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4 Apr 2025

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Schneider Electric appoints Oliver Hill to lead NZ team
Oliver Hill becomes the New Zealand Country President for Schneider Electric and PDL, aiming to drive sustainable growth and innovation from 29 October 2024.

Schneider Electric launches new PDL Pro Series designed specifically for the commercial building market
Those in the commercial sector can now easily and safely upgrade their switches and sockets with a fresh new look and extensive functionality with the launch of PDL Pro Series.

Tiger Building wins New Zealand's most prestigious Polo title
The winner of the Land Rover NZ Polo Open, held yesterday on Clevedon’s Fisher Field, was won by Tiger Building 7 - 6 (John-Paul Clarkin, Matt Clarkin, Craig Wilson and Kit Brooks) in an outstanding highly competitive match against Semco PDL (Glenn Sheriff, Juan Britos, James Harper, Harry Seme

Most in Berlusconi PDL party want to support PM Letta: party moderate

TP Vision breaks new ground in TV design
With a floor-standing tinted glass bezel, the PDL8908 is a drop-dead gorgeous panel that's truly in a class of its own. [Read more]

Stirrings by Berlusconi
The PDL party (People of Freedom) in Italy led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has abstained from confidence votes in parliament and indicated that he will attempt to return to power.

Worry over faulty electrical safety device
Associate Energy Minister Harry Duynhoven is alerting people who have bought two specific types of PDL POWERGUARD branded Residual Current Devices (RCDs) to note a voluntary recall which has taken place over recent weeks.

Nailing his colours to the mast
When Christchurch businessman Sir Robertson Stewart bought PDL in 1957, it was a clapped-out war munitions manufacturer. Over the next few decades he built it into a large, electrical equipment manufacturer with annual revenues of...

PDL head farewelled in Christchurch
Christchurch industrialist Sir Robertson Stewart was farewelled by hundreds of people in Christ Church Cathedral yesterday with tributes to his enthusiasm for life.

PDL Wiser launches in New Zealand
PDL is offering electricians, builders and other tradespeople the opportunity to differentiate their business and provide cutting-edge smart home technology to their customers with the launch of the globally award-winning PDL Wiser.

Levels legend Leo Leonard reunites with PDL Mustang for circuit celebrations
South Canterbury motorsport legend Leo Leonard was revved up for Levels Raceway's 50th anniversary as he got back behind the steering wheel of the iconic PDL Mustang.

Berlusconi relaunches Forza Italia
Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi suspends his PDL party and relaunches Forza Italia, the centre-right party that brought him to power in 1990s.

Italy PM Monti plans to resign
Italian PM Mario Monti says he plans to resign after Silvio Berlusconi's PDL party withdrew its support for the government.

Part 1 – Planning
NEW FORMATTED AND EDITED VERSION - 12/02/2012I have decided to do a write up of my recent experiences in cabling a large home for data and voice. When i undertook this project i intended to learn how to install and terminate cat5e/6 cabling, install patch panels and hook the whole thing up to telecom phone lines. I gained valuable experience in all these things, learned a lot and enjoyed the whole process.A large amount of the information i gathered for this came from Geekzone blogs and forum posts and helpful members, big thanks to all those that helped. Individual mentions will come at the end of the posts.Original thread from geekzone forums.Background reading:TCF Premises Wiring Code of Practice Telecom Code of PracticeCables to go guide Structured Home wiring Structured Wiring How To ZDNet BlogMotivation:The wiring in this house was a mess and to be honest I'm surprised the phone and internet worked at all. Also the house was going to be used as a home office for a small business so it required more phone jacks in various places and some wired jacks for internet in the office. I also did some upgrades to the computers and installed a NAS device for storage and remote access, most of this required faster than wireless access especially the home computers and the NAS. So they decided to upgrade all the wiring and get gigabit networking for all the office devices, so i offered to do the wiring for them for good experience and practice for me. Joins under the house in the phone line, and the split of the phone line to all jacks.Planning:The first thing I did was to plan out thoroughly what was needed where, I did this by drawing up a house plan roughly to scale. I will not include this to protect the privacy of the home owners but I will put up a link to an example at the end of the post. Would be helpful if you had access to original house plans.With the house plan I went through with the home owners and decided where to put all the outlets and where to locate the central wiring point. I also considered where voice was needed and how many outlets in each location.Useful information for this can be found on the TCF website I decided to go the route of Rj45 jacks for all locations voice and data (thanks to the input of geekzone members) forgoing Rj12 and BT jacks totally. All outlets would be star wired back to a central location and use Cat5e cabling.Since i decided to integrate the phone line and data network all to the same location, i had to consider how to connect up the outlets to the telecom etp (where the phone lines comes in from the road and joins your home wiring - should be a small white box on the outer wall of the house somewhere, see pictures). Thanks to advice here i decided i would run a single cat5e cable from the central wiring point to the telecom etp (will explain more in part 2). I decided on 2 jacks in all bedroom locations 4 in the office, 4 in the lounge, singles in locations for phones and 2 high on a wall well positioned for a wireless access point.With this house plan and outlet locations, I created a cable schedule in a spreadsheet to label all cables and give their from and to locations and which ports of the patch panel they will be connected to.In the cable schedule i formed a room and cable labelling format so i could label all the cat5e cable at both ends and quickly check where that cable goes.This information gave me enough to price up the job and purchase 90% of the materials.Another major factor to consider was how to run the cabling, in my case there was good access to the under floor of the house and i did a thorough check under all the rooms to assess where would be most practical to run the cabling into the room. Then adjust the outlet locations slightly accordingly.I also decided to make my own patch cables and phone cords (RJ45 - RJ11) for a bit of practice and experience, plus there was plenty of off cut cable and leftovers.Parts:I used a number of shops to get the best prices they include:Cables directPB TechComputer StoreMitre 10 MegaIdeal ElectricalI purchased the bulk of the materials from cables direct who have a pretty good range and a good website, delivery was pretty fast too.I found there were plenty of choices for wall jacks and modules (PDL, Dynamix, Amdex) but decided on Dynamix ones with matching Keystone jacks , they make single and dual wall plates that come in 2 pieces, wall plate and plastic cover, however the 4 way plates are single piece and are a bit messier. In hindsight i may have used 2 dual plates instead. Also remember flush boxes or surface mount boxes depending on how you will mount the outlets, i got them pretty cheap from mitre 10 mega.For the keystone jacks i got colour coded ones (green for voice jacks, blue,yellow,white for data 1,2,3 correspondingly) because dynamix had a nice range of colours. This made it easy to tell which jacks go to which patch panel ports. I suppose i would have used PDL ones if matching the existing jacks was required but they were considerably more expensive. Next up was a patch panel, as i had a total of 20 wall outlets and needed some spare to patch the phone line into i went with a 24 port patch panel from Dynamix and a wall bracket .As not all the ports would be used initially i got an 8 port gigabit switch and used the existing modem router. A 305M box of cat5e cable would be plenty for this but it pays to check rough measurements first.Tools:After experimenting with eBay and cheap overseas sellers i ended up just getting some proper tools locally Punch down tool (for 110 style jacks as this was the jacks and patch panel i was using) this was a goodish quality impact tool which i can recommend, worked really well for me. You may be able to use a cheapish non impact tool but i didn't find them as easy to use for lots of jacks.Crimping Tool i got a cheapish one which works fine for me, but there are more expensive ratcheting ones. That is probably all the specialist tools needed, of course general tools will be needed too. Drills, screwdrivers good assortment of sharp drill bits (i used good quality spade bits to drill the holes for the cabling -12mm for most double locations and 14mm+ for the 4 cable locations. ) Cable cutters and strippers (could use sharp knife or the function on the cheap insertion tool)That's about all for the planning stage Part II installation coming soon....Pricing Estimates:Google Docs version hereItemQuantityPriceTotal Price Store 24 Port Patch Panel1$55.20$55.20PB Technologies8 Port Gigabit Switch1$69.95$69.95Computer Lounge19" Hinged Wall Bracket 2U1$35.00$35.00Computer Store 305M Cat5e Box1$156.69$156.69Cables Direct Dynamix Double Plate6$2.97$17.82Cables DirectDynamix Single Plate2$2.74$5.48Cables DirectDynamix Quad Plate1$2.01$2.01Cables DirectFlush Box7$1.11$7.77Mitre 10 MegaSurface mount Box2$2.76$5.52Mitre 10 Mega Rj45 Keystone Jack Cat5e (assorted colours)19$5.46$103.74Cables Direct Rj11 Plug5$0.18$0.90Cables DirectRJ45 Plug30$0.53$15.90Cables DirectRJ45 relief boot30$0.35$10.50Cables DirectUY2 / UR2 Gel filled joiners10$0.25$2.50JA Russell200x Cable Clip box1$22.75$22.75Mitre 10 Mega Hanlong Impact Punch down Tool1$38.27$38.27Computer StoreRJ45/RJ11/RJ12 Crimper1$13.95$13.95Computer StoreCable Tester1$11.95$11.95Computer Store Total Price Parts $575.90 Labour30 hours$20/hour$600 $1,175.90 Alternative Pricing for PDL ProductsItemQuantityPriceTotal PriceStore PDL single/double/quad Face plate9$7.55 each$67.95JA RussellPDL Cat6 RJ45 module19$19.40 each$368.60JA Russell Dynamix Range (Wall plates + Jacks) $129.05 PDL Range (Wall plates + Jacks) $436.65 PDL + $307.60 Quoted from JA Russell with no trade discount Pictures:Picasa Web Album Full version picturesCable ScheduleHouse Plan (example from house plan off the web with an idea of how to mark on outlets etc)Special Thanks to Geekzone members:chevrolux Cyril7WebwatAlso mention goes to Sbiddle for his original blog on the subject (mainly on new home installation)Feel free to ask questions or let me know of any errors.