Goings On in the Swamp

Hello all, sorry for the lack of posts over the last 4-days or so. While the Wife and Daughter were out in the lovely wilds of Southern California with the SN2 Homecoming activity I was left home alone with the Lady, the Princess Pomeranian. Together we held the fort down.

On the great "Things-2-Do List" while having the run of the house was the addition of a new layer of insulation in our attic. The attic in our home is a large unused space; its access limits its usage. But, it needed some R-30 pink type stuffing and it was cheap in our area for some odd reason. So, whilst the majority of the family was away I hauled in and laid down 32 packages of insulation brought in 4 at a time (the capacity of the Chevy Malibu Maxx).

Before I get too far ahead here, this activity would render this space completely unusable including access to the Cable System cabling that is installed up there. Yes, the builder saw fit to but cable in the house which at the time we thought was a smart thing, however they installed it using multiple splitters mounted to the rafters in this hard to access space. Putting down this new blanket of insulation would prevent any kind of activity up their including the occasional Cable Repair guy who like to climb up there and cut off and replace connectors. I think that is part of their deal because I have escorted them up their several times and that was all they did, plus complain about the number of splitters in the way of getting good signal to the big digital TV or Cable Modem all the way down in the basement.

So, I bought a large roll of the RG-6Q cable and proceeded to run new cable from a closet in the Basement to every room in the house that has cable now (4 bed rooms, two Offices and the family room for the big TV). I also ran a main feed line from the little cable box outside the house to this little closet moving the Cable Modem, Phone Modem and the wireless router into the space.

After getting all the new cable in place I pulled all the splitters out for my collection of spare parts and laid down the new insulation. After which I went around and added new plugs to each end of the new cable in every room. I also bought a new fancy Amplifier/Splitter that could handle all the cable feeds at once.

All this activity meant no internet or home phone for a few days while all the wiring was on the move but it's all up and running. I do have some wired network cabling to clean up but they are wired runs to locations that are not used any more so I may simply eliminate them. The Wireless router has made all that Cat 5 wire strung to the bedrooms on the second floor, redundant.

I'll have pictures when I get the closet completed in case anyone else is interested in how this can be done. Today I do not have to worry about a Cable repair guy falling through the attic while willy nilly replacing plugs on the cable system.

BT: Jimmy T sends.