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Modernizing old house network wiring - Part 8 - Removing Some Ugly Outdoor Cabling

After several days of work, I have Ethernet lines in many areas of the house and I understand all of my Cable TV wiring.  All of it is "dark" (not hooked up to anything at either end):

Here is the Master List of Dark Cables:
  • Bedroom 1: Ethernet to the attic, and Cable TV (shorted) to the basement
  • Bedroom 2: Cable TV, strung outside the building to the basement telecom panel
  • Bedroom 3: Ethernet to the attic, and Cable TV, strung outside the building to the basement telecom panel
  • Den: Three Ethernet and Cable TV runs to the basement telecom panel.
  • Kitchen: One Ethernet (broken) and Cable TV to the basement telecom panel
  • Living Room: Cable TV to the basement telecom panel
  • Basement (finished part): Ethernet and Cable TV to the basement telecom panel
  • Other: One Ethernet from attic to basement telecom panel
That's a lot of cable.

But wait!  There is lots more cable near the basement telecom panel:
  • There is a bunch of very old and/or hacked telephone wiring that once ran to some rooms
  • There is a bunch of new and ancient telephone wiring that comes in from the outside.
  • There is some (maybe) alarm system wiring
I'll get to that stuff later.  Because today is when I get rid of stuff I understand, but I know I don't want.

Bye bye, sloppy cable

Looking closely at my Master List, there is a lot of Cable TV wiring.  The worst part is the three Cable TV runs on the outside of the building, amounting to roughly 100 feet of Coax cable stapled up.  I'm going to remove these three ugly outdoor coax cable runs.

That means I'm going to lose my Cable TV capabilities in the Living Room and in two of the three bedrooms.  That's OK, if I need Cable in those rooms in the future, I'll reinstall the cable from the attic above or the basement below.  But that's very unlikely: Cable TV wiring is definitely on its way out.

Analysis

There have been a few units of work performed on the side of the house.
  1. An AC unit, along with its plumbing and wiring, circa 1998
  2. Another AC unit, along with its plumbing and wiring, circa 2001
  3. The telephone line from the street, circa 1940, which has been abandoned
  4. A more modern working telephone line from the street, circa 1975
  5. A 1990's vintage network interface box, from the telephone company
  6. A 4-pair line leading to the network interface box, but abandoned.  Circa 1990's.
  7. A Cat5e cable, for the building phones, using a single pair and sloppily run.
  8. A Cable TV company feed, likely installed around 1990.
  9. Three cable TV cables leading to various rooms, likely installed around 2001.
  10. One cable TV cable that goes nowhere
  11. One motion detection security lamp, sloppily installed and non-functional, circa 2010.
That's at least eleven units of work, not including any repairs or modifications.   It likely looked great at one time, but over the years it has gotten ugly, to the point where now it's just an unholy mess.

Eventually I'll move the AC unit away, but the goal now is removing the abandoned and the ugly.

First Stop: Telephone.

This was easy.  I opened the Network Interface Box and looked in.  The box is very broken, and when I opened it it was clear that it lost the plastic between "company" and "customer" sides.  Whatever.

There were two cables going into the "customer" side of the box - a Cat5e cable and a 2-pair POTS cable.  The 2-pair cable was disconnected, so I pulled it back to the wall of the building and snipped it off, leaving a driplet in place until I could properly dress the hole I'd be leaving behind.

The Cat5e cable was still connected to one line.  I removed the Cat5e from the box, and then closed the box up.  From there, I drew the cable back into the house.  I'll need to fill the hole that's remaining.

There is one more telephone line left - the line from the 1940.  It strings around the building a bit, so  I'll need to get that when I move to working on a ladder.

Second Stop: Cable TV.

Happily, there were some F-connectors on the outside of the building, so I just unscrewed them, clipped off the cable, and then stuffed the old cables inside the building.  I also pulled out the "cable to nowhere".

I wasn't prepared to get up on a ladder today, so that's all I did on the outside of the building.

Next time

Next time I'll pull off everything else that should go.  But this requires work on a ladder, so I'll need to be more prepared.

The effort will include the following:

1. Remove 1940's telephone line
2. Remove remaining old Cable TV
3. Remove old security light
4. Remove any unused hangers
5. Fill holes as appropriate







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