Fishing cable

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m1abram

2[H]4U
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Mar 15, 2002
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Ok I moved into my house about 6 months ago and have been trying to figure out a good/easy way to get ethernet cable from my office (second floor) to the family room exactly below it. I do NOT want to cut holes (wife would kill me). Well the other day I was looking at the wall and notice that BOTH rooms have a phone jack, and both phone jacks measue exactly the same distance from the front wall. So I am assuming that this is because there is a STRAIGHT phone cable run from the one room to the other.

I have not pulled the phone jack box to see how big the hole is in the floor stud for the cable, if it is atleast 1/2" I think I should be able to fish a cable down.

Does anyone think this might be a possible way to run the cable I want, has anyone done something similiar? Any recommendations?
 
it might be possible, i know when i ran cat 5 from the router to my room i had to do some crazy wiring, like through a floor into the basement, run 100 feet in basement, then up two stairwells covered in dry wall, then i had to remove trim moldings and run it through a door frame (just to make it look nice) so after a couple of hours of work and still not being anywhere near done i just said" who cares" and drilled a hole in the wall. its rather amusing to see.

but in your case only do it if you know 100% its a straight run. otherwise you should prolly run it to a spot where you have a closet on the first floor and drop in there. you could pull carpeting up and hide it under that.

hope you have some luck
 
It should be possible, i imagine that they did wire those directly.Which means there will be a hole in the floor seperating them. Just hope and pray that they use a decent size bit to make the hole and its just not as big as the phone wire.

I am going through the same thing at my house. Completely rewiring my house. It started with just cat5 coax and phone, but I am starting to redo all the electrical. To get mine to the upstairs i had a small cubbyhole that ran the entire length of my chimmney so i ran the cable up that once it was in the attic i decided where i wanted it in the room and drilled a hole in the header stud for the wall. Once this was done i removed the base board which is 4 inches tall in my house and cut a small hole in the plaster, used a couple metal coathangers straitendout (my getto guide wire), and pushed down the hole from the attic. Once i got ahold of it in the bedroom i taped a peice of cat 5 to it and pull it back into the attic taped my coax phone and cat5 to the peice of cat 5 i pulled up and pulled it into the room. It took a long time to figure out how i was going to get the wire into the room with out messing up the walls, and this seemed to be the best solution to my problem.
 
I think it would be even easier to fish the cable through if you remove the Ethernet jack.



This is assuming you have a crimper, and know how to put a new one back on.
 
You can go to your hardware store and pick up some "jack chain", it comes in different sizes, depending on the size of the hole in your floor plate. Just feed the chain in the hole, and the weight of the chain drops it straight down. Securely connect the cable to the chain making sure the connection is tapered and slim, and taped. Pull the chain up with the cable, and hopefully it won't bind at the hole. Done.

The main problems I encounter fishing cable, is sometimes there is a horizontal fireblock nailed in between the studs at about 7 or 8 feet above the floor, it's almost impossible to try and get anything through the hole in that from above, or below, unless you are extremly lucky.

You can buy "cutin" brackets which basically you cut a rectangular hole in the dywall about the size of a wallplate and two flanges fasten it from the inside of the wall. They have the mounting holes for a wall plate to screw into.

You can also do one of two things, buy ethernet R45 jack wall plates. or maybe better, a wall plate with simply a hole in the middle and run the cable thru that for a direct connection. The ends will need to be crimped on
 
I plan on using the existing phone jack box for the termination. I will just change out the plates to ones that have multiple jacks.

No I just need to see if I can drop a chain through, I think I like that idea best. I was thinking of buy a cable fisher but those run about $50, since this is a vertical drop a chain with weight should work well and be much cheaper.
 
You can also get one of those break and glow sticks and tie it onto the end of the fishing line. Be easier to find when you drop it down ;)
 
Nasty_Savage said:
You can also get one of those break and glow sticks and tie it onto the end of the fishing line. Be easier to find when you drop it down ;)
Click to expand...

oh yea, or maybe even a small led flashlight (cheap one in case it gets lost). Not a bad idea.
 
They also have very long (5ft) drill bits that are pretty flexible if you need to drill a new hole. You probably have to remove/smash the old box that held the telephone jack, but once that is gone, it is pretty easy to insert that long drill bit and drill a hole straight down.
 
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