Best provider to choose when you need major wiring done?
We are in the process of purchasing a home in Green Bay and the home we've chosen is an older home (40+) which has been extensively renovated and the basement finished (including plastered ceilings, to make wiring more difficult). When working on the house, the home seller apparently didn't feel the need to put cable OR phone jacks ANYWHERE in the house, at least none that we could find. We have found strings of cable at various places in the basement, but they don't seem to go anywhere, and some are RG59 cable anyways which I wouldn't use. We would need cable (and CAT5, preferably) run to a few rooms in the house. I'm guessing the upstairs wiring would necessitate dropping wires from the attic, and one or two rooms in the basement might be more complicated because of the finished basement walls. I think I remember Time Warner does wall drops for an extra charge. Does AT&T do wiring if they have to do a lot of it? Or are there any services/freelancers out there that do media wiring in homes without charging a small fortune?
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Last I heard, TWC does new
Last I heard, TWC does new outlets for $5 each unless it involves wall fishing. Then they charge around $30 an hour I believe. Not sure what AT&T charges. An electrician would likely be expensive but you would get a knowledgeable person who does quality work. Personally I would do the work myself because I don't trust the quality of the individual that would be sent to my house.
Just curious, is this a single or two story house and you mentioned the walls in the basement are finished, how is the ceiling finished (dry wall, removable tiles...) and is the entire basement finished? These would be the biggest contributing factors in the difficulty of wiring your home.
Also I would decided on how concerned you are about a clean install. By this I mean, do you want the wires hidden in the wall in outlets, the wires popped into the room at the base of the wall through the floor, or do you want the wires ran through the wall to the outside and wrapped around the home to a central point. These would be the primary ways to run cabling.
This house is a single
This house is a single story, with a basement that is finished except for a utility room where the electrical and wiring comes in, and a second utility room with the furnace/water heater. Other than those two rooms, the rest of the basement is finished including drywalled ceilings.
There's going to be some wall fishing for sure, from what I can imagine. Not sure what the house renovator was thinking exactly, because there is cable running but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.
The attic seems very accessible (steps up to it from the hallway closet) so I'm thinking I should be able to fish cable up to the attic and drop it to the rooms from there. I've never done it before though, so I'm not sure how well that will happen. I may give it a go nonetheless because I'd also like to run Cat5 while I'm at it.
Mark, I agree. Do it
Mark,
I agree. Do it yourself. I have seen several installations where "installers" simply drilled through the floor!
Could I suggest that you use Cat6 instead of Cat5e? Gigabit technology is here. No sense in upgrading again a year from now.
Bill
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