Having installed hundreds of mile of cable in my networking lifetime, there comes a time when you have to run the wire on the outside of the wall rather than on the inside.  To do this, you use what is called ‘raceway’.  You’ve probably see raceway used for electrical wiring on cinder block walls.  The same concept is used for network/phone wiring when the wiring is added after construction. 

In the past, the raceway for data came in 6′ sections, and you would buy ‘joint covers’ when you needed to use more than 6′ at a time.  It has always been a pain to keep the inventory of this along with the necessary accessories.  Enter my new found friend, ‘Raceway on a Roll’.  This product comes in what looks like a pizza box, and is 50′ of flat PVC that you cut to the length you need, fold on the ‘dotted lines’, and you have a sturdy raceway the length you need!  The concept is similar to the Seamless Gutter product where they show up with a roll of aluminum sheeting and ‘form’ your gutters to the length you need.  The product I use is from Premier Raceway.  Another manufacturer is Wire Trak, and they have a wider selection of accessories, but seem to follow the same concept.

The one limitation for this is the largest raceway (width) I’ve found is 1.5″ (by Wire Trak–Premiere’s largest is 1″).  While this should be sufficient for most basic jobs, you may need to move to the pre-formed raceway when a greater capacity is required.

Also, I usually try to be wary of purchasing without reading reviews of products.  However, there was only one review for the product, and it was not nice, to say the least!  I went ahead and purchased it anyway, and found that the reviewer was way off base, and either not very bright or just a bitter person trying to express his dislike of life in general through the ripping of various products on-line…

The important question here is how much…and amazingly enough, it is about the same price as the pre-formed sections  in a cost/foot analysis.  When you take into account the fact that there is no ‘waste’ (you cut the raceway to the length you need!), it is actually cheaper!  The cost for a 50′ box of raceway is $48 for the 1″ raceway.