Seen in the field

Wall of Shame

Since the advent of supercomputer cameras in our pockets, I’ve collected a bunch of real winners. Fortunately, most of the pictures’ culprits are out of business.

Phone boxes mounted beside a fire alarm maintenance keypad

Let’s start with: “Are you really going to mount those black phone boxes on either side of my fire alarm maintenance keypad, leaving a wire across its face?”

A densely tangled low-voltage panel — Feel sorry for the next servicer.

Just twist your head into there — Just twist your head into there.

A flying 120-volt AC Romex splice wrapped in tape — 120 VAC Romex flying splice has tape!

A loose equipment grounding connection — It was a ground until somebody bumped it.

Bad panel / impossible closet: The shelves were added later, but this installer still had no excuse. There’s a fully protected basement with a nearly empty eight-foot-wide equipment board 12 feet below this cramped closet.

A poorly mounted device with visible cable — Oops.

Damaged ceiling and exposed wiring — Let’s try that again with real anchors.

Class I and Class II wiring tied improperly — You can’t wire-tie Class I and II together, so…

Improvised wiring support near a sprinkler pipe — Copper showing & not twisted at all?

Unsafe transformer wiring — Unsafe outlet wiring, rule 1 broken.

Poorly terminated wiring — When someone can’t use their main tool properly…

Fire-alarm wire run through damaged material — I swear it was broken before I ran fire wire through it.

A damaged punch-down connection — IT pro tried to solder a punch-down.

Unusual wall-mounted cable path — No violation—just weird.

A junction box hanging from a sprinkler valve and feed wires — “J-box” hangs from sprinkler valve and feed wires.

Open office ceiling filled with loose cable — Your office ceiling?

A badly installed low-voltage panel — The “competition.”

Too many wires resting on a suspended ceiling — How many wires will collapse it?

Overfilled panel blocking future accessories — I guess we broke that thing.

Loose wiring left inside a panel — I’m just going to leave this here.

Power and low-voltage wiring without proper separation — Minimum separation?

Loose field wiring in an enclosure — Sorry but it has to be this bad if you want to network.

An installation that nearly met the requirement — …so close, literally.

Wiring without minimum separation — Minimum separation? What’s that?

Wires routed through an improvised opening — No box to mount "violating" horn to.

A questionable fire alarm panel interior — What does the field wiring look like?

A crowded ceiling full of tangled cable — W T F

Poorly installed life-safety notification panel — Nice life-safety notification panel.

Low-voltage wiring routed alongside gas pipes — Minimum separation plus gas pipes!

An in-wall speaker crossover mounted remotely after hitting a pipe — In-wall speaker hit a pipe, so they “remoted” the right crossover.

Two of four network terminations completed — Two of four—could be worse.

A crowded alarm and communications backboard with loose wiring — Sharing the backboard with a slob.

A closet crowded with network and video equipment and tangled cables — Mess.

An alarm keypad mounted beneath mismatched and damaged electrical switches — Blasted electrician.

Fiber equipment mounted among exposed terminations and crowded electrical boxes — New fiber link.

A waterflow device wired through an unprotected opening — Nice waterflow violation.

An electrical box and wiring installed in an exposed wall channel — Haven’t read the NEC at all.