8 Times Nature Got in the Way of an AV Installation, slide 0

When a Summer Rain Wasn’t So Refreshing

Mild rain caused water to gather in the first floor meeting room called the Basement.  This room was the lowest point in the building, and as the building was not sealed up completely, so water gathered there. The youth pastor was a “take action” guy.  He bought in some young people and squeegeed the water out of the meeting area and closets to get it to dry up quicker.   They pushed the water to the drain in the room, located in the soon to be Front of House location.  However, It was no drain.  It was a recessed cable pull box with 8  x 2”conduit extending to the stage, the ceiling stub outs and the IT closet.  But that water sure disappeared.

A few months later, the AV installation began.  The AV company’s technicians pulled all the wires needed, hung the speakers and projections systems, and completed the lighting.  The room looked and sounded great.  Opening day was a huge success.

However, a few months later, I noticed the AVIOM Cat5 distribution box had liquid on it.  Upon further investigation, I discovered a milky liquid was oozing from the AVIOM Cat 5 cables, and dripping down the rack. Not a good thing.  Every cable, including the spares pulled, was oozing liquid.  I soon realized what the problem was.  It was plenum cable run in underground conduit and was reacting to moisture.  What a mess!

The only reasonable solution was to un-disconnect the Cat5 at the stage and pull it back through the conduit.  We then could pull non-plenum cable back through the conduit and re-terminate.  That plan came to a halt when we discovered that the Cat cable was coming out wet, indicating we had water in the conduit.

We had to un-terminate all cables from a stage box, pull all wire out of the conduit, and dry the conduit out.  We had a wet-dry vac on each end – one on the stage, on at FOH.  The stage vac was set to blow, and the FOH vac was on suction.  We pulled 10-20 gallons of water out of each conduit.  Using a pull string, we pulled rags through it as well until it was reasonable dry, and then left air blowing through it for a few hours to dry it out thoroughly.  We re-pulled the audio cable and new, non-plenum cat cable, re-terminated everything, and all was great working order – no more leaking cables.

  • Client of Michael Burton, Ford AV

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8 Times Nature Got in the Way of an AV Installation