Because you can do it yourself! This story is a little old, but I was just looking through some pics and realized that I never shared the story of how Shane and I, mostly Shane, rerouted the cable in our living room.
The problem started out as a cable wire taped to walls and fished over to the other side of the room. The solution began with calling Charter Cable to come out and move the cable line under the house so that it ‘poked’ out in the right spot. They basically just grabbed a really long piece of cable, ran it around the house (in the backyard) and popped it through an existing cable hole through the brick. It had special tools to fish that through…foreshadowing.
The cable line that was buried a good 1 centimeter in the backyard was quickly dug up, excuse me, dusted off, by Beau and Brother and chewed until we had no cable in the living room. No cable on a NASCAR Sunday is not a good thing in my house…Shane has to watch the race in the bedroom – unacceptable.
So, Shane decides that instead of calling Charter and paying another $85 for them to do crap work, he would get under the house and figure out how to re-route the cable. (Our house is a crawlspace and all of our cable wires are run underneath the house using a splitter and holes drilled in the floors…very complex setup.) He pulls the remaining piece of cable from the living room through the pre-existing hole and goes into the crawlspace and disconnects that piece from the splitter. Then, he puts on a new cable, runs the wire through one of our crawlspace vents (yes, it looks like a vent that would be in your floor – but it is on the side of our house) and up through that pre-existing hole again. What happens? Well, the dogs find that and chew it. They were about a hairs length away from the pound at this point.
And the conclusion of this story, finally, is that we run another cable the same way (through the vent), and put stuff in front of it so that the dogs can’t get it. We knew we were building a deck so why bother trying to figure out a new way to do this? I’ll tell the rest of this in pics...
The problem started out as a cable wire taped to walls and fished over to the other side of the room. The solution began with calling Charter Cable to come out and move the cable line under the house so that it ‘poked’ out in the right spot. They basically just grabbed a really long piece of cable, ran it around the house (in the backyard) and popped it through an existing cable hole through the brick. It had special tools to fish that through…foreshadowing.
The cable line that was buried a good 1 centimeter in the backyard was quickly dug up, excuse me, dusted off, by Beau and Brother and chewed until we had no cable in the living room. No cable on a NASCAR Sunday is not a good thing in my house…Shane has to watch the race in the bedroom – unacceptable.
So, Shane decides that instead of calling Charter and paying another $85 for them to do crap work, he would get under the house and figure out how to re-route the cable. (Our house is a crawlspace and all of our cable wires are run underneath the house using a splitter and holes drilled in the floors…very complex setup.) He pulls the remaining piece of cable from the living room through the pre-existing hole and goes into the crawlspace and disconnects that piece from the splitter. Then, he puts on a new cable, runs the wire through one of our crawlspace vents (yes, it looks like a vent that would be in your floor – but it is on the side of our house) and up through that pre-existing hole again. What happens? Well, the dogs find that and chew it. They were about a hairs length away from the pound at this point.
And the conclusion of this story, finally, is that we run another cable the same way (through the vent), and put stuff in front of it so that the dogs can’t get it. We knew we were building a deck so why bother trying to figure out a new way to do this? I’ll tell the rest of this in pics...
Drilling a hole from the outside to the inside of the house, because we needed a bigger hole to get through and didn’t have the proper ‘fishing tools.’
Using the non-proper fishing tool (which is the wand from our blinds, duct taped to the cable and pulled through) to fish the wire in.
Our completed product, with a big gaping space both inside and outside (we welcome all critters!), but overall a very conveniently and cheap cable line move.
Don’t try this at home. Which I’m sure you wouldn’t, but seriously – don’t.
Hello Stacy,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Eric Ketzer, and I am a Manger at Charter Communications. It was interesting to read your blog about routing your cable. You are absolutely right, in most cases, it is much cheaper to run the cable lines yourself. So kudos to you and Shane for coming up with a workable solution. I am bothered by the fact that you were unhappy with the job our Technician initially did, so I'd like to see what we can do to fix that. You can contact my team at Umatter2Charter@chartercom.com, and we will get you taken care of.
Good luck with your future renovations, Eric
Hi Eric! Thanks for reading my blog...we actually have since moved to AT&T U-verse cable, so there really isn't anything that Charter can do at this point. While I wasn't happy with my cable moving experience, I really appreciate you making an effort to reach out and ensure my satisfaction. Thanks!
ReplyDelete