Tag Info

To the best of my knowledge, the only fire retardation requirements that exist for a residence apply to slowing the spread of fire between connected units - say in a duplex or row home. In the case of your personal dwelling, there is almost no way to restrict the spread of fire within a residence without making it extremely inconvenient to navigate in your ...

In a single family residence, with the exception of a garage, I don't believe there are any codes concerning the spread of fire. There are requirements to have smoke detectors to notify you of a fire, and other requirements to avoid creating a fire, but not to stop it's spread. If there were, you'd need fire rated doors that seal to the floor between rooms, ...

It's by no means an all-in-one solution but I've personally found Velcro Cable Ties to be INVALUABLE. You can reuse them over and over; great for those "oh darn!" moments when you need to remove or replace a cable. -M

I'm a fan of the recessed media box that monoprice sells. I installed it pre-drywall which I'm sure is easier, but it does have the ability to be installed as a retrofit (you don't say in your question which way you're doing this). There's two major issues with having actual connectors in the wall behind the TV: you have two additional connections per ...

In general I think the pros prefer the wall plates. It gives it a cleaner look especially when nothing is attached (no components are installed yet). I know some audio/video-phile types actually prefer "big hole" method as it cuts down on the number of connections. Imagine 1 cable (2 connections, 1 at the cable box and 1 at the TV) compared to 2 cables ...

For home office I am a big fan of the Ikea Signum. It is a wire basket, with hooks for wires that attaches and hangs under a desk. What I have done is zip-tie a power strip to the underside of the basket, and route all of the wires up into the basket, then route as much wire as I need up to items on the desk (computer, monitor, printer, etc..). It works ...

As BMitch and The Evil Greebo both point out, you may not be required to seal the penetrations. However, if for your own peace of mind you wanted to do it, here is what I'd do. Install a single gang electrical box on each side of the wall (not back to back. And don't use low voltage boxes for this application). Connect the boxes using flexible metallic (or ...

I use a velcro cable wrap (this one, actually) for anywhere visible (on my desk behind my monitors, and upstairs in my living room behind my TV). It's a braided sleeve which has velcro running the entire length, which wraps around a bundle of cables. It's relatively easy to add/remove cables to this, and it's also very easy to allow individual cables to come ...

You can get waterproof coax connectors, though there's a bit tough to find. They have a rubber gasket in them that seals the connection. Another option is to use standard compression coax connectors, but put heat shrink tubing around the outside to seal them. If you have to locate the splitter in a location where it is more directly exposed to the ...

Just did this recently when I installed my new antenna tower. I picked up an outdoors electrical junction box to contain my grounding setup. I couldn't get ahold of any of the old "outdoors" style coax connectors (seem to have gone out of style), so I used the normal coax connectors, crimped on, then filled with dielectric coax sealant gel. I also had ...

I've had a coax junction screwed to the outside of my house for years (probably close to a decade) -- the only protection we have is that the cables connecting to it were made w/ the 'outdoor' type ends. If you really wanted an enclosure, you could use an electrical box with a weatherproof cover, feed the cables up from below, make the connections, then ...

I keep my entertainment system on wire shelves, so most of my cables are tied to the posts / legs of the shelves. Of course, I also still have an old CRT television. For much of my networking gear (power distribution, DSL modem, network switches, wireless router, small server, etc.), I have it mounted to a sheet of plywood in the basement along with the ...