Cable TV to 6 rooms? Which pro?

[wjl11]

Hello,
The cable TV runs in my house are a mess. All over the place, inside the house, outside the house, inside the walls, running along the floors.
I want to have someone come in and re-do this the right way. Split RG6 from where it enters to the house to six rooms throughout, terminating at wallplates.
Do I call an electrician or some other professional in order to get this done right?
Thanks,
Will

 

[executone]

Most electricians can do the job, but try calling a cable contractor.
Since you are having the coax replaced you might want to think about upgrading your phone cable. You could make the house data ready. Run two coax rg6 and two cat 5e cables to each location.

Good Luck!!

 

[wjl11]

Thanks.
Also, do you have any ballpark idea on how much something like this would cost?

 

[daronwilson]

If you find a Cable TV contractor, you can get it done rather inexpensively. A lot depends on how you want it done.

In our area, the cable company or their contractors will do that work cheap. But, they will staple around the house (they refuse to crawl) and just drill a hole in the wall and stick the wire in. We gey many jobs because the customer wants it cleaner than that. We route all the cables under the house (or in the attic) and fish the walls, then put wall plates in.

If a customer asked me for a price, I would guess about $100 a drop for RG6 CATV faceplates, all the stuff in the wall and a splitter for the runs at the Dmarc.

But, your local prices could be considerably better, if I were hungry I would probably do it for half that.

Good Luck!

It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[AvayaNovice]

Most decent contractors are going to do this job on a T&M basis. I would assume anywhere from 30-100 dollars an hour, depending on your area and their expertise. If you want it done CLEANLY, do NOT call the cable company. It's their policy to get things done quickly with no fishing at all.

Dependin on how your house is designed, this could be an easy or difficult process. If you have a subfloor, you could try drilling through the bottom plate like Daron explained; however, sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't depending on the construction.

If you've got a solid slab under your house and NO subfloor, but you do have an attic -- you might be able to fish it from above. Problem there is whether or not you've got fireblocking, insulation, etc. All of that can be overcome by using a 1/2" piece of conduit with a flexbit inside of it to get the insulation away from the bit, the flexbit can then penetrate the fireblocking plate, but that's a royal pain. Not sure if it's worth it to you.

If you've got neither a attic or a subfloor, and the cieling is a hard lid -- then you're going to have to come from an exterior wall if possible, and if not that, then you're going to have to figure something else out.

So it all varies.

 

[buitenhek]

All comments above have great insight. Some cabling contractors can charge as much $160 per drop.

Another alternative, if you have the time, run the cables yourself (through wall, under floors etc) and have a contractor with RG6 experience terminate and test the cabling.

Finally, also keep in mind that you can use a coax balun on each end of twisted pair cable to connect a TV. It works “~okay” in reverse also using twisted pair baluns on the coax line, but don’t expect data speeds more than 1-2 megabit. The baluns run anywhere from $10-$30.

Regards,
Peter Buitenhek
peter@profitdeveloper.com

 

[daronwilson]

I'm confused about the baluns, I've used them for video, haven't seen them for CATV, do you have a source for baluns that cover the frequency range (to 750 Mhz or more) for CATV?



It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[Jd925]

What are baluns for? Thanks

 

[daronwilson]

Baluns convert BALanced line to UNbalanced line. In a case where you have coax (which is unbalanced, outerconductor is ground) and you want to convert the media to twisted pair (unbalanced) you would use a balun on each end. This is readily accomplished for many signals, I hadn't seen it used for CATV at all, so I want to find the particular components.


It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com

 

[jeffbouldin]

I talked to one of the manufacturers (Nitek I think) about using them for CATV. They told me that Cat 5 wire didn't have the bandwidth available for CATV.

 

[gmc74]

If you are going to rewire all of the cable in your house, I would really recommend a structured wiring system. Basically, a patch panel where the cable feeds from the outside of the house to the panel, and then from there it goes directly to each room. Also, I would run an extra line from the outside of the house to the panel, that way you have the option of upgrading to a Dual LNB DSS system with minimal cost/work.

The benefit of this is that you can patch different signals to each room. If you are going to do the coax like this, I would do cat 5 at the same time, might as well get the home network nice and clean too. Also, if you go to DSS in the future, you can mount your multiplexer there as well, very nice and clean.

I have this in my house, it is great! All of the cable, phone lines, and network lines feed from one convenient location in my laundry room. I mounted my cable modem on the wall. I have a router in there feeding my network. I also set up a system that lets me play the Tivo in my living room, to any TV in the house with a few A/B switches.

Mine was installed when my house was built, so it was a bit easier.

 

[wjl11]

GMC74,

If you have your router in the laundry room, don't you need a PC in there as well?

Will

 

[gmc74]

No,

I have the cable coming into the laundry room from outside, then that connects to my cable modem. From there I have the ethernet cable connecting it to a Linksys router.

From there you can distribute to the rest of the house. I have a patch panel so you just run a cable from the router (4 ports) to the jack for the room you want it to go to, on the patch panel. I have one going to my living room, one to my loft and one to my office. In my office it goes into a switch so I can plug in more than 1 PC there.

The router dishes out the IPs and works as the firewall. As soon as I get off my lazy butt I will plug in a wireless gateway in the laundry room as well, this will use up the 4th port on my router, so if I want to distribute anything more then I will have to add a seperate switch, and I think my wife will kill me.

I have a picture somewhere, if you want to see what it looks like let me know. I hope that clears it up for you.

 

[gmc74]

Oh, one more thing.

The next addition will be a camera at the front door that runs back to the patch panel and uses an RF Modulator to distribute the signal to all of the TVs in the house on a specific channel. That way when the doorbell rings you can switch over to 4 (any number really) and see who is there.

 

[wjl11]

Ahh. Sounds like a great setup. yes, I'd like to see a picture if its not much trouble.
Thanks!
Will

 

[gmc74]

I don't see it in the gallery on my site, I will post it tomorrow and put the url up here.

It is definately a convenient way to make a mess

 

[AvayaNovice]

Hey guys,

Patch panels are great! Good reccomendation. Here's what NOT to do:

Do NOT buy a patch panel designed for your home. They usually are made by leviton, and they've got different modules you can put in for cable tv, satellite, etc.

Those things are JUNK.

If you're going to do it, bring all your cables to a specific location, that's accessible. Also bring your demark cables there (if you can, run conduit from your demark to your patch panel location). And in fact, run conduit or flex or whatever to EVERY location that you can, so if you ever need to upgrade it, you can -- easily.

Buy a 12 port patch panel, or 24 port if need be. Rackmount products are better, cleaner, and more organized. Terminate all your stuff there, and distribute. Point being, use quality products... not those junky house products that use terrible components.

 

[wjl11]

Avaya,
Can you give me some manufacturers that you would recommend for patch panels? (No rackmount products)
Will

 

[skip555]

you could use a blank patch panel and then the proper inserts

that way you dont have to pay for what you dont need

 

[gmc74]

I guess it all depends on what your budget and expectations are. I have a system that uses the Open House products -

http://www.multiplextechnology.com/openhouse/

and it works great.

I am sure higher quality products may be available, but at what cost?

Sorry I totally spaced on that picture, I know there is one on my site somewhere. I will spend the rest of the day at work looking for it