or a basement full of mystery cables, you're not alone. A lot of older houses started with one or two phone jacks, then had more added wherever they were needed. The quick fix was often to tap into the nearest jack or splice into an existing run, which works until you need to trace a line or fix a bad connection.

That's what I ran into on a family member's house. We weren't building a big multi-line phone system from scratch. We just wanted to clean up the old house phone wiring, figure out which cable went to which jack, and make the connections more reliable without tearing open walls.

It's important to run enough cables and provide enough jacks in your home to not only provide the services and equipment you currently use but also to account for any future needs including rearranging furniture. In this post I'll go over what I think are the best practices regarding which keystone ports to include in your wall plates.

ANSI/TIA-570-C Residential Structured Wiring Standard

There's actually a standards document that was last updated in 2012 for residential structured wiring, ANSI/TIA-570-C. It provides the minimum outlets to meet 2 different grades of the standard. Each of the grades indicates you should have at least one wall plate in each kitchen, bedroom, family/living/great room, and den/study/office of your home. See my recommendations on where to put voice/data/video outlets in each room of your home.


For ANSI/TIA-570-C Grade 1 you should have at least one 4 pair UTP (Cat5e minimum) and one RG6 cable terminated in each wall plate.

For ANSI/TIA-570-C Grade 2 you need at least 2 4 pair UTP (Cat5e minimum) and 2 RG6 cables at each outlet with 2 optional fiber cables.

According to the standard all residential 4 UTP cables should be terminated according to the T568A standard.  Which I think makes the most sense. There's a misconception that T568B is newer or better, but it's not. The only difference between the two is that the green pair and orange pair are swapped. T568A is more compatible with phone systems so you can use an RJ45 jack for phone or ethernet depending how you have it terminated on the other end.

My Disagreements with TIA-570-C

RJ12 Phone Jacks Not Allowed

One Dual VDV and One Dual DV

Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6 cable is frequently used for wiring telephone jacks. You can send up to 4 telephone lines on one 4 pair cable that terminates at a RJ45 (8P8C) jack. The problem is most phones, even multi-line phones, don't directly plug into an RJ45 jack. We'll discuss some options for connecting phones with RJ11 connectors to an RJ45 port.

Jack Configuration

Connecting Standard 4-Line Phone to RJ45 Jack

RJ45 4-line to 2 RJ11 2-Line Adapter

Break Out Box

Since the Leviton systems are geared towards residential installations the Leviton 47609-4x4 is wired according to the T568A pinout unlike the splitter above which is T568B.

DIY RJ45 to RJ11 Break Out Box

If you can't find the break out box above or have special needs you can make your own break out box.

You can make one anyway you'd like but to give you an example let's make a a 4 port box that takes an incoming cable and splits it up to L1&2, L2&1, L3&4, L4&3 similar to the Leviton.

We'll need:

• A 4-port surface mount keystone box (C&E Blank Surface Mount Box for Keystones, 4 Hole, White (CNE43705))
• 4 Phone jack keystone ports (like these ONQ / Legrand F9042WHV5 RJ25 Phone Jack, White, 5Pack)
• 1 RJ45 Connector.

We're going to daisy chain 2 pairs on 2 ports for Lines 1 & 2 and then do the same on 2 other ports for lines 3 &4 so we'll have 4 jacks wired like this:


With this configuration we can connect:

• 4 separate 1-line phones to one RJ45 jack to access all 4 lines.
• 4 2-line phones 
• 2 2-line phones
• or some other variations like one 4-line phone a fax machine and a single line phone.

Step 1: Strip cable

Step 2: L2&1 Jack

Step 3: L1&2 Jack

Step 4: L3&4 Jack

Step 5: L4&3 Jack

Step 7: Crimp RJ45 Connector

Home networks are becoming more important and many people are adding structured wiring for high speed data lines in their existing homes or new construction to be able to transport large files such as video and backups quickly. While adding these new data lines it's a good time to rewire your outdated home telephone wiring too!

It's common to use a 66 block or 110 block for analog phone lines but it seemed a bit complicated to do what I wanted. You can create a simple switch board to help you manage multiple analog phone lines using the same RJ45 patch panels you're using for your Cat6 data lines.

You can have multiple lines per room and easily change which lines go to which rooms. You can have as many or as few incoming phone lines as you need but for this tutorial I'm going to assume there are 4 incoming phone lines. Let's say one main house voice line, 1 line for a home office plus 1 fax line and another line for an older kid's room.

I spent half this past weekend trying to find info on how to do what I wanted without much luck. After I figured out how best to wire telephones using Cat6 patch panels I decided to post it here so I don't forget and incase anyone else finds it useful.

If you don't have a need to regularly switch around your phone lines have a look at my posts on how to wire a 66 block and how to wire a residential 110 block. If you want something very simple use a Leviton Phone Distribution Panel which was very quick and easy to install.

110 wiring blocks are commonly used for distributing telephone lines in homes and offices. If your home was built after 1990 there's a good chance you have a 110 block connecting your telephone jacks to your incoming phone lines. They're a bit complicated but knowing how they work can wind up saving you a lot of money. In this post we'll go over over the different parts of a 110 block and how to wire your phone system.

Instructions on how to wire a 66 block with as a 4 line bridge for 11 telephone ports. This is a common way to wire residential and small business telephone wires.

There are a number of different ways to wire your phones using a 66 block. I discussed another option in my article on How to Wire a 66 Block. That was a little more complex but it's worth reading if you're not familiar with 66 blocks and would like a better understanding of how they work and what you can do with them. That other wiring provided less density but gave you greater flexibility.

This article will show you to use the inner pins to create a daisy chained bridge for up to 4 incoming lines going to up to 11 phone ports. It's still a bit complicated so if you want something easier look at the pre-made 1x9 bridge in my article on organizing telephone lines in an older home for an easier solution. We're essentially using a 66 block to make a 1x11 bridge. You can always buy 2 1x9 bridges and wire them together saving a lot of time but if you want to understand 66 blocks better or, like me, just enjoy using your punch down tool keep reading.

What you'll Need

Materials

• A 50 pair split 66-block 
• A couple of screws to attach the mounting bracket to your structured media panel
• Cat5e cable running to your phone jacks as well as an incoming phone line
• Some spare Cat5e you strip to separate individual pairs

 Tools

• Screwdriver for screwing down mounting bracket
• Punchdown tool with 66 black (cut and non-cut)
• Spudger
• Wire snips

Above are the tools I use. I have a Klein Tools VDV427-822 Comfort Grip Impact Punch down tool kit which I think is the best punch down tool out there because it has a long reach and is shaped like a screwdriver. It comes with the spudger which is a tool used for moving and pulling small wires in tight to reach areas. And I have a pair of 5" Wiss electrician snips for cutting and stripping wires. You'll also need a 66 blade that has a cutting and non-cutting side like the Klein VDV427-016-SEN  66 blade.

The kit comes with a nice case that clips everything I need on my belt even has a pouch for extra blades.

Step 1: Mount 66 Block To Structured Media Panel Feed Cables

Remove the 66 block from the 89d mounting bracket and secure the bracket to your structured media panel or other appropriate surface and start to feed your cables up from the bottom leaving a bit of a loop in case you need extra wire to punch the wires down again in the future.

There are 12 cables total. 1 Grey Cat5e for the incoming lines and 11 green Cat5e cables for the premise wiring that goes to the phone jacks. You can use any colors but for consistency I follow my Structured Wiring Jack Color recommendations. Feed 6 cables through each side of the mounting bracket making sure the grey incoming cable is on the upper left of the bracket.

Clip the 66 block back on the mounting bracket.

Step 2: Punch down Incoming Cable

I like to start out by punching down the premise cables first since in a residential installation they're typically not going to change.

I start by punching down the grey Cat5e cable that has 4 pairs for up to 4 incoming lines. I punch it down to the upper left of the block which is where incoming lines are typically placed.

I'm using a Cat5e rated 66 block and Cat5e cables even though analog phone lines don't really need to be installed with that spec. Because of that I'm wiring the 66 block slightly different to maintain the twists in the wire pairs as much as possible.

Instead of stripping the cable all the way back I'm stripping it so that it lands around the center of the area of where it will be punched down and instead of untwisting the wires and feeding each one through it's own fin, each pair goes through one fin and there's an empty fin below it.


The wires get punched down to the pins closest to the fins. I hook the white striped wire of the pair up to the pin above and the colored wire down to the pin below. This way the twists are preserved as much as possible. I use the terminate and cut side of my 66 blade in my punchdown tool to punchdown and trim away the excess cable.

Important: Make sure the cut side is up for the white striped wire and down for the colored wire when punching down.

The order of wires is white-blue, blue, white orange, orange, white green, green, white brown brown.  It's easier for me to just remember blue, orange, green brown and the white striped wire goes on top.

Step 3: Punch down Premise Cables

The green cables lead to phone jacks installed in various rooms throughout the house and will be terminated in the 66 block.

First we strip the cable. I take my snips and score the jacket a couple of inches down from the end then bend to crack and remove the outer jacket. Grab hold of the rip cord and start ripping down the outer jacket until it comes to just under the fins. I hold the cable down around 4 fins from where the first wire is going to be punched down so it lands around the middle. I trim off some of the excess wire at the end as well as the jacket and rip cord.


Now separate the pairs in the order they will be punched down, blue, orange green brown and feed them through the appropriate fins.


Untwist the blue pair just enough so you can hook the white-blue wire to the pin on top and the blue wire to the pin below.


Then punch down the wires making sure the punch down tool is cutting on the top for the white blue wire and on the bottom for the blue wire. I use my finger to hold the jacket of the cable down to the side of the block so it stays in the middle. This isn't that important but I think it looks nicer when it's centered.


Repeat for the other 3 pairs, orange, green and brown.


Now just repeat that process for the rest of the premise cables and your 66 block should now look like this.


Keep in mind that the 66 block has 50 rows of pins but we're only punching down 6 cables which is 24 pairs or 48 individual wires so there will be two empty rows on the bottom.

Step 4: Cross Connect Daisy Chains

We have the incoming lines and all our premise wiring punched down on the 66 block but they're not connected to each other yet so none of the phones will have dial tone.

To get the phone lines connected to the incoming phone lines we're going to daisy chain some wires on the inner pins to feed dial tone from each incoming line to each phone jack.

I cut a length of Cat5e cable, remove the jacket and separate out the 4 pairs of wires to create the cross connects. That way each cross connect daisy chain is color coded to match the colors on the incoming line pairs.


We start with the blue pair, line 1 and punch down the white blue wire to the pin next to the incoming white-blue wire and the blue wire next to the incoming blue wire. Feed the cross connect wire through the same fins that the incoming blue pair is in.


The blue pair cross connect now has dial tone for line 1. We'll use the cross connect wire to provide dial town to the other extensions. Here you can pick and choose which lines to send line 1 to. You can send it to only a few of the extensions, you can choose to send it to a different line (color pair) instead of blue, etc. For simplicity and because it's the most common way of doing things in a home installation we're going to send line 1 to all the line 1's (blue pairs) of the premise wires and do the same for the other 3 lines as well.

Now run the cross connect wire down to where the blue pair is on the next premise cable and start to separate the twists without cutting the cross connect wire. It sometimes helps to use the spudger to create an opening in the twists.


Punch down the wires using the non-cutting side of the 66 blade. We don't want to cut the wire because that will break the connection and lose dial tone we need to send to the other cables.

When you're done punching down the wires feed it back out through the same fins the wire came in through and continue to the next cable's blue pair.


Wrap around the bottom of the 66 block and continue up the other side until you get to the end. When you get to the end use the cut side of the 65 blade to punch down and cut the cross connect wires. Your 66 block should now look like this.


Side Note: We don't have to do both sides of the 66 block with the cross connect wire. We could just do one side and use cross connects to send dial tone to the other side but I think it looks more consistent to use the cross connect wire and I enjoy punching things down. :)

Now repeat the above with the orange cross connect wire to send line 2's dial tone to all the premise wires.


Most homes these days probably only have 1 phone line (if that) but it's nice to have one extra line setup and ready to go if necessary. Back in the day you'd have the main house line, maybe a line for a modem, then the kids would want a line to talk to their friends but now most people have broadband and you're more likely to get your kids a cell phone than a landline. Most people can probably stop right here but we have the other cross connects ready and it's fun to punch wires down so we'll feed line 3 (green pair) and line 4 (brown pair) to all the lines too and our 66 block will end up looking like this.


And here's one more shot showing a bit of the side.


So that's how you make a 4 line 1x11 bridge with a 66 block. You can use the techniques to customize the wiring to suit your needs now or in the future. If this seems too difficult for you there's always the Leviton 1x9 Telephone Bridge that already has the bridge part done for you, all you have to do is punch down your incoming and premise wiring. No need to punch down all those cross connects but the 66 block locks cooler and did I mention I like punching things down? :)