Yeah I’m definitely willing to pay to get it done, because I’m sure I’ll be the same if I don’t.
But the cost they’re suggesting for the patch panel is (including the cabinet, which I was expecting to be my own after-the-fact expense not budgeted as part of this) about 4x what I would have expected even after budgeting things at the high end of what I thought might happen. $150 instead of <$100 for the hardware, and $150 for the labour was my expectation.
And that’s without even getting in to the cost of the actual cables. I didn’t put it in this post because it was already long enough and I figure it’s a basically separate issue. But they’re wanting to charge me $266 per cable. No modification for the fact that more than half the cables are going to just 2 locations, and all the others are two cables to the same location. Just a straight $266 for every individual cable. It’s meant this whole thing has blown out way beyond where I was expecting it to be.
Out of interest, if you do just get them to lay empty conduit, how easy/hard would it be to run 4 or 8 cables through that conduit and fit it to a faceplate later on?
It gives better flexibility going forward and you save that money for now. When ready, you can decide wall mount or free standing rack, patch panel or none or anything you wish to change once you’ve had time to consider the issue more thoroughly.
I never installed any additional patch panels. Instead I just put the RJ-45 end on and plug straight into the switch. Easier and I never have any problems doing so.
Interesting. So you’d suggest just getting the conduit put in? How hard and/or expensive/cheap would it be it run 4 or 8 cables through that conduit later on, compared to (a reasonable charge for) getting it done while the rest of the wiring is being done?