Connections

Some might remember the TV series Connections with James Burke. The one where he connects seemingly random events - sort of like the Challenger disaster being related to the width of two horses' behinds in ancient Rome.

Likewise, I finished painting the master bedroom this weekend. Naturally, it involved doing some demolition in a pantry closet in the kitchen...

So I wanted to paint the master bedroom this weekend. I filled the minor holes and cracks in the plaster and did other prep work. Then I remembered(!) that the cable TV enters the house through and outside wall in the master bedroom. Yup, just like the old phone lines, the CATV is run from the pole to the outside of the house. The splitter is on the exterior and the various lines run along the outside until they reach the room where they're needed. Then they drilled through the brick and let the end of the cable dangle into the room.

The main one comes in near the ceiling in the master and has about 40 feet of extra cable. The loose cable runs along the master bedroom floor and into the room next to the master bedroom...

Needless to say I wanted to do this right by running the cable through the wall cavity and having proper CATV outlets so that I could patch the existing holes before I painted. I also wanted to get the CATV run from a real main distribution point, just like the new phone lines.

So up in the attic I go to find a way to chase the cable down to the basement. I found the plumbing stack that runs from the attic through the master bathroom and through the kitchen on the way to the basement. However, the stack is hidden behind some plywood in the back corner of a pantry cabinet in the kitchen. It's nothing a little sledge hammer won't cure. ;-)

As I'm demolishing, my father-in-law calls. He asks She Who Must Be Obeyed, "What's all that noise? I thought you were painting the master bedroom?"

She nonchalantly replies, "We are. And to do it we need to tear some stuff out of that pantry in the kitchen."

He mumbles acknowledgment, but knows better than to ask for clarification...

So I ran the cable down the chase and fished a cable down into the wall in the sitting room. I hooked everything up and...

Static.

I should have known that we'd get interference from the power feed to the electrical sub-panel in the attic. You can't run high and low voltage close together and parallel to each other.

After a little head scratching, I remembered that we chased PEX up from the basement for the laundry room. I re-cut some of those holes, chased the CATV up through those walls, hooked everything up, and...

STATIC!

More head scratching and a little figuring. Oh yeah, this run is on the long side. So off to the home center to get a signal amplifier.

Works like a charm.

And then I could fill the old holes and paint the master bedroom.