unified house media port

amakarevic

currently, my house has a total mess of media cables coming to it from the back alley, for phone and cable. the phone cable runs to the top of the house than down where the old Bell Atlantic box is, then from the box loose cable into the house. Cable is all loose wire from the alley pole into the house.

what i would like to do is install something like a large electrical box up near the top of the house wall facing the alley to which i would like to have them (Verizon and Comcast) rerun the cables from the alley pole. from there, i want to have electrical conduit run into the basement from which point can be just loose cable. the house is 2 units, upstairs main unit and downstairs a small 1BR apartment.

the reason i want to do this is to eliminate ANY LOOSE CABLE dangling around the house, the sight of which nauseates me. i want to make it clean coming in at one point and then just having conduit pipe from there on. so i was thinking 2 conduit pipes, one for the main unit, one for downstairs, to make it nice and separated.

QUESTIONS:

1. is this, for some reason, a bad idea?

2. any issues with having a phone and RG6 cable run in the same conduit?

3. which kind of box should i use? regular 6x6x4 plastic electrical conduit box or some special media box?

4. also, do you think Comcast/Verizon might give me a hard time about running wire into my box

thanks

gregzoll

You can not change the outside cables, but you can change how they run inside the house. Utilities tend to frown in sharing a box with other, especially communications. I placed both my telephone (att uverse) and catv (comcast, but dead) next to each other, below the meter can. That way, I could ground both to the ground rod as they should be, vs. to the outside of the meter can or water pipe inside.

If you can post some pictures, it would be easier to give suggestions. As for the inside, how many tv's, how many computers do you connect via Internet, and are they connected via wifi or ethernet. If you do a search on the networking forum, I posted a picture of my network rack. I can add to this post a picture of how my outside looks.

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gregzoll

Back of the house



Pole shot on the other side of the yard

That is about as simple as it can get for doing it correctly. Pretty much everyone on that block for Comcast is dead, due to switching to ATT, so it was easier for them to leave the drops connected both to the block & houses, but there are filters in place. Check with your utility first before moving your drop from one spot to another.

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ddawg16

QUESTIONS:

1. is this, for some reason, a bad idea? Yes

2. any issues with having a phone and RG6 cable run in the same conduit? No...you can run all the low voltage stuff you want...

3. which kind of box should i use? regular 6x6x4 plastic electrical conduit box or some special media box? Moot issue....see Greg response

4. also, do you think Comcast/Verizon might give me a hard time about running wire into my box Only if it is 'after' their box. See Greg's response

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Billy_Bob

Those boxes on the wall are "protectors" (lightning) and are grounded. Lightning could follow those wires to the protectors and then through the ground wires to ground.

They prefer their wires and protectors be on the outside walls. If this was inside, lightning might travel to the inside of your house!

With that said, You could probably dig a trench to the pole, then have them run their wires in the trench to the protectors.

You would need to call and ask them about this though.

gregzoll

Billy Bob, unlike you, me & the OP have no choice but to have aerial service for utilities. For me, the Sewer line runs within four feet of the alley base that trash trucks, and the occasional consumer vehicle travels on. I do not mind aerial service, since I can keep an eye on the lines, in case any damage happens to them. And, I can rest assure that they are properly grounded as they should on mine, to the ground rod.

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jimmy21

You can run cables from the dmark boxes into a media panel in your house.

something like this.
http://www.amazon.com/Leviton-47602-.../dp/B0014ZPFI2


This is what i did in my house. I ran 2 cat5's from the phone companies dmark to the media panel and 2 rg6 cables from the cable companies dmark box to the media panel. Then from the media panel i ran to all the different places in my house

Don't know if thats quite what your asking though