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GunnerJ posted:I don't understand why line of sight is important. I mean I'd like ethernet in every room for convenience but not because wifi won't work without line of sight. I live in a two story split level, my wireless router is in the highest room and my Roku is in the lowest room, and it works without much issue. This can vary a lot for old houses that aren’t made of modern drywall Chicken wire was a shortcut used in home construction like 100 years ago. They would rough out a wall shape with wire mesh, then they’d put plaster and wood slats over it to form the wall The chicken wire is strong but light and gives the plaster something to adhere to, but effectively makes your whole home a faraday cage so WiFi can barely penetrate the walls
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Mar 14, 2021 17:04
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Fortunately what's being asked about is a townhouse so this isn't a concern.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:06
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Ah, fair, just giving an example of why you might need to hardwire your whole house for internet here in the year 2021
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Mar 14, 2021 17:08
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Squinky v2.0 posted:Ah, fair, just giving an example of why you might need to hardwire your whole house for internet here in the year 2021 I suppose that depends on what you're doing. I have a NAS in the basement and don't want to spend forever transferring videos I'm working on. Some people, especially in a place described as a "townhouse" are in such density that there is a lot of contention for wifi channels. And some people simply don't want to have to rely solely on wifi, especially for things like 4k video. These are all reasonable situations where one would want to wire their house. Now also in the post you are ostensibly responding to this person wants cameras. The easiest way to do this is with hard wired PoE cameras.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:11
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Motronic posted:I suppose that depends on what you're doing. I have a NAS in the basement and don't want to spend forever transferring videos I'm working on. Some people, especially in a place described as a "townhouse" are in such density that there is a lot of contention for wifi channels. And some people simply don't want to have to rely solely on wifi, especially for things like 4k video. These are all reasonable situations where one would want to wire their house. Yeah, most of this applies to us. We have a NAS and will want to stream 4K from it, the sellers have said WiFi is spotty (they blamed LoS, but thinking about it, it could easily be WiFi congestion or even just a lousy router), and I was thinking POE for the cameras. I'll try to look for businesses who'll give us free quotes, it doesn't seem like this is a predictable cost. Alternately I could learn to do it myself, but it sounds like a lot of frustration for something I might still screw up.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:18
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disaster pastor posted:I'll try to look for businesses who'll give us free quotes, it doesn't seem like this is a predictable cost. Alternately I could learn to do it myself, but it sounds like a lot of frustration for something I might still screw up. It's basically electricians and/or home stereo/home automation places.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:20
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I pulled cat6 cables from my basement to my first floor pretty much without a hitch in a 50's european brick house. This includes a 40 cm bore hole at an angle through concrete where I used the Pythagorean theorem. It's really not that hard. Struensee fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 14, 2021 |
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Mar 14, 2021 17:26
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Struensee posted:I pulled cat6 cables from my basement to my first floor pretty much without a hitch and this is in a 50's european brick house. This includes a 40 cm bore hole at an angle through concrete where I used the Pythagorean theorem. Yes, going from a basement to only one floor above is "really not that hard", and it's also not what's being discussed. It is not very likely to have a clean chase from the basement to any other floor because of basic fire safety. It's been a very long time since "balloon construction" has been a thing. You can't just build stuff with penetrations between floors and leave them open. Very often you'll find that the most effective way to get from floor to floor is through closets, where you can run a bit of conduit that's (mostly) hidden by the fact that it's in the back of a closet and you don't have to look at it. Of course, you can just trench drywall wherever you like but now you're making an even bigger mess and your job costs went up. You might need to do this anyway if you don't have something like "stacked" closets between floors. And even after you've done that if you want a clean, workmanlike job where you have cables in the walls ending at proper recessed jacks now you're fishing walls. Some of those walls could be exterior walls, so not only are they filled with insulation but you're also needing to somehow get through a double top plate which, while absolutely possible, becomes a much more difficult job involving comically huge drill bits or cutting and then needing to patch more drywall unless you can actually get a drill on it from the top, which isn't going to happen on a gable end. So congrats that your job was easy for you. It's not likely to be the case in what's being discussed here.
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Mar 14, 2021 17:41
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Our house came with a spiderweb of old coax on it (like TV in every room level and then some), so we installed MoCA adapters wherever we want wired internet, which is several places where the WiFi is bad due to too many thick plaster walls and/or it’s my husband’s office where he frequently moves around huge media files. Also our entertainment center is all wired connections for optimal streaming and gaming. Luckily the TV den is where the main line comes into the house (because the PO also used it as a TV den). We will probably consider other ethernet options once we get into more serious remodeling and have walls opened up for rewiring/repair. I reeeeallly want to rip all the coax off because even though it’s currently a convenient way to get wired internet to most rooms in the house, it’s super loving ugly.
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Mar 14, 2021 18:39
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disaster pastor posted:Two things we want to do when we move in in May: Probably the easiest thing to do is to find the companies that contract with the local cable or phone companies and see if they do private work. It might also make sense to run coaxial cable at the same time, as it's pretty much just as easy to run 2 wires as it is to run 1, but that may depend on the layout of the house as to whether that makes sense. If you see a cable or phone technician working in your complex, you can politely ask them if they know of a company they suggest for custom wire runs. You might also ask your HOA if they have a company they work with, but the answer there will probably be no. Motronic is right in that the cost and complexity will vary wildly from house to house and region to region, but I would expect to be paying a minimum of $100 per outlet for the easiest job possible with the price going up pretty quickly from there. It still may be worth it, but you might want to explore MoCA adapters (if there are existing coax runs) or even power line adapters. That's all going to depend on your specific needs and the layout and construction of your townhome. Do you know what your ISP situation is going to look like? And do you have a pretty good idea where you need service (main tv, office, gaming computer, where the ISP service comes in, that sort of thing)? A phone or cable technician is probably a good place to start, but you'll want to have a pretty good idea on what you specifically want in order to get a good answer.
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Mar 14, 2021 20:04
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You might look into powerline ethernet? I haven't done it personally, but apparently it's really improved in the last 10 years That said I'd much rather have dedicated ethernet cable run, rather than be married to a some quasi proprietary technology. Cat 5e isn't going anywhere anytime soon as a global standard, and you're unlikely to get > 1gbps home internet in the next 5
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Mar 14, 2021 20:10
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Something else to consider is a WiFi mesh setup. I’ve had good success with those in the past in high density living situations where the WiFi spectrum was soaked. Not as good as wired but way better than a single router broadcasting from a few floors down.
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Mar 14, 2021 21:02
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Motronic posted:Yeah, that too. I have a Ubiquiti AC access point on the first floor that covers from the basement to the second floor just fine. Switching to one of these is the best thing you can do to fix WiFi issues. Everything just stays connected except LG TVs cause they are garbage.
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Mar 14, 2021 21:39
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The gear for it really isn't here yet - but Wifi 6E will add support for 6ghz, which is terrible at penetrating walls. You might not want to go crazy and do every room setup for an access point, but if you've got an office or other space where you'd want suprt fast wifi, it would be good to plan for it. The lack of wall penetration is actually an advantage in some cases, since it means your neighbors poorly configured access point can't effect you as much. FWIW, Ruckus R610's are about $200 each on ebay and are a bit more solid then the Ubnt gear. Ubnt pissed me off when they dropped support for self-hosting their video recording software, so I've been actively removing them from my house. devicenull fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Mar 14, 2021 |
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Mar 14, 2021 21:51
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Inner Light posted:x-post from the house buying thread. Is there a renovation/design thread that I'm remembering somewhere? Alright, I think I decided I'm not going to do anything about this weird spot. Maybe if I rub it enough with a cleaner it will be duller and match the surrounding area better. But I'll likely have a rug over it anyway, I guess. I can't think of any other way to deal with it. Plus, if I sand and refinish the floor, the contractor said I will lose all of the red color from the factory. It would probably look closer to this: https://i.imgur.com/o30FA9B.jpg Which I think looks less attractive. :-/
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Mar 14, 2021 23:13
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Queen Victorian posted:Our house came with a spiderweb of old coax on it (like TV in every room level and then some), so we installed MoCA adapters wherever we want wired internet, which is several places where the WiFi is bad due to too many thick plaster walls and/or it’s my husband’s office where he frequently moves around huge media files.  Going to do a similar thing in our new place that has coax everywhere; beats needing the expense of pulling Ethernet initially.
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Mar 14, 2021 23:22
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It just occurred to me that I haven’t had one of my 2.4ghz wireless blackouts (losing signal to/from every single 2.4ghz from garage openers and fan remotes to baby monitors and guest wifi) since my neighbor moved out. Huh... I wonder what he was doing.
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Mar 15, 2021 01:22
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Sundae posted:It just occurred to me that I haven’t had one of my 2.4ghz wireless blackouts (losing signal to/from every single 2.4ghz from garage openers and fan remotes to baby monitors and guest wifi) since my neighbor moved out. Huh... I wonder what he was doing. Some cordless phones were insane. My mother had one that was, so did my next door neighbour circa 2004. Guaranteed nothing else was functioning in the 2.4GHz range when they were in use. A condo circa 2013 also suffered occasional deauth/jamming attacks, occasionally for entire weekends. Also entertaining but this drove me to change everything to 5Ghz - it was fairly early days for that. Sassafras fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Mar 15, 2021 01:28
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2.4ghz remote control cars, drones etc will ruin wifi, as will musical wireless stuff. Our neighbors microwave got replaced and all our wifi issues went away the same day
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Mar 15, 2021 01:32
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Hadlock posted:2.4ghz remote control cars, drones etc will ruin wifi, as will musical wireless stuff. Our neighbors microwave got replaced and all our wifi issues went away the same day That's not necessarily "wifi" It's just the same unlicensed ISM frequencies. And crappy gear won't comply with the non-interference rules. Sassafras posted:Some cordless phones were insane. I still have a Panasonic that is a 2.4 ghz wifi killer. I used to use it as a demo for clients when I was doing network engineering contracts.
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Mar 15, 2021 01:38
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Thanks, all!I Like Jell-O posted:You might also ask your HOA if they have a company they work with There's no HOA, which we're generally pleased about. I Like Jell-O posted:Do you know what your ISP situation is going to look like? And do you have a pretty good idea where you need service (main tv, office, gaming computer, where the ISP service comes in, that sort of thing)? A phone or cable technician is probably a good place to start, but you'll want to have a pretty good idea on what you specifically want in order to get a good answer. Yeah. I'm hoping for gigabit from Spectrum, they say it's available there. I'm expecting to need internet in the office, master bedroom, and living room at least. We've reached out to the seller's agent because we realized yesterday they gave us conflicting information: they've told us both that the cable comes in through the basement and that it comes in through the office (2nd floor). Hadlock posted:You might look into powerline ethernet? I haven't done it personally, but apparently it's really improved in the last 10 years I'm using powerline where we're renting now, actually. Here it's a bit better than wifi because we have SO MANY old walls in the way, but it's also prone to just stop working for a few minutes when ???? is happening, so I'd prefer not to rely on it. Cyrano4747 posted:Something else to consider is a WiFi mesh setup. I’ve had good success with those in the past in high density living situations where the WiFi spectrum was soaked. If it turns out that the cable comes in through the office, we'll definitely consider this. If it comes in through the basement, I'm not sure it'll be an option (though I don't know much about mesh setups), we have a ~wAcKy~ townhouse build where you can only get to the basement through the garage, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to get the network set up.
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Mar 15, 2021 13:32
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disaster pastor posted:
Basement shouldn't matter at all unless you've got a concrete floor between the ground floor and your basement with a tight rebar weave in it (or some other crazy faraday-cage creating setup) in which case I want to know about your experiences buying and refurbing a bunker. Just have one node at the router and then put another on the floor above it, and then build out from there.
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Mar 15, 2021 13:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:Basement shouldn't matter at all unless you've got a concrete floor between the ground floor and your basement with a tight rebar weave in it (or some other crazy faraday-cage creating setup) in which case I want to know about your experiences buying and refurbing a bunker. Good to know, thank you!
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Mar 15, 2021 13:46
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disaster pastor posted:Yeah, most of this applies to us. We have a NAS and will want to stream 4K from it, the sellers have said WiFi is spotty (they blamed LoS, but thinking about it, it could easily be WiFi congestion or even just a lousy router), and I was thinking POE for the cameras. Its annoying but not that difficult to run ethernet yourself. The quick and dirty method is buying plenum rated cable and running it through your cold air returns. This may or may not be allowed by code in your area and may or may not get you jacks located where you actually want them. If you want to pay someone to do this imho I would try to find a local MSP (IT managed service provider) because they are always going to have someone on staff or have the name of a company they contract out to for pulling cable at business they support. If you or a friend/relative who works somewhere that has outsourced their IT support to an MSP, you might be able to get a name of a place to call. Or just find some local to you and place some calls, YMMV here but I don't see this being outside the realm of possibility. I would definitely trust someone from the MSP/IT space to run the cable and correctly punch down to a patch panel/terminate jacks over paying an electrician to do it. Also lol absolutely do not call your local cable provider to do it, I am having to patch a gigantic hole in my beautiful wood floors this week because the previous owner let (I assume) the Comcast installer just drill through the floor into the basement to pull coax into the living room vs doing it the right way. Sirotan fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Mar 15, 2021 16:23
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Another option is third-party satellite system installers. When we had the house wired, we hired a guy who did 6 drops, including 4 on the second story, for around $1200 including the cable and wall plates/boxes. He primarily did Dish Network/DirecTV installs, but he did a great job with minimal wall cuts.
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Mar 15, 2021 16:44
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Sirotan posted:Also lol absolutely do not call your local cable provider to do it, I am having to patch a gigantic hole in my beautiful wood floors this week because the previous owner let (I assume) the Comcast installer just drill through the floor into the basement to pull coax into the living room vs doing it the right way. I have one of these too, even though a wall box would have been dead simple. Stupid assholes. Also a whole lot of cat5 for analog security cameras where the staples went through the cable. I have to test it all to see if it's still good for IP cams or if it needs to be re-pulled 
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Mar 16, 2021 04:35
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I was living in a rental with a detached garage at the back of the property leading to an alley. There was a 20' walkway between the garage and the house. Narrow but very deep lot. Upstairs neighbor moved out and her boyfriend took over the lease and moved cable service into his name. Landlord had put in a really nice 4" pvc pipe under the walkway to the house, terminated in a little shed with the meters and coax distribution for our top bottom townhouse Cable guy attached a new Y adapter at the pole, then strung it to the ground, then snaked the cable across the grass, then drilled 20+ holes in the 100 year old brick facade and drilled a hole in their bedroom wall and ran the cable through that Never mind that the house had been professionally wired for the last 30+ years, and was still wired with active service through the existing underground wire/piping. My only guess is that the guy got some kind of bonus for doing a new install, and the upstairs neighbors were slacker stoners and wouldn't care about the new tripping hazard. gently caress cable companies I'm glad I never have to deal with them again
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Mar 16, 2021 20:22
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I actually had cable techs come out and replace a bad service line for me and while chatting with them they told me they're specifically told not to ever remove or reuse old lines when setting up a new customer, even if it the old equipment was from their company. Which explains why I have both an AT&T line/box and a Spectrum line/box on my house with two runs going to the pole.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:35
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Do Always Supervise the Cable Installer. At my parents house they just showed up while everyone was at work and used one of those trench cable layers and ripped up a bunch of drainage pipes. Cue like six months of angry calls and legal threats before they hired a landscaper to come dig it up and fix it.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:38
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Anyone with experience in treating sulfur and iron reducing bacteria in well water? Every place I look or company I ask has a different solution.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:43
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brugroffil posted:Anyone with experience in treating sulfur and iron reducing bacteria in well water? Every place I look or company I ask has a different solution. There are plenty of reasonable solutions depending on where you live/how prevalent it is. I'd start with shocking the well and see if it lasts before going into expensive water treatment options.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:46
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SpartanIvy posted:I actually had cable techs come out and replace a bad service line for me and while chatting with them they told me they're specifically told not to ever remove or reuse old lines when setting up a new customer, even if it the old equipment was from their company. Is this why I have 3+ sets of coax bolted/stapled onto the exterior of my house?
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Mar 16, 2021 20:46
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Queen Victorian posted:Is this why I have 3+ sets of coax bolted/stapled onto the exterior of my house? yeah I'm slowly removing all the Cable lines I find when I feel about it. My basement has so many different abandoned runs stapled to the rafters.
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Mar 16, 2021 20:55
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I imagine if you can identify which company the run belongs to, and they still exist, if you called the 800 number and politely Karened them they would send a truck out to remove it. Assuming it's not something that will take you 5 minutes.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:07
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Day after closing the cable guy is coming, sounds like I have to watch him like a hawk so he doesn't immediately destroy the walls etc of my new house by being lazy.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:10
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Having transitioned from a WiFi mesh to cat6 supporting a WiFi mesh, having wired home runs is a HUGE benefit. Each node has to talk to each other node in addition to the network traffic, so each additional node adds traffic exponentially, and it's easy to saturate your spectrum. We got a local home theater place to install ours. We could have saved about a grand in material costs by buying bulk cable from Monoprice if we'd planned ahead for that, so ask early in the process. Now that our mesh is hardwired (and the streaming devices too) we have no more WiFi congestion for our portable devices. It's great and well worth the cost for infrastructure that will last longer than any device plugged into it.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:12
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Most cable installers have a staple gun and a 24" drill bit, are being paid by the job not by how long it takes, etc. So yeah, act accordingly.
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Mar 16, 2021 21:12
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Motronic posted:Most cable installers have a staple gun and a 24" drill bit, are being paid by the job not by how long it takes, etc. So yeah, act accordingly. pretty much this.. Okily dokily we'll just drill a hole here to get to the first floor livingroom maybe even an actual run in the basement to get to where your TV is... and oh you want some bedrooms upstairs too.. Hole, Hole.. ugly rear end cable run outside screwed into all your siding.
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Mar 17, 2021 00:44
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When we moved into this rental house, cable guy from Comcast came and only had a 6 foot A frame ladder strapped to his mini van. I should have known it would be a loving thing. When he put that ladder up against the telephone post to try and connect the cable which was over his head, he asked me to hold the ladder because he could only reach the cable by standing on the tippy top. I thought for sure this guy was going to fall and break his neck and mine. When he pulled the drill and 24" bit out, he had it aimed to go straight through the loving trim on the floor of the living room but thankfully his drill was dead. He wasted about a half hour looking through his van for a charger and said he might have to go home to grab it and come back tomorrow. He then asked if I had a drill and I very reluctantly handed it over, but I also was loving sick of not having internet and dealing with comcast. I asked him to put the hole through the wall instead of the trim and he was just like "uhh okay sure ... WRRRRRRRT". No joke, I don't think he ever even looked outside because he pulled the bit out and there was plastic on the end. "Huh, I wonder what that could be". He drilled straight through the exterior wall and into the corner of the plastic phone/cable routing box on the outside of the house. He ran the cable through the hole and I could see light and feel air around the cable. I figured he would spray some foam inside or put some kind of tight sealing gasket around it. He quickly packed up his things and was about to leave when I asked him about the hole and says "Oh, I ran out but if you have some liquid nails or caulk you can just seal it yourself" and he hosed right off into his mini van. A few months later I had issues with my speed and the comcast guy came in a real comcast truck, wearing a real uniform (not sweatpants and a def leopard tee shirt) and had gadgets to detect internet speed and what not. He marked it down as poor quality installation and I got a few free months of premium channels and got my install fee waived because of it.
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Mar 17, 2021 03:59
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The only cable company installers I've been impressed with have been Sonic. Every person they've ever sent out to my place has been super professional.
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Mar 17, 2021 04:49
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