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Splicing cat5 cables, yay or nay?

hunterjwizzard

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Mar 20, 2020
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I ran a cat5 cable for a security camera yesterday and it looks like I flubbed and left it a couple of feet too short. Conventional wisdom would be to terminate the end, use a connector and an extension wire - but its too short on the outside portion of the run. I know its bad practice but if I were to simply splice an extension on there would it really be so bad? Entire run is about 94 feet.
 
A tough one--if the run is exposed to the elements, a careful splice should work better than the coupler. Of course, neither is really wonderful and splicing the fine wires in a Cat5 cable can be a bit challenging.
 
I have dozens of couplers, the cost of the coupler is not an issue(also you can easily get one for way less than $8).

Its just going to be outside.
 
A tough one--if the run is exposed to the elements, a careful splice should work better than the coupler. Of course, neither is really wonderful and splicing the fine wires in a Cat5 cable can be a bit challenging.
Maybe its just me but I don't find the splices particularly hard. Tedious yes. But I would heat-shrink each individual wire splice and then shrink the whole thing.

Assuming I can find my heat shrink ever...
 
Personally I would just run another cable. 100ft isn't much. If you use a coupler outside, it should be IP67.
 
Err...this may be stupid but just put the coupler in the house? E.g. extend on the switch side, or wherever you connect the camera, not on the camera side.
 
Personally I would just run another cable. 100ft isn't much. If you use a coupler outside, it should be IP67.
Its not the length of the run so much as the extreme difficulty of accessing my crawlspace. Its about 2' high at the center line. I was lucky to get to run this cable at all.

You don't say how long the outside run is.
Could you replace the outside run so the splice is inside?

Unfortunately the cable exists the house via a tiny hole in the stucco, and reaching the inside portion of it is a no-go for the reasons covered above. I can't actually get into the crawlspace myself at all(and I am not a large man).

I can't actually run cables through the ceiling on my own and usually have to resort to hiring a child. And children are notoriously poor at meeting ISO9000 standards.
 
I've had another thought on the subject. Cameras are not terrible power-hungry, but my injectors are beefy. What if instead I put a POE-powered POE switch in a weather-proof box under the eves, and used this one run to support 1 cameras? I sort of wanted one for the backyard anyway.
 
Its not the length of the run so much as the extreme difficulty of accessing my crawlspace. Its about 2' high at the center line. I was lucky to get to run this cable at all.

Unfortunately the cable exists the house via a tiny hole in the stucco, and reaching the inside portion of it is a no-go for the reasons covered above.

Well if you plan to take care of this eventually, then just splice the thing so your cam is working until then.
But yeah, that's not a human crawlspace.
 
splicing the individual wires ruins the impedance control of the cable, whereas using the punch down junction box I linked does not

they also make weatherproof versions if it needs to be outside
 
I've made that mistake before but after it was fed down a 25 foot drop and through more raceway. I've used the telco-era weatherproof "jellybean" crimps. They only work on solid core network cable though but they are 100% waterproof.
1019796337_lg.jpg

Likewise, hiding an RJ45 coupler somewhere is a hack and should never be used in permanent installations.
 
splicing the individual wires ruins the impedance control of the cable, whereas using the punch down junction box I linked does not

they also make weatherproof versions if it needs to be outside

Ahh ok. Thank you for explaining. Dumping a random link with zero context is a good way to get your post ignored.
 
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