Ran conduit in a client's house last Tuesday and smelled something weird

Turns out I'd been running my low voltage wires right next to a 120v line for years without thinking about interference. A customer complained his cameras were glitching and when I checked, the interference was obvious on the tester. Has anyone else had their wiring layout cause signal issues like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

wood.eric8d ago

Wow, I actually read something about this a few months back in a trade magazine. They said keeping low voltage wires too close to 120v lines can definitely cause signal interference, especially over longer runs. Sounds like you just got lucky until now, so it's probably worth checking your old layouts too.

murphy.aaron8d ago

Yeah that trade magazine thing is right. I read something similar on a home automation forum where a guy had his Cat6 running parallel to power cables behind a wall and his whole network kept dropping out. Apparently even a few inches of separation is enough to cause problems if you're running them side by side for more than like 10 feet.

quinncarr8d ago

@wood.eric that trade magazine spot on with the interference stuff. Parallel runs over 10 feet with less than a few inches gap can absolutely wreck your signal, especially on gigabit connections. Shielding on Cat6 only helps so much when magnetic fields from 120v lines build up over distance.