WARNING: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU DO TO YOUR OWN HOUSE WHICH INCLUDES BURNING DOWN YOUR HOUSE FROM SCREWING WITH ELECTRICAL! THIS POST IS SIMPLY WHAT I DID!
Know what’s cool? Having cat6 available in every room.
Know what’s hard? Putting cat6 in a 100+ year old house.
With that said let’s get started!
Things I used:
- A wire snake
- A drill
- Utility knife
- A grinder / small saw (But oh god not a sawsall)
- A 1/8″(ish) bit, 1/4″ bit and a 1″ bit
- As many “Old Work” 1 gang electrical boxes as you want outlets
- A “data” or “wall jack” plate to go over the boxes
- Cat6 “keystone” jacks (Those things that go into the wall plates)
- Punchdown tool
- A cat6 patch panel
- A network rack of some sort (Wall mount or otherwise)
- Ideally some sort of rack mount switch
- Some sort of router (Again ideally rack mount + bonus points for pfSense boxes)
- 3/4″ ENT or “Smurf” tubing. (Measure the distance between the furthest outlet and the end point and then times by the number of outlets)
- Many feet of cat6 wire. (Measure the distance between the furthest outlet, times by the number of total runs for the house, then add 50 feet for good measure)
- Joint compound (For when you mess up)
- Paint that matches the room (Again, for when you mess up)
- A 3′ wire aka a coat hanger straightened out
- (Optional) Coax cable / other wires if you like to have variety
- (Optional) A $30ish borescope with a light from amazon (It’s super worth it!)
- A super old “balloon framed” house
- Shitloads of time and patience
Ok, so I lied about putting wires in a 100+ year old house being hard. Or at least hard compared to other newer houses. Apparently some super old homes (aka 1900’s) were built using a framing method called “balloon framing”. What that means is that there’s no separating between floors. Neat right? I mean except for the fire hazard part. Anyways, that makes the job that much easier since any wires on the 2nd floor have a clear path all the way down to the basement (where the network rack is located).
Alright enough with the history lesson, lets get started!
First off, figure out where you want these new outlets. I tried putting mine roughly 16″+ away from an outlet. This means they’re close enough to where something will potentially be plugged in but far away enough that they’ll be in a different stud bay from anything electrical. Also put them the same height off the floor as any electrical boxes that what they don’t look off. Once everything was figured out, leveled, and the areas marked off in pencil I moved on to the next step… Putting holes in walls.
Next take a drill and very small bit and put a tiny hole in the center of your marked off outlet location. Did it go through easily? Yes? Good, we didn’t hit a stud. Now take that 1/4″ bit and make the hole bigger. Finally with a bigger hole take the borescope and look around and confirm that there’s no wires or anything in there. Oh, did I mention that my walls didn’t have any insulation so this was super easy? No? Well, I’m saying it now. When you know everything is clear, take that wire and check the distance to the nearest studs and mark them on the wall in pencil. We’ll use this for later.
Hokay, with everything marked off time for the fun part. Since this is a 100+ year old house that means these walls are horsehair plaster and lathe. That means these walls are harder to cut than a line at Disneyland. First take a utility knife and cut around the edges of your marked outlet hole to take the plaster out. Now that you can see the lathe, turn the edges into swiss cheese with that 1/4″ bit and be sure to not press too hard! The last thing you want to do is pull that lathe board away from the plaster walls. Once the board sides are swiss cheese, take a small saw and connect the holes (carefully) to take the boards out. Lastly take the box, confirm the fit, and we’re done with this part.
Off to the basement with you! Well, in a moment. Measure from an exterior wall to those stud bay markers you made earlier and take note of these. Now from the basement, measure off from the basement wall and mark off these 2 spots. That’s where the stud bay of our new outlet is. Now take your drill bits and drill about 1″ down from the sill plate and up at a 45 degree angle. This way we can get inside the wall without poking out somewhere weird. Keep going up in drill bits until the hole is 1″ wide.
Hopefully you hit the mark and we’re off to the next step. Take your ENT tubing and just shove the bastard right up and into that hole. It should go up nicely since it’s rigid yet flexible, if not then use the snake between the basement hole and the new outlet hole. Coolio, now the ENT tubing is in place. This makes it super easy in the future to run updated cables. I mean sure, you didn’t need the tubing but you also don’t need to make future cabling harder either. Pull your ENT tubing to your basement endpoint and leave about 6″ sticking out of the outlet hole.
Cool, now the fun part! Run your wires down the ent tubing. You may be able to just force it down depending on how many bends are in the tubes and how long the run is. If it isn’t going then just use the wire snake. Once all the cat6 is run you get to do the ever fun and tedious task of punching down the wires. Be sure to run the wires through the box by the way before punching them down! I used T568B but it really doesn’t matter as long as you use the same on both ends of the wire. Punch down the keystone jacks on the outlet end and the patch panel at the other. Slap those jacks into a face plate, stuff it all into the box, and test away!
Now that everything is wired (Easy I know right?) you can setup your network equipment like the modem, router, and switch. With all that setup and confirmed working you’re off to the races!