laying new cat5 cable in house

[scotty do]

I have multiple computers in the top floor of my house, networked with cat5 with cables running down to my basement. The cables are all running through the air duct that is conveniently in my room. Also going through the air duct is a plain coax cable for the TV. I've tried twice to lay new cable. I think what happens is as I pull the cable up it gets ripped on the corners and damages the cable causing the picture to be extremely low quality on all TV's. I'd like to lay a few new RG6 lines, without splitters and new cat5 lines to the top floor without using the air duct. To protect the cables and reduce the clutter that they are causing. How can I put the cable through the drywall? I'm also going to need to do this with a phone line, that already is in the wall but I have no idea how its connected. I beleive there is just one cable coming upstairs looping to all the rooms.

Is there some kind of guide on how to do this? And anywhere to purchase new crimpers and cables for rg6....preferably in Canada? Thanks, and sorry for the length of this post.


-Scott

 

[Nybbles]

First off, unless those cables running through the duct are Plenum-Rated, they are not supposed to be there. The outer jacket of CAT5 cables gives off toxic gases when burned, so if there was a fire, these gases would get circulated throughout the house. Therefore, to go by code (at least in the US), no non-plenum rated cables are EVER to be used in an airspace.

With that said, I may not be a whole lot of help in helping you replace those. Usually I kinda play every cable install by ear, so it depends on the situation a lot. Have you looked for an alernate way you may be able to get the cable ran? As far as picture quality, make sure it's not running along a lot of electrical. Typically it wouldnt matter as coax is shieled, but i'm just trying to give ya something else to try. Besides, you wont want to run ur CAT5's along electrical anyway.

As for getting the cables through drywall, typically you'd drill a hole in the top plate of the wall. The top plate is the horizontal 2x4 at the top of the wall. Then you go straight down and put a hole in the dry wall with a small saw. This is where a fish-tape comes in handy..... shove it up the hole and try and pull it through the whole in the top. Depending on how many runs you're doing, you may not be able to do them all in one shot. If you want, you can pull some lengths of string down along with some of the runs to you can use as pull-strings for the rest. The catch on this is that you might as well forget it if there is fiberblass insulation in the wall you're trying to pull down. The other catch is that sometimes there may be a horizontal 2x4 in the middle of the wall somewhere too. I havent personally ran into these, but i hear they are possible.

Ok, now i dont know what these are called, but they are metal thingies that you fold up around the hole u cut. It has screw holes so you can attach a wall plate to it. Basically, u'd do this since you probably dont have an electrical box in the wall that you're gonna be able to use.

I dont know how much help this will be, but since we arent there, we cant really tell you the best way to get the cable ran. Once the cable's ran, I can give you some very specific directions on how to complete the job. Good luck, and post back if you have any more questions!

 

[scotty do]

Ack! I can assure you, my furnace doesn't get hot enough to burn the cables. I am going to try and lay the cables, but wont the top plate be a barrier seperating each floor? Or do I have to drill through them?

 

[Nybbles]

Ack! I can assure you, my furnace doesn't get hot enough to burn the cables. I am going to try and lay the cables, but wont the top plate be a barrier seperating each floor? Or do I have to drill through them?

First off, it's not the furnace burning the cables. It's about an accidental fire in the house burning the cables releasing poison gasses into the duct work.

I've never ran between multiple floors in residential, so I couldnt tell you for sure. Most of my cabling has been in commercial buildings and most of those have dop cielings you can work in.

 

[Party2go9820]

Ack! I can assure you, my furnace doesn't get hot enough to burn the cables. I am going to try and lay the cables, but wont the top plate be a barrier seperating each floor? Or do I have to drill through them?

Absolutely. Not only the top plate of the stud wall but also the plywood that makes the floor and the carpet. Going up multiple floors in a finished house is going to be a pain. Personally I would just leave it in the duct. The building codes are different everywhere and in a residential home it may not even be out of code.

Some other options -
Wireless?
Run the cable outside in a conduit or pipe?

 

[ambit]

Thankfully the townhouse i'm currently in was cheaply constucted and i had a clear shot from the baseboard of the second floor to the basement in one room.
I couldn't do that in the other room on the second floor, so i ran Cat5 under the carpet across the room, down 2 flights of stairs and into the Rack.

 

[davidavila]

I realize I'm a little late, but if anyone else stumbles onto this in the future, like I did...

Sometimes it helps to run the line along the vent stack that runs from the waste pipes in the bathroom/kitchen (waste pipes in the basement) through the walls upto the attic (the vents go through the roof and allow water to stay in the trap to prevent sewer gas from leaking into the house). From the attic it is usually easy to follow the directions provided by Nybbles... I am luck to have a small ranch and networked the whole house in one night by drilling from the basement up through the floor int the walls...

Those "metal thingies that you fold up around the hole u cut" (code for low voltage only, no electical plugs like 110v or 220v) and the face plates (that allow you to snap in video, network, telephone, speaker, etc. conections so you can make one hole in the wall and have many possibilities) are available at most home centers... There are also 4ft. drill bits with extenders for dilling all the way from the attic through the floor below, but know where and what other lines are in the area, drill through a electrical line...