re-wiring house cable, stuck

Posted by Mikepier on October 25, 2009, 9:22 am

> The Comcast tech found that we were losing 45 db from where the cable
> entered the house to the office where the phone sat (+25 to -20).
> Even with an amplifier on the line and him replacing all the ends, we
> only got to -10.
> He blamed the rg59; a neighbor who's an EE figured it had to be the
> horseshoe nails once I got in some of the crawlspaces and found them.
> My neighbor figured the horseshoe nails were messing up the shielding.

You sure you don't have a splitter, or a lot of splitters somewhere in
the mix? 45db is a heck of a drop.
Anyway, your best bet might be to forget about trying to use the old
cable as a drag, and maybe go from the outside, or perhaps in the
attic to run the cable to the location.

Posted by aemeijers on October 25, 2009, 9:33 am

Mikepier wrote:

>> The Comcast tech found that we were losing 45 db from where the cable
>> entered the house to the office where the phone sat (+25 to -20).
>> Even with an amplifier on the line and him replacing all the ends, we
>> only got to -10.
>> He blamed the rg59; a neighbor who's an EE figured it had to be the
>> horseshoe nails once I got in some of the crawlspaces and found them.
>> My neighbor figured the horseshoe nails were messing up the shielding.

>
> You sure you don't have a splitter, or a lot of splitters somewhere in
> the mix? 45db is a heck of a drop.
> Anyway, your best bet might be to forget about trying to use the old
> cable as a drag, and maybe go from the outside, or perhaps in the
> attic to run the cable to the location.

Attic, maybe. Outside, no. Ugly and leads to early failures. There has
to be some usable way to fish a new wire in the walls. Around here,
Comcast and the others always try to cheap out and do it the quick and
dirty way. I'm surprised OP got their tech to spend any time diagnosing
it. Most of the techs are subs, and they want to get in and out fast,
since they don't make that much per site visit.

I always tell people to pre-wire it themselves, or hire somebody, before
their scheduled hookup date. I've had to rewire several cable and satt
installations for relatives, where the 'free' installation was worth
about what they paid for it.

--
aem sends...

--
aem sends...

Posted by Mikepier on October 25, 2009, 9:44 am

I had a problem with my phone/cable modem dropping out, and it was
because my cable modem was hooked up to the 7.5db tap of a 3 way
splitter. I moved it to the 3.5db tap, and it was fixed. Most 3 way
splitters have 2-7.5db taps and 1- 3.5 db tap.

Posted by hr(bob) hofmann@att.net on October 25, 2009, 11:56 am

> I had a problem with my phone/cable modem dropping out, and it was
> because my cable modem was hooked up to the 7.5db tap of a 3 way
> splitter. I moved it to the 3.5db tap, and it was fixed. Most 3 way
> splitters have 2-7.5db taps and 1- 3.5 db tap.

I just had a Comcast guy tell me I had a problem with the wiring in my
house. I had complained that the new digital conversion boxes they
sent out as part of their digital conversion were not working very
well when the weather was wet. He said the signals at my distribution
box in a chase off the family room were plenty strong and so the
problem was in my internal distribution wiring. I pointed out to him
that there were no leaks in my roof and that the problem had to be in
their cable which ran from a tap on a telephone pole cable support
location down the pole and underground 100' into my house.

After he went up on a ladder at the pole and looked at the tap into
the main cable, he discovered that the squirrels that abound around
here had eaten into the line. After he ran a new cable from the tap
into my house, things are just fine. Of course, he forgot to tell
Comcast that they had to send out a crew to bury the new feed line, so
I am having to move the cable every time I cut the leaves up to avoid
having to rake them. Called Comcast and bitched at them for
forgetting about me. They were very apologetic, and now I only have
one more week to wait until they come out to bury the cable.

Posted by RicodJour on October 25, 2009, 4:06 pm

> Mikepier wrote:

> >> The Comcast tech found that we were losing 45 db from where the cable
> >> entered the house to the office where the phone sat (+25 to -20).
> >> Even with an amplifier on the line and him replacing all the ends, we
> >> only got to -10.
> >> He blamed the rg59; a neighbor who's an EE figured it had to be the
> >> horseshoe nails once I got in some of the crawlspaces and found them.
> >> My neighbor figured the horseshoe nails were messing up the shielding.

> > You sure you don't have a splitter, or a lot of splitters somewhere in
> > the mix? 45db is a heck of a drop.
> > Anyway, your best bet might be to forget about trying to use the old
> > cable as a drag, and maybe go from the outside, or perhaps in the
> > attic to run the cable to the location.

> Attic, maybe. Outside, no. Ugly and leads to early failures. There has
> to be some usable way to fish a new wire in the walls. Around here,
> Comcast and the others always try to cheap out and do it the quick and
> dirty way. I'm surprised OP got their tech to spend any time diagnosing
> it. Most of the techs are subs, and they want to get in and out fast,
> since they don't make that much per site visit.
> I always tell people to pre-wire it themselves, or hire somebody, before
> their scheduled hookup date. I've had to rewire several cable and satt
> installations for relatives, where the 'free' installation was worth
> about what they paid for it.

I'd pay those guys not to run wires. In one house I worked on the guy
ran from the electric meter up into the gutter, inside the gutter
around back, around the wing, up the side of the building and poked a
hole into a back bedroom. Almost 200' of cable and the basement was
open, there was a wire chase from front to back, and the house was
balloon framed so you could pull the wire up 1-2-3. Maybe he was
killing time at the end of the day, or fell off the ladder a couple
times too many. I was trying to figure out how many times the damn
idiot moved his ladder.

R

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