Cable and Wire Management?

Question

How do you (successfully) handle and manage Wires and Cables such as in your comuter work areas or TV-Video Game systems?

Answer 1

One thing that helps in your AV rack is to position the equipment in a sensible fashion. This means:

- Receiver on the lowest shelf. This allows speaker wires to flow out and away without interfering with other wires.

- Catv/Sat box's (things you do not normally touch) above the receiver.

- DVD player, VCR, Game System on the upper shelves.

WIRE MANAGEMENT

You want 3 separate bundles / areas:

A) AC power cords. Keep these away from the other wires

B) Speaker wires. These ARE power cords as well

C) Interconnects. All low-power signal wires. Video & audio.

POWER CORDS:

Look at the back of your rack and see where most of your AC power cords come out.  Attach a power trip to that side of your rack and use Velcro strips to run the AC power cords to that side. Use Velcro strips or "wire loom" to make a neat bundle.

NOTE: if you use wire loom, make labels with A, B, C, ... and put a lable on both ends of the power cords so you can match the device with the plug.

Now - you have the entire center of the rack for interconnects. You can just let them hang, or bundle them loosely with Velcro.

Answer 2

The first thing I would do is draw things out to see what wires you will have to "manage".  Then I'd see which would be the best or most logical way to group them.  One criteria you might consider is how often you would need to reconfigure.  Those wires may be better off bundled by themselves.  Also, always consider that when you are finally 'done'  something always comes up and your nice neat 'wire management' will have to be redone.

One of the worse things I have ever done is to use spiral wire wrap to 'manage' my wires/cables.  When I needed to reconfigure it was a pain in the butt to undo.

Answer 3

If you really want to "manage" them, you can use tie-wraps, or even more "manageable", some velcro straps... Then you wrap together cables of the same kind, or group, or for each device...

Answer 4

You can purchase wire runners for floor or carpet, and use re-useable wire ties. You want re-useable wire ties so you can undo them and add mor later if you need to.

Also use these.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...

And, if you are adventurous here is a very protective solution much cheaper than power surge strips.

I bought surge protectors for my circuits at home depot and installed them at my power panel.

You just knock out the hole closest to the circuit breakers, mount the unit with the lock nut on the outside feeding the wires into the panel.

Turn off the breaker you want to protect.

The black wire goes to the hole with the black wire already in the breaker, and the white wire goes to the silver bar inside your box that already has neutral, or white wires in it.

The guys at home depot can show you how to use them. They are a real money-saver.

Doodad