Power and Cat6 cabling question

[MMoss]

When running 120v and Cat6 how much space should you place between them? I've seen somewhere it should be the distance of the studs in a standard stick build house. 

What about higher voltage lines would be a good minimum distance, for example an emergency generator designed for a medium sized multi story business. 

[BrandonS]

You are correct that you should not tie network cable to power cable or run in parallel.   A few inches apart from 120v wiring should be fine in my experience.  Occasionally crossing a line should be fine too.  I would just keep them as far away as you reasonably can.  Shielded CAT6 is made to combat interference so you might consider that if you haven't already purchased your cable and feel you might have a lot electrical interference to deal with.  Good luck.

[dlowery · Accepted solution]

Hey, I do a lot of physical cabling, so I can chime in on this too. I always try to keep electrical and cat6 as separate as possible, if you are doing cabling for a new building, cat6 should be in its own trunks anyways. Thats not always realistic when you are running additional cables though. Just do your best to keep them away from each other and you wont run into any problems. If the electrical is that metal shielded stuff you don't need to worry much at all. Also, when crossing a cat6 cable over electrical, try to keep it as close to a right angle as you can, that will also minimize interference. 

Edit: Just to add to this, you'll only really run into a big problem if you are zip tying a cable to electrical over a long distance. You can probably get away with more that you think you can, unless you are dealing with crazy voltages, or strict regulations.

[MMoss]

It's an upcoming remodel, they were talking about digging a trench for the Emergency Generators power cables and running the telecom through a separate pipe, but next to one another. I don't know the specs on the generator, but it's a commercial size for a 3 story building.