Structural Integrity Bear DE

The structured wiring enclosure is the communications crossroads in the digital home. It is the point from which all communications-related wiringdata network, telephone, video, and securityemanates. It performs for communications and signal management what the electrical service panel does for the homes power wiring. In the words of Gordon Waldhausen, product manager for On-Q Legrand, The structured wiring enclosure is the hub of home technology.

Structured wiring is a concept that first arose around the early 1990s. It is not something that every potential homeowner (or even builder) is intimately acquainted with, but awareness has nonetheless increased greatly in the last 10 years, driven partly by the increasing number of homes with multiple computers, and partly by demand for Internet access and broadband proliferation. As Kirk Horlbeck, senior VP for corporate marketing and international development at Liberty Wire and Cable, noted, Some realtors now have a pre-wire area on their property data sheets. And signal managementwhere the signal comes in, and how it gets distributed around the propertyhas really become a buzzword.

Agents of Change
Like electrical panels, structured wiring enclosures dont change fashions at the rate of, say, consumer electronics, but they do evolve. Among the many factors driving the evolution of these enclosures is the increased awareness, by homeowners, builders, and architects, of the importance of connectivity within the home. Not only are more new homes getting structured wiring, but what used to pass for structured wiringa couple of drops throughout the homeis being replaced with more drops in more rooms. The result is an increasing need for larger wiring enclosures.

Jay Kilby, senior product manager for telecom equipment provider Suttle, said that he has also observed a movement toward incorporating more applications like whole-house audio and others into the structured wiring panel. Theres also more demand for home healthcare monitoring and people wanting to integrate digital video recorders (DVRs), he said.

Kilby also noted that with more people hanging flat-panel displays on the wall, there isnt as much furniture in which to store the electronics. All of this translates, he explained, into more of the electronicswhich might previously have been located at the entertainment centermoving toward the wiring enclosure. So, not only is there more wiring in the average enclosure, but now theres active electronics, as well. This further drives the need for more space within the enclosure, but also electrical power, and a need to dissipate heat via venting and, in some cases, fans.

With the increasing role of the panel, even the aesthetics of the once utilitarian can itself are changing. In custom homes were seeing larger enclosures with decorator doors, incorporating smoked plexiglass panels, said Darrel Hauk, president and CEO of Channel Vision.

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