re-wiring house cable, stuck

[MMark]

Hi...

Our house was wired for cable when it was built in the 70's with old rg59. On top of that, they horseshoe nailed the cable to the studs. I started re-wiring it with rg6 but ran into a snag in the back bedroom.

The wiring starts in the basement, runs up the center of the house to the attic, then through crawlspaces, etc back down to the bedrooms. One bedroom that we're using as an office has a drop, but the jack is in the mid-line of the house, so it runs back and forth under a lot of sub flooring.

My problem is those damn horseshoe nails. I broke the top out of the wall box and was able to pull out one of the horseshoe nails with a coat hanger, but there's another one somewhere up there in the wall. Because of all the zigging and zagging under the subflooring, a snake wouldn't work to run a new line. My understanding is that snakes work okay if you have essentially a straight shot, which I don't.

Any ideas on how to free up the line/get rid of the horseshoe nail somewhere up the stud without taking all the drywall down?

Thanks Mark

[RBM]

Typically, you cut the old stuff off and abandon it, and run the new cable in whatever fashion works best now that there is sheetrock up

[clare]

But being able to use the old stuff as a "fish tape" sure makes the job easier.

[RBM]

Not where it's drilled horizontally through studs and stapled

[jimmydahgeek]

Can you just run a new line through the cold air return?

[HeyBub]

Aghhhh !

[Mikepier]

Just curious why you are replacing the RG59? Were you getting a bad picture? Is it for a cable modem?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Against code!

[clare]

That's why he's asking how to get the staples ohy. I've found sometimes just giving it one H of a pull pops the staples out, and the cable can then be pulled out. The cable itself is good for close to

1000 lbs of pull. Doesn't take that much to pop cable staples.

Sometimes you get lucky - sometimes you don't.

[clare]

Illegal unless you use plenum rated cable.

[clare]

How about digital HiDeff TV.

[Mikepier]

It is still possible to get HiDef TV with RG59. Although the performance not as good as RG6, with a strong signal RG59 should work.

[MMark]

Good question... We tried to go with the Comcast Triple Play package in August but the phone kept dropping out.

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.

If I could get the office cable free, I'd been planning on doing a home run of rg6 all the way back to the source but have been having a heck of a time getting that office cable free.

[Mikepier]

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.

[aemeijers]

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...

[Mikepier]

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.

[hrhofmann]

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.

[clare]

With Rogers digital it MUST be 100% sheilded RG6 throughout, or you get pixelation

[RBM]

I too, have been able to give a hard snap and rip a pile of staples off of RG-59, but I think he's got horseshoe nails, not staples. Them puppies ain't commin out so easy

[RicodJour]

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