My wife and I built our home about 5 years ago. Â Unlike many people I know, I don’t have a long list of things I would do differently in my house. Â We put a lot of thought and effort into our design and took about 3 years examining plans before we found on that worked for us. Â The one thing that is on my ‘I wish I had’ list has been my structured wiring.
When I met with the subcontractor about wiring, I knew that surround sound and networking were my two big ticket items. Â I received some good advice and pointers from my builder, who is also my neighbor, but the execution of the structured wiring left me a bit disappointed.
Fast forward 5 years and my structured panel has become a mess. Â I have a Legrand/On-Q 42″ structured wiring panel so I have lots of room for my equipment inside. Â I had created some makeshift shelves out of a desktop envelope holder. Â While those worked, they weren’t a great solution. Â So, I finally bit the bullet. I purchased 1 full width equipment shelf and 3 half width equipment shelves and I have begun reworking the inside of the panel.
Having the manufacturer’s shelves made the process much easier and I’m really happy with the results, pictured to the right.
On the to-do list is adding a battery backup inside of the panel.  I currently have one sitting outside of the enclosure on the counter.  It works, but I’d prefer to have it all hidden and tidy inside of the panel.  The depth of the wiring panel is a little more than 3.5″ so finding a batter backup to fit into the space is difficult.  The one I have found is a Tripp-Lite 550VA UPS made for structured wiring panels.  It also includes ports to surge protect your phone lines and coax for TV.
