Working too hard

[Mrwurm]

Well, my high speed internet connection is going to be installed this friday (8/23/02). I tend to be a bit picky about how things are done so I ran the cables (two) myself. Well, sort of. I had about fifty feet of plastic electrical conduit (1 in ID) so I ran it through the wall, in the attic, over the stairs, out the wall, etc. This cost me nothing but time (and sweat) and now the new cables can be easily snaked to the desired location. Am I crazy /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif Standard installation is included with (and required) for the DirecWay satellite system, but I am certain that no installer would have gone to the trouble of getting the wires to where I wanted them. The fine print reads: "additional cost for more than one wall penetration".

So, the point to all this is; Would anyone else actually go to all this trouble just to make a cable installation look professional, or is it just me?

((when my driveway was installed (concrete), I planned to spend the day watching and enjoying the work. I ended up straightening their forms and worked harder than anyone on the crew. Also did some of the floating and troweling when the crew could'nt keep up.))

 

[dmccarty]

MRwurm,

No you did the right thing. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif And you are not ****
ethier. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

My wife decided to get RoadRunner. Pretty much without
talking to me. I get home one Saturday after 12 hours +
working on our land, walk into the study and see black cable
hanging from a wall plate NEAR the CIELING. WHAT the ^%&*
is that! I went bonkers. The lazy good for nothgin piece
of ^&*( installer did not want to fish the cable down the
wall cavity so he installed the plate a few inches lower then
the ceiling. Looked like s...t. I could not believe the wifey
let the idiot do this.

Years ago I had run cable from where it comes into the house
over the cathedral ceiling and into the bedroom side of the
house. I put in a splitter to give the study cable at some
point. All the lazy good for nothing bum had to do was twist
on to the splitter and run down the wall cavity. But he
could not be concerned with doing the that kind of job. The
cable sent somebody else out to put the wall plate where it
should have gone but their FIX to the wall plate near the
ceiling was to just put the flat wall plate cover in place.

Not Happy. Next time we paint we will just patch the hole.

You did the right thing.

Later,
Dan McCarty

 

[looch]

I actually did this before I even had high speed (still don't). I ran a pair of cables to five locations in my house - one phone and one LAN.

If you're happy with the job you did, that's what matters.

 

[MikePA]

I've run all my wires and cables. When we had a phone installed in our master bedroom I ran the wire from the attic and down the inside of the wall behind our bed, no mean feat in a post and beam house (built at the turn of the century). I didn't cut through the plaster and lath because I wasn't sure what kind of box they were going to use. As it turned out, they used a round box. They didn't even have a hole saw, they were going to use a small hand saw...NOT! That would have shaken the keys off the back of the plaster. I had the right sized hole saw and drilled a hole. The guy popped the round box in and installed the phone line, then he asked me if he could buy the hole saw from me.

While I don't mean to defend these installers, particularly the phone guys, some of them might be being paid a fixed cost, so they are going to do the job the quickest way unless directed otherwise. I don't think this is right and I wouldn't do it, but many do.

 

[TAB]

Jerry you did the right thing. You have it the way you want it and that is worth the work. Professional installation now often means only that they are getting paid. You will be happier in the long run, unless you screwed something up.

 

[Mrwurm]

"unless you screwed something up"

HEY now you're start'n to sound like my wife /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif

/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[MDNick]

Mrwurm,

No you are not being ****. Check out this <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=off&Number=73587&Search=true&Forum=All_Forums&Words=dishnetwork&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=1&Limit=50&Old=allposts&Main=72937>link</A> to see the quality job that the dishnetwork guys tried to do to me. Sorry it is so rough. I reread that myself and went wow, I was mad. It is your house, and you are entitled to have it look perfect. These experiences confirm to me even more that free professional installation is a rip off and will quite likely be extremely poor quality from an aesthetics stand point. It might function just fine, but there is more to a quality professional job than 'It works'.

 

[DocHeb]

You should have seen me crawling through the attic fishing wire back down the walls, while the installer was getting set up. He wanted to staple it ~90 feet around the house up to the second story office. What a joke. If I would have known, I would have gotten the cable (RJ6 Quad Shield) ahead of time and run it from the office down to the outside cable box - maybe I could have done it at a time when the attic wasn't ~130 degrees /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif. Relax, and bask in the personal satisfaction knowing it was done right, despite the opposition forces to the contrary! You are not alone.

 

[Alan L.]

I have direct TV. If I go with Direct Way I realize they need to replace my dish with a dual dish for both TV and internet. right now I have a dual LNB dish. I also have an outside TV antenna. For each receiver, the satellite and TV signal is combined into to one coax using a diplexer. Inside the house, at each receiver, the single coax is then split between satellite and antenna signal with another diplexer.

Will the data come on the same cable, or is it separate? It would be nice if they didn't have to run another cable. The wall where I need it is external with insulation and would be hard to get a cable down there.

 

[DVerbarg]

<font color=blue>Will the data come on the same cable, or is it separate? It would be nice if they didn't have to run another cable.</font color=blue>

Starband (and I assume DirecWay is the same) has its own coax cable, actually two coax cables. One for receiving and the other for transmision. Its ugly, a pain in the rear to work with and they don't want any connectors in the middle of the run, no "tees".