Home Improvement → Home wiring - cable

We're doing a significant remodel to half the interior of our house. If I can get the time/motivation, will take before/after picts, although most of the upstairs work is pretty much complete.

One of many questions I'd like to ask; currently our electric and phone come into the right side of the house that's having the work done. The cable, however, comes in on the other (left) side.

I'm going to homerun new Cat5e and coax from all the new rooms into the corner of the first floor/basement for distribution. Will likely be getting one of those nifty Levitron panels from Home Depot.

Question is; is it worth me asking the cable company to re-run the wire from the poles across our non-busy street to the other side of the house, along with the elec/phone? Or is that going to be a hassle and cost big $$, as I suspect?

Currently the cable line comes to the left side of the house and hits a passive three-way splitter; one run outside the house to rear, one run outside the house to the upstairs, and one run along inside of the house's front wall for the full length to the other side of the house (where the elec/phone are) - probably about 45'.

That third line is long and the reception on the TV at the end is not very good. I assume since the initial feed is being split 3-way then running that far, I'm losing strength.

SO, if I don't have the cable co. re-run the wire to the elec/phone side, I would take that 3-way out and just join the cable feed to that long wire that already runs the length of the house - then to a patch panel, then rerun coax inside the house to all rooms that need it.

Sound good?
Would the length of the cable run be 'bad' before it hits the patch panel? Are there 'signal boosters' I can apply to the splitter at the patch panel if needed?
Thanks!
KM

Don't know anything about the wiring part of your question, but I have a cable amplifier in my attic that has worked good for excellent reception on my TV's.

With the current passive three-way splitter you should be fine extending the cable to your main distribution point or demarc. I am doing this with my satellite coax and have had no issues.

If you do have issues, you can always go back in with an amplifier.

Who's your cable provider and do you have Internet with them or just TV?

Good to know an amp will likely help.

I think the current 3way splitter is really hurting the longest extension as reception on that end is not very good. Unless enlightened otherwise, I think I'll do the 'unsplit' at the outside demarc, run the full length across the house to a splitter at the other end and amp that before actually splitting to the soon to be five new runs.

The biggest hassle will be running the line back to the other end for the upstairs connection. Perhaps I'll just change out the demarc from three to two split; leaving one for the upstairs and the other to feed all the other lines. With an amp, that should work out fine...I think.

My current provider is Comcast, though Millineum is in the area too (their signal kinda sucks) and I have DSL, not cable, broadband.
KM

Hmmm....I'm with Adelphia (at least for now). I've had intermittent problems with signal levels inside the house for at least 5 years.

About 3 years ago I made several complaints and a very capable tech came out. We traced the cable from the pole to the house -- I have underground service -- and we discovered I had RG-6 leaving the pole and RG-59 at the house side, indicating an underground splice or connection.

Both cables looked pretty old. The tech put in a work order to replace the drop. About a week later an Adelphia truck came with a machine to cut a small slit in the lawn and install a new underground cable to the house.

All work was free. So....maybe if you have underground cable it could accidentally get cut.....

Hmmm, RG-6 vs RG-59, eh? I will keep that in mind as I redo the inside of the house! All new runs are RG-6, though apparently the gauge does still differ in that rating? Someone was telling me that... Or maybe it's just shielding...

Millenium does bury their cables around here but our Comcast line is suspended. I'll just wire the whole house as I'm thinking and see how it goes. If any fuzz, I'll be talking to Comcast!
Thanks all,
KM

Keep everything at RG6, the main difference is in the signal loss which can become significant at the higher channels and longer runs. Make sure you splitter is rated at 1GHZ.

I decided to go all out on my house in a sense. We have Verizon FIOS so that means we have a ONT and thats where the cable signal comes from. Now everything was ran with New RG6 back in Janurary but we had it coming up through the floors like a standard old house you would have. Well the signal comes out so hot they have to drop it down at the splitter and even then it comes out hot. There's to much power which is a bad thing. But anyways when I re did the house and ran all the wiring up the walls we went with RG6 Quad Sheliding. Didn't matter to me it was at lowes expense. I think we paid 80 for the spool. Then we also got Two spools of 500 feet Single Shield for free cause they messed up on the order.