Many new businesses share one mistake: they treat low-voltage infrastructure as "just cabling" and don’t pay decent attention to low-voltage connectivity planning.
As a result, they experience congested wireless networks, poor video conferencing performance, inability to scale, security access control gaps, and other issues.
If you want to build an effective office, you have to plan the low-voltage connectivity properly from the start.
In this article, we shall explain what low-voltage connectivity is, how it differs from high-voltage connectivity, what common mistakes new businesses make when setting up their connectivity systems, and how to avoid them.
What Is Low Voltage Connectivity?
Low-voltage connectivity is an umbrella term for cables used to transmit data, communication signals, and control information between devices. The examples are Ethernet networks (Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a) and fiber optics that connect computers, routers, and servers, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, motion sensors, and intrusion alarm panels, keycard readers, biometric scanners, and electronic door strikes used for building entry, smoke and heat detectors, strobe lights, and emergency notification systems that meet safety codes, IP cameras and more.
Their main difference from high-voltage devices is that they operate at 50 volts or less and serve as the "nervous system" of technology, handling telecommunications, security, and automation rather than heavy-duty power, which is the domain of high-voltage connectivity.
So the main difference is that high-voltage connectivity is simply the power source for power-hungry devices like lighting, HVAC, or anything else we use in the office, while low-voltage connectivity is designed to send a signal to the device and power it simultaneously.
When setting up the low-voltage power systems, many businesses make similar mistakes that later cost them time, money, and growth opportunities. In the following few paragraphs, we shall cover these mistakes and provide advice on how to avoid them.
And if you need a consultation on low-voltage architecture for your new office situated in the Boston area, contact Kelo Tech on the website keytechpros.
Top Common Mistakes in Planning Low-Voltage Infrastructure
The most common mistake is that businesses start thinking about the low-voltage infrastructure only after they plan or finish their office buildings. This will be the top of our list.
1. Treating Low-Voltage Infrastructure as an Afterthought
When you think about access control and surveillance only after construction is nearly complete, many other necessary appliances, such as cable routes, equipment locations, and wall penetrations, may already be in place. Installing low-voltage infrastructure becomes more difficult and expensive.
2. Underestimating Future Growth
The second top mistake is that businesses tend to forget about the future growth needs. They tend to install these for, say, 20 people, and when the company’s headcount rises to 40, they system is simply not able to sustain growth. The most common issues they face are too few network ports, the lack of spare cabling capacity, limited rack space, or insufficient capacity. Therefore, if you are building a new office, consider low-voltage for future growth needs.
3. Choosing Cabling Based on Today's Minimum Requirements
If you are building a new office, you may be tempted to install lower-grade cables to reduce costs. The tightest example of such a case is when a company installs a cainternett that meets the current internet speeds, but as the team grows and the interned needs increase, the initial setup may not be enough anymore. It will struggle to support bandwidth demands, high-resolution video systems, and so on.
4. Insufficient Wi-Fi Planning
Quite often business owners think that few access points will provide adequate coverage. As a result, you get a lot of dead zones around the office, weak signals in the meeting rooms, congested wireless networks, and poor video conferencing performance.
If you want to set up a proper Wi-Fi design you should consider office layout, wall materials, occupancy, and device density for the current and future office needs.
5. Ignoring Power over Ethernet (PoE) Requirements
Another important issue is ignoring the needs of PoE-powered devices. These include IP cameras, wireless access points, VoIP phones, and access control readers. If you don’t consider them during planning, the network switches will not have sufficient power capacity to support all connected devices.
6. Inadequate Equipment Room Planning
Another thing often underestimated is the size of the network closets and server rooms. Quite often, they are undersized and poorly located. That becomes a cause for numerous other issues, like insufficient cooling, limited space for equipment storage and management and also difficulty in maintenance.
7 low-voltage, and Electrical Cabling Improperly
When setting up the low voltage equipment it is also important to remember that placing data cables close to electric wires can cause electrical interference and that will degrade the performance of the low-voltage network.
As a result, you’ll get disrupted signals, poor video quality, bad connectivity and a lot of other unpleasant situations.
Summing up
Proper planning of the low voltage infrastructure creates the basis for the productive flow of your business life and allows to avoid the numerous problems in the future.