Loading…
11
Ran RG59 on a 12v run last Tuesday and the keypad kept dropping, swapped to 18/2 and it cleared right up
Heads up to anyone doing keypad runs, I made a dumb mistake last Tuesday on a small office job off Route 9 and I want to keep someone else from doing it too. I had about 90 feet of RG59 left on a spool from a camera install and figured I would use it for a power run to the entry keypad instead of pulling fresh wire, since it was already sitting in the van and the run was short. Everything powered up fine at first, but within two days the keypad started acting up, dropping off the bus and coming back with a fault code about every 20 minutes. I went back out and checked the voltage at the end of the run and it was sagging way below what the panel could handle under load, which made sense once I actually thought about it, since that coax voltage drop adds up fast on a 12v line. Pulled the RG59 and ran 18/2 instead, 90 feet again, and the keypad has held solid for a week now with no drops at all. The part that bugs me is I had one good reason to know better, since my old lead guy used to say coax is for signal and copper is for power, and I ignored it to save one pull. Anyone else ever cut that corner with leftover cable and get burned, or do you keep spools of 18/2 on the truck just for this?
0 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In0 Comments
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.