Wire management is simply the process of making your electrical wiring neat and organized so that it shows good workmanship and makes tracing wires for future troubleshooting easier, and that’s exactly what I’m going to cover today in lesson #11 of this Wire Terminals playlist.
There’s no one right answer to wire management. In this lesson, I’m going to share some of the products I use for wire management and what I use them for so you have some insight for how you can incorporate them into your own system installation.
Wire Management VIDEO
Zip Ties
I don’t think I need to explain why zip ties are useful. If you don’t already know… you probably shouldn’t be installing an electrical system. Get them from Amazon in a bag of 1,000. It’s cheaper than your local hardware store and you’ll use them. If not in your electrical system, for other things.
Wire Loom:
I use two different types of wire loom: Split loom and Braided Loom.
Split Loom is a bit bulkier, looks a little worse, but probably offers a bit more abrasion protection. This stuff is great for installing wires underneath a truck for DC DC charging where bulk and looks don’t really matter.
Braided loom requires us to feed the wire in from the ends, which is a bit of a pain, but it looks nice, especially if you clean up the frayed ends with a bit of heat shrink like I’ve done here:
It also offers a decent amount of abrasion protection when wires could rub, but maybe not as much abrasion protection from sharp edges as split loom.
Wire loom comes in several different diameters, so you’ll just need to see how thick your bundle of wires are and get the loom to match.
Cable Duct
You’ve seen cable duct on our channel a few times. It has ‘fingers’ on the sides that can be broken off to put wires through and a lid that snaps in place to conceal wires from view, keep things from bumping into them and can be cut to fit with any kind of saw; which a miter saw makes the most square cut.
A bit ‘extra’, perhaps, but definitely makes an installation look nice.
Cable Clamps
Cable clamps simply go around one or more wires and hold the wire in place with a screw. I personally like the ones with a rubberized coating on them and these come in many different sizes depending on what size of wire or what size of bundle of wires you are working with.
Zip Tie Squares
If you need to secure a wire or bundle of wire to something, similar to cable clamps, you can use a zip tie square. These:
- Screw to where you need the wire secured
- The zip tie feeds through
- And the wires are secured to the mounting square with the zip tie.
Most of these have some double sided tape on the back, but it never seems to work; so just go ahead and assume you’ll need to screw it in place.
Wire management does a few different things:
- It makes your installation more professional looking
- It holds your wires in place to decrease abrasion to the insulation.
- It adds strain relief to a component connection, reducing the chance the wire falls out.
- It allows you to easily trace wires for troubleshooting purposes.
