Running cable - please help before something *else* gets stuck in our wall?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=the raindog]
I’m really surprised how quickly some have defaulted to “tear out the drywall.” It’s got me wondering how many times they’ve done this. It may actually be what has to be done in the end, however…I’ve fished cable through walls dozens and dozens of times* and I’ve never had to tear out drywall. (while admitedly somes times it’s taken lots of effort to pull the cable through the wall)

Hanging, taping/finisjing and repainting sucks, and I’d certainly give it the old college try long before I started tearing out gypsum board. With an accesible attic above—that makes it easy to spot the wall----I’d be hard pressed to believe that it couldn’t be done.

Of course, YMMV.

*I do HVAV/Elec/Plumbing work as a contractor and have pulled cable many. many times.
[/QUOTE]

So you know all about the insulation problem. Why not help Greg out with some tips about how to deal with that? I’ve done a lot of industrial/commercial electrical, and where there’s a lot of insulation we often “have our way” with the drywall.
Or better yet, avoid external walls.
Time is money, eh?
:slight_smile:

22

[QUOTE=Zsofia]
If you have no problem running it in an interior wall, run it there and stick a wireless router on it.

  • Lazy Homeowner
    [/QUOTE]

Brilliant!

23

Obviously you are the man for the job. I gasped at your mention of conduit, given the wife’s description as cat-5. I was able to breath again after you said you were using STP not UTP!

24

Dumb question, but you’ve got Cat-5 into the attic above the bedroom where your desktop is, along with electrical power in the attic (which presumably was used to power the drill). Why don’t you just put a Wi-Fi access point in the attic right above the desktop? If you configure both AP’s in bridged mode, you’ll be on the same subnet as the rest of the computers, and can share one router and firewall for the whole house.

25

[QUOTE=SuperNelson]
Dumb question, but you’ve got Cat-5 into the attic above the bedroom where your desktop is, along with electrical power in the attic (which presumably was used to power the drill). Why don’t you just put a Wi-Fi access point in the attic right above the desktop? If you configure both AP’s in bridged mode, you’ll be on the same subnet as the rest of the computers, and can share one router and firewall for the whole house.
[/QUOTE]

Or, failing that, can’t you drop it to an inside wall, put in a jack, and run the cable under the carpet around the edges of the room?

26

Hello, Hubby here again.

Some resonses to individual posts:

Rick: Yes, we are in Massachusetts, so we do have Nor’easters. They pound on the front of the house, which faces mostly east-ish, but the wall in question faces south, so it’s probably the warmest wall on the house.

I will be careful not to mess up the insulation more than necessary. I’m not convinced that the drilling will cause enormous amounts of rearrangement. In any case, if we’re worried about energy efficiency, there is much more low-hanging fruit - for example, the window air conditioners that I never got around to taking down or covering last year, or the multiple windows are so shoddy that you can slide a piece of corrugated cardboard out along the sides. (When this house was built - early 90s, not for me - the obviously went LOWest bid on windows).

Mangeorge: I agree that professionals usually “have their way” with the drywall, or any other obstacle, when they’re doing jobs. Of course, in construction, they can make the drywallers fix it up afterwards 8). Part of the reasons for doing things like this myself is to aim for the standards I like, and to have no one but me to blame when I fall short. Tracking down an electrician who will actually show up is difficult, and usually means the big conglomerations who charge two-hour minimums for 10 minutes of work. And besides, it’s fun!

SuperNelson: The drill I used in the attic was the cordless, so there may or may not be closely accessible power here (there is no outlet, there may or may not be romex under the plywood that I could graft onto. I suppose I could graft onto the power where the light switch for the attic light is. Bleh.) Over near the middle of the house, where the demarc between the main upstairs and the in-law upstairs is, I had an electrician run out from the subpanel and create an outlet about 1’ down from the ceiling in the stairwell. Then I ran ethernet there from the basement and put up a WAP. There’s a few reasons I don’t want to set up a second one:

[ul]Cheap home WAPs are an order of magnitude more painful then commercial WAPs[/ul]
[ul]Commercial WAPs are painful[/ul]
[ul]Sendbind’s law tells us that WPA2, while safe today, will be unsafe in the future[/ul]
[ul]I hate to power another brick for one room, when there’s no good reason not to drop cable (just some speed bumps… that’s all… honest…)[/ul]
[ul]Everything else being equal, I hate to radiate[/ul]
[ul]I’m just a cranky old man (ask DefyingGravity)[/ul]

27

[QUOTE=DefyingGravity]
(Further note: I was once stupid enough to use a circular saw to go through drywall in a similar manner. Do you have any idea how well a circular saw is designed to throw dust up and out? The entire room immediately dropped to about 2’ visibility, and that’s with a wet/dry vac and an air cleaner already running in expectation of a little dust).
[/QUOTE]

Ha, never accuse yourself of stupidity, because the house is always out to get you. Example: years ago in Vermont was helping a friend install a bathroom in a 100+ year old house on th second floor. The whole house had wonderful wideboard floors, as did this room where the bathroom was going.

We started with drilling a 5-inch hole for the 4-inch wastepipe for the toilet. We figured we could drill a small hole, then get a saber saw in to finish.

So, we drilled and drilled and drilled. After reaching the end of the bit that was about 5 inches, we began to wonder what the hell? So, we just used the saw to get a piece of the floor panel out. There, underneath, was what turned out to be a 10 inch hand hewed beam.

No other place for the toilet, so we just had to drill dozens of holes with a long bit through the beam and chisel the damn thing out.

So, home improvement is a ball, eh?

BTW, I’ve patched and painted wall board dozens of times and don’t think it’s hard at all, so I also go along with cutting out a big piece to get the drill and finishe snaking the cable.

Good luck!

28

Well first of all, thanks for the thread! Spectacular. Both of you are much too bright to be doing any home handiwork, and hey, that’s why it’s such a good thread.

As you are aware, when cable guys (who have the same problem of post-construction cable distribution) have this sort of general problem, they solve it by running cable on the outside of an exterior wall. I assume you have already rejected that solution. If you do penetrate an outside wall, make reasonably sure what you are penetrating through. On average a home built in the 90s will not have much in the outside wall, although there can be exceptions. In particular, if Romex is code in your area, pay attention to where the outlets are because there will be no conduit to deflect the bit. Of secondary consideration is PVC plumbing, which should definitely not be in an outside wall unless it’s a vent pipe. Still, be careful. On rare occasion you might find some HVAC distribution in exterior walls; these may or may not be lined with sheet metal but you’ll be able to tell from the noise. Finally, as mentioned, there may be firestops.

It’s darn near impossible to vertically thread something in an exterior wall and be able to come up through the top plate in an ordinary stick-built home. If you come in from the attick, whatever you feed down through a hole drilled through the top plate will be into the insulation and most definitely behind the plastic vapor barrier that’s under the drywall. You’ll never find a fishtape. If you cut an opening in the interior drywall and try to feed upward you’ll never find the hole you drilled in the top plate.

I say bite the bullet and put the cable on the room side of the drywall. There are (only slightly ugly) channels made for covering wire that sits on the surface of a wall. Once you give up on hiding the wiring completely, you have only to drill through the ceiling near the wall and you are done.

Having said all that, my experience is that homeowner advice (and I’ve built houses as a general as well as remodeled extensively over the years) on this board is not very useful b/c you sorta need to be there scoping it out in person to give good advice. I usually manage to get the actual situation wrong from the textual description and I seldom manage to get my point across in a post, either.

I thank you again for spectacular posts on your part. The most important thing is that you each blame the other and have a good row. I believe it was George on Seinfeld who pointed out that make-up sex is the best.

29

Am I the only one here thinking Ethernet over Powerline - the latest stuff gives fairly high performance, and compared to ripping holes and patching drywall…

However, I can talk - I have far too many wireless repeaters in an effort to get wireless to the kids room. But I have an excuse, english houses made of brick and breeze block than make it impossible to run ethernet anywhere except via the outside of the house.

Si

30

EmmaJane – you might get a lot of points if you suggest that he buy this tool to help with the job: Wall-Eye. It’s a small light-mirror combo that you can insert thru the small hole drilled in the wall, and actually see what is in the wall!

So it’d be easy to see what is blocking the way, where the rest of the drill bit is, etc.

And it’s only $30! So with a small expenditure, he gets a new toy (tool), and since he has to try it out right away, you soon get your internet connection for your computer.

31

[QUOTE=KlondikeGeoff]
Ha, never accuse yourself of stupidity, because the house is always out to get you.
[/QUOTE]

Of course, the contrapositive quote is: Nothing is ever foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

[QUOTE=KlondikeGeoff]
There, underneath, was what turned out to be a 10 inch hand hewed beam.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, Vermont. Having a number of relatives in Vermont, in my experience there are three kinds of houses there:

[ul]Old houses built like Old Ironsides[/ul]
[ul]Shacks/trailers of indeterminate age, either run down or ingeneously constructed with no real way tell which category it is in, and always displaying at least one piece of tarpaper or tyvek[/ul]
[ul]New constuction that sticks out like a sore thumb from the other houses[/ul]

32

So, here’s a thought: go to the top of the wall, make a hole just large enough for the bit and try to punch through the header and whatever. You might then be able to pull the cable into the room through that hole, then snake it down through the wall to the bottom (if the obstruction is really just 1x2 crossbracing, you should be able to get past it somehow; but the insulation sure complicates things). Then you just have to patch a small hole. Or you could add a nice big cornice molding to the room and cover it (my apologies if the missus sees this and decides she wants the trim in any case!). Write off the extender and tape as educational expenses.
This is how I spend my day off from rebuilding the master bedroom???

33

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
Well first of all, thanks for the thread! Spectacular. Both of you are much too bright to be doing any home handiwork, and hey, that’s why it’s such a good thread.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you! Ummm, I think…

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
As you are aware, when cable guys (who have the same problem of post-construction cable distribution) have this sort of general problem, they solve it by running cable on the outside of an exterior wall. I assume you have already rejected that solution.
[/QUOTE]

Dear God in Heaven, yes.

The very fact that it is the solution of choice for cable guys is prima facie evidence that it is the lowest, meanest, shoddiest solution to the problem. I can’t count the number of friends and acquaintances who’ve said “I love my new cable/DLS/FIOS, but the way the installer just ran the cable down the house really sucks.”

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
In particular, if Romex is code in your area, pay attention to where the outlets are because there will be no conduit to deflect the bit.
[/QUOTE]

I always assume that the wiring is easily penetrable, and that extreme caution is required. For example, to make the initial cut into the wall, I used a utility knife set to about the depth of drywall to get into it without cutting past, used the small hole to verify it was safe to cut there, then used a drywall saw to widen the hole.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
Of secondary consideration is PVC plumbing, which should definitely not be in an outside wall unless it’s a vent pipe.
[/QUOTE]

Excellent thought. I had not specifically woried about that, but I do know where all the PVC vents are, because they come up into the attic. I suppose drilling into one and venting sewage smell into the bedroom might cause some… strife.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
Still, be careful. On rare occasion you might find some HVAC distribution in exterior walls; these may or may not be lined with sheet metal but you’ll be able to tell from the noise.
[/QUOTE]

Ha! I would need HVAC to encounter that problem. That would be a nice problem to have.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
It’s darn near impossible to vertically thread something in an exterior wall and be able to come up through the top plate in an ordinary stick-built home.
[/QUOTE]

BY GRAPTHAR’S HAMMER, I WILL FISH THIS CABLE.

One the one hand, that may insult you and all the other good people here telling me to cut into drywall or run it somewhere else.

On the other hand, you will all probably find the resulting story humorous in some aspect or another.

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
I say bite the bullet and put the cable on the room side of the drywall.
[/QUOTE]

Never give up - NEVER SURRENDER!**

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
There are (only slightly ugly) channels made for covering wire that sits on the surface of a wall. Once you give up on hiding the wiring completely, you have only to drill through the ceiling near the wall and you are done.
[/QUOTE]

But that would be admitting that I could not do this, or that I was wrong to try it in the first place.

I was raised with a good old fashioned swamp yankee ethic, which says that I can figure out how to do pretty much anything and act laconic about it. And if I run something ugly down the wall, then any future person (especially a potential home buyer) will come in, see it, and say “Oh, another amateur playing at construction.”

(The way I intend to do this, they would actually have to cut into the drywall to figure that out).

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
Having said all that, my experience is that homeowner advice (and I’ve built houses as a general as well as remodeled extensively over the years) on this board is not very useful b/c you sorta need to be there scoping it out in person to give good advice. I usually manage to get the actual situation wrong from the textual description and I seldom manage to get my point across in a post, either.
[/QUOTE]

Well, there’s certainly a quorum here on ripping drywall. But my aesthetic sense is reluctant to do it, and (don’t tell my wife, but if it comes down to patching drywall, I’ll spend so many weeks obsessing over making it perfect that I could have spent the time fishing 10 drops down exterior walls before I’m done, and with less mess.)

In other words - I hope no one is offended if I decline the drywall ripping advice. It’s just not the right choice for me or my marriage :smiley:

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
I thank you again for spectacular posts on your part. The most important thing is that you each blame the other and have a good row. I believe it was George on Seinfeld who pointed out that make-up sex is the best.
[/QUOTE]

Wait - what? There’s supposed to be sex somewhere in this deal? Why has everybody been wasting time on drywall when they could have been advising us on that?

34

[QUOTE=ImGravity]

Ah, Vermont. Having a number of relatives in Vermont, in my experience there are three kinds of houses there:

[ul]Old houses built like Old Ironsides[/ul]
[ul]Shacks/trailers of indeterminate age, either run down or ingeneously constructed with no real way tell which category it is in, and always displaying at least one piece of tarpaper or tyvek[/ul]
[ul]New constuction that sticks out like a sore thumb from the other houses[/ul]
[/QUOTE]

You got it. It’s been years since I lived there, but then, unfortunately, the tarpaper shacks were far too common

We were fortunate enough to buy a 150-year-old house on four acres just south of Stowe. When we bought it, being strapped for $ then, we got a bargain because it had no wiring, indoor plumbing or much else. That’s where I learned the building trades. :smiley:

I wired the whole house, put in copper plumbing throughout (after learning sad lessons about soldering joints), built a fireplace out of beautiful old salvaged brick, tore out partitions, etc. It was difficult because no two walls, ceilings or floors were parallel to each other or plumb.

Originally the water came from a spring some 700 feet away into three oaken barrels in a springhouse (flowed by gravity) and from there had a pump that brought it into the house. Eventually got rid of the barrels!

Talking of snaking wires through walls, this was not a “timber house” that had vertical heavy planks in the walls, but had 8x8 inch beams laid on each other like a log cabin. Outside was clapboard and inside was split lath and actual plastered walls and ceilings. That made the outside walls about 12 inches thick and provided wonderful insulation (that never bunched up).

On the walls were about a hundred layers of wallpaper that we had to steam off. The stairway to the second floor had about a 100 coats of ironclad paint too.

The cellar floor was dirt and the foundation was made of huge boulders. One wonders how they ever got them in place. The house was as solid as a brick, no dip in the ridge, straight and true outside.

Sure hated to leave it, but sold it after 8 years and at least made a huge profit on it. That is, if you don’t count the labor I did in every spare hour of my time. If you figured that out, I was probably working for about eight cents an hour. :smiley:

35

[QUOTE=ImGravity]
Of course, the contrapositive quote is: Nothing is ever foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

Ah, Vermont. Having a number of relatives in Vermont, in my experience there are three kinds of houses there:

[ul]Old houses built like Old Ironsides[/ul]
[ul]Shacks/trailers of indeterminate age, either run down or ingeneously constructed with no real way tell which category it is in, and always displaying at least one piece of tarpaper or tyvek[/ul]
[ul]New constuction that sticks out like a sore thumb from the other houses[/ul]
[/QUOTE]

I was wondering how KlondikeGeoff could manage to chop (I mean hew) a 10 inch beam in half and have the house still standing.
Tarpaper, eh?

36

[QUOTE=DefyingGravity]

So I drilled through the plywood floor in the attic to fish down using a simple 5/8 spade bit, about 6 inches long. I forgot that there is almost certainly another layer about a foot down. So when my wife tried to fish it down, it must have hit that, twisted around, and been messing around above the bedroom ceiling. I believe that’s where it found and hooked some romex, by the feel of things.
[/QUOTE]

OK, if I understand what is going on, you drilled the attic floor, and stuck the fish tape in. The problem is the attic floor is on top of the joists, and the plate at the top of the wall is below and supporting the joists. The plate at the top of the wall is quite likely a double 2X4. (3" thick) Drilling up from the bottom, you probably got stuck in this. Drilling down from the top, you never reached it as you only had a 6" bit.
You can do one of a couple of things.
You can buy a longer drill bit and drill from the top.
You can buy a bit extender and add it to your existing drill bit to get additional length.
Either of these will get you through the top plate of the wall. Fishing down though the insulation to hit a hole you drilled in the fire stop (be it an X style or a horizontal) will be just slightly easier than you winning the Tour de France next year.
If you intend to do that, make sure your lovely wife has the theme from Mission Impossible playing on the stereo during your attempt to fish the damn wire.
This leaves you with opening up the wall to do the job right. You will have the added bonus of being able to recover your drill bit.

Just so you don’t feel too bad let me tell you about moving the cable TV line in my son’s new condo.
My son bought a condo. It had been a apartment building that had been converted. My son’s unit is on the first floor above a subterranean garage. The cable TV came up from the garage in the bedroom. In the floor about 2" from the wall. Yuck. He needed the cable to come up in the living room. The installer for the cable company came and told us he was not allowed to drill the concrete floor. the only way he could run the cable to the living room would be to run it exposed along the wall. Double yuck.
So I ask the guy, if I had you come back and the cable was already run, could you hook it up? Sure he said, I’ll even give you the coax.
SCORE! how hard can it be to drill two holes in the floor (one in the bedroom inside the wall, so the cable can be inside the wall, and the other in the living room.)
So on Saturday I show up with my trusty 18 volt professional grade drill and my brand new 12" masonry drill bit. Figuring that this joint has a 4" slab, I cut a hole in the dry wall about 4" off the floor for the new wall box. I chuck up my drill and go to town. I proceed to bury the drill up to the hilt, and I am not though the floor yet.
I go buy a bit extender. It doesn’t work worth a damn on the bit I have (It’s made for wood, I am drilling concrete)
Half a fucking day shot.
I buy an 18" bit a Lowes. It’s a larger diameter than the 12" bit and it only goes in part way before it binds up. I think I hit some rebar.
give up in disgust.
The following Saturday, I have done my research, I have in my possession a brand new 24" 1/2" masonry drill bit, and a rented professional hammer drill.
In 6 minutes I was done with both holes.
As near as I can figure that slab is about 14" thick. I told my son if WWIII ever comes his parking garage will double as a bomb shelter.
Anybody want to buy some very slightly used masonry bits?

37

[QUOTE=ImGravity]
BY GRAPTHAR’S HAMMER, I WILL FISH THIS CABLE.

Never give up - NEVER SURRENDER!**
[/QUOTE]

Dude, both you and your wife* need to sign up for this message board. Anybody that can go around quoting Galaxy Quest belongs here. You are our kind of people.
If money is an issue, post a request and one of us would be happy to sponsor you. Seriously both of you write posts that are are pure gold.
Please consider staying.

*Nobody has said anything, but two or more people sharing one account is verboten here. You and your wife are guests, so no one is going to get too upset, but if you decide to stay, you will both need individual accounts.

38

[QUOTE=Rick]
Dude, both you and your wife* need to sign up for this message board. Anybody that can go around quoting Galaxy Quest belongs here. You are our kind of people.
If money is an issue, post a request and one of us would be happy to sponsor you. Seriously both of you write posts that are are pure gold.
Please consider staying.

*Nobody has said anything, but two or more people sharing one account is verboten here. You and your wife are guests, so no one is going to get too upset, but if you decide to stay, you will both need individual accounts.
[/QUOTE]

Second! :slight_smile:
I’ve learned stuff trying to give you advice.

39

I’m not in a position to recommend a cable routing solution, as I’m not familiar with the construction of American houses. But abandon the drill bit and fish tape - it’s a (probably broken) tool, not bloody Private Ryan.

40

Hi everyone,

Wow, thanks for the overwhelming response and helpful suggestions you all have come out with, I didn’t expect such an interest. I suppose the whole man/tools/problem with tools angle was a winner.

To address a few quick things:

  1. Thank you for the nice compliments and invitations to join based on the quality of our postings. I’m not quite honestly sure what I or we wrote that qualifies as “spectacular” but I’ll take a compliment any day. :slight_smile: I wasn’t the one quoting Galaxy Quest. (And for the record, Greg watched Buffy on DVD for me and I watched Babylon 5 for him. Then he suggested this “great” show called Robotech and I haven’t fully trusted him since, it shook our marital bonds.)

  2. Accounts - I actually have an account, have had it since 1999 (I know it says 2004 but I had to re-up, etc., I don’t know the details of why). Greg posted under my account just once and I scolded him and made him read the Straight Dope Terms of Service aloud. He now, if you look, has his own guest account that he has been posting under. My handle is “DefyingGravity”; in a neverending effort to be witty, he has chosen “ImGravity”. :rolleyes:

  3. Project - As he said, he ignored all the suggestions about drywall rippage and went up to the attic a few hours ago and pulled up a small section of plywood. I wasn’t there for it, but apparently he was able right away to get his fishtape back - it had gone through the top hole then had a merry old time playing around in the space between the attic floor and ceiling of our bedroom. He said “I didn’t know fishtape could bend that way!” But anyway, he now has fishtape again.

  4. Next step - Er, trying to remember. I think he’s still planning on going straight down. He is also determined (by Grapthar’s Hammer, etc.) to get his drill bit back. I said that as long as I am able to look at naked kitty porn on the internet by bedtime tonight, I was going to not argue about how he accomplished the hookup. Of course it should be stated that if I argued that he should drill down, he would immediately tell me, with much sighing and not-quite-fully-repressed impatience at my stupidity, all of the reasons I was wrong and drilling up through the roof was better and moreover the obvious way to go. If later the sky-drilling proved to be suboptimal as a path to the floor below, he would then announce that he had come up with a brilliant plan of drilling downward; and that no, I hadn’t suggested that, and I had misunderstood him before, and obviously I have no grasp of the situation or even of basic physics and wasn’t that one of our triplets calling for Mummy? And could I roast some coffee beans for him on the way?

I think I got distracted in there somewhere. Just wanted to reassure you that we’re not sharing an account, I’m paid up and have been reading since 1999 or so, and maybe I can convince him to stick around (he hangs out on “digg”) but either way he has his own login now. Oh yeah, and to give the progress report.

This has been the summary of the post immediately above it. I just put four kids under 7 to bed, I’m kind of tired. Pity I’m a night person.

I will keep you all posted!!! Everyone has been so nice it makes me want to post more often! Of course I can’t compete with Greg’s razor-sharp wit. Nor do I try, nor do I try. :rolleyes:

EmmaJane