Interior wiring for a 1963 home.... (1 Viewer)

[gregnash]

The wife has finally given me the ok to go ahead and wire most of our home for data. With that being said, I have acquired most of the wiring that I need and am getting ready to figure things out.

My question is, does anyone know if there was a standard "thickness" to floors in the 60s? there is a small crawl space underneath the house and to my surprise it looks like the floor is actually made of 2x4 instead of the occasional joist with plywood over it to create the solid floor.

I am planning on mounting a low voltage single gang unit within the drywall since these units will only be holding a maximum of three (3) RJ45 CAT6 network cables and a coaxial television cable (Charter). In the past when we first had that house wired for cable TV/internet the technicians told us they were not allowed to do things through the wall unless it was already there so the guys just came out about 3" from the wall and then drilled a hole straight through the carpeting and floor. We know since our house is a 60s era house that there is RED OAK flooring below the carpet which is part of the reason why I do not want to just drill more holes in the floor and actually make things look nice and well mounted in the wall.

Like I said when I went under the house I found that the flooring seemed to be all 2x4 or 2x6 (can post a pic tomorrow when there is better light) which seemed odd to me. The plan is to use the current mounting locations for either electrical wire (current wall plugs) or where the cable line was drilled through the floor to determine where I will mount the single gang on the wall.

Hopefully this all makes sense, just looking for a little guidance from some of the contractors out there how to do this properly without pissing the boss off!!.

 

[PAToyota]

If you know you have a hardwood floor, it’s possible that there is a plank subfloor below that - instead of a plywood subfloor. I somewhat doubt that there is a 2x subfloor.

 

[half k cruiser]

It is common in older houses to have your joists covered by diagonal sub flooring. Its not 2x4, closer to 1/2'' by 4. My house was built in 1950 and that's how it is setup. I actually have an area in the laundry room that requires a plaster repair where you can see a cross section of the sub flooring.

 

[gregnash]

Ah ok... well I received all my wiring stuff and ended up grabbing a 54" installers flex bit to allow me to drill through the flooring easier. Last night I picked my installation area in the wall in the office and cut the hole. That was a BIG step for me as I am anal retentive and like to know everything I can before moving forward and this was one of those things I just wouldn't be able to until I could see below. Since I don't get off until late and it is normally dark out I am doing this in steps until I have the day off on Friday. Tonight I will drill through the flooring with the flex bit in the one section to see exactly how far I am drilling through. Will attempt to remember to take the camera with me and take plenty of pics.

Lots of this stuff is foreign to me so I try to understand as much as I can before diving in. @half k cruiser so what you are saying is there is basically an "underlayment" type layer of this 1/2" x 4" flooring then the standard subfloor then my Red/White Oak plank (then carpeting over that)? If so, then at max I am looking at drilling through probably 3" or so of material.

 

[half k cruiser]

@gregnash that 1/2"x4" diagonally laid board is the sub flooring. Plywood was not mainstream when your house was built like it is now. I bet if you look in your attic you have 2x4 or 2x6 decking for your roof. Anyhow, back on topic, you will be drilling through 3/4'' oak, 1/2'' underlayment for a total of just over an inch in material. Assuming of course you miss your floor joist, which I would recommend.

 

[gregnash]

Sweet... that is the plan with the prep and investigation is to ensure that I am not drilling through a joist. LOL

 

[half k cruiser]

Sweet... that is the plan with the prep and investigation is to ensure that I am not drilling through a joist. LOL

Just peak in your crawlspace and measure your on center distance, probably 12'', you can then measure away from your walls and be pretty spot on as to where the joists are.

 

[gregnash]

Well while I wasn't drilling through a joist necessarily I was drilling through the wall fittings and whatnot... Total depth of what I was drilling I measured at about 6"+ with the lower 2x4 that frames the bottom of the walls. Since I was doing all this on my own, that was lots of fun getting in and out of the crawl space. Of course the entrance is at the back of the house and everything that I pretty much needed to do was either in the middle or front of the house. So climbing under AC ducting, water lines, sewer lines, etc. was TONS of fun..

Almost completely done now though. I just have to drill for the bedroom wall plate (probably the easiest one) and then I will be done. Running the wire was an interesting feat as measuring for adequate amounts of line was a slight worry of mine but ended up being real easy.

Here are a few from last night, will take some more tonight. This exercise definitely made the ankle and leg sore today but somewhat anticipated that and was sure to take plenty of advil last night and supplement with a few adult beverages...

Underside of floors.... And I think you are right @half k cruiser as there were a few spots that I could see between the planks and they looked to be maybe 1/2" or so thick.
Untitled by Greg Fisicaro, on Flickr

Office.... which is main patch panel at this point... 3 dedicated lines with a fourth pulled for possible expansion in the future.
Untitled by Greg Fisicaro, on Flickr
Untitled by Greg Fisicaro, on Flickr

Reward once lines were pulled and strung through to living room... Hard to remember to take pics along the way.
Untitled by Greg Fisicaro, on Flickr

 

[half k cruiser]

I now see what you were talking about. I thought you were just drilling down through your floor in a random spot to run some wires. I didn't realize you were coming down through the plate like that.

 

[gregnash]

LOL... yup!
Got everything buttoned up on Friday. Finished all rooms and have one extra line taped inside the wall that I can run somewhere if I absolutely need it. Only ran into one issue where I had not properly tested on patch cable and so I was not getting a network connection. Found that I had not crimped the end properly and thus the connectors were not hitting the wire. Cut the end off and put a new head on and all was good.

Actually ended up testing the connection with my Xbox One and was downloading patches at 50+mbps... used the Xbox IE app and went to speedtest.net and pulled 65mbps which is max speed for my line and same thing I get for my wired iMac that is 2' away. So I am happy with this endeavor!!.

Only thing I didn't do was re run the cable coax as the holes in the floor are not large enough to get the ends through. Was going to purchase the tools to terminate properly and then rerun everything to the new wall plates/keystone jacks but decided against it. I will definitely do the livingroom at some point but not at this moment.

 

[half k cruiser]

@gregnash ok, while I know a fair amount about construction, I'm pretty dark ages on my tech. Is a physical cable faster than wifi ? I just assumed everything was Bluetooth and wifi now days.

 

[gregnash]

@half k cruiser Absolutely... Dedicated hardlines will always be faster than a wireless connection. One thing to remember with wireless is that the signal/frequency you are connecting at is NEVER dedicated to that one device. Add in to that the fact that walls, piping, other electrical devices, etc. all play havoc with a wireless signal and you get small amounts of signal degradation over time and distance. You have to remember that this is essentially a radio wave, so part of the wave get blocked when going through ANY solid object. While wireless suits most peoples uses (email, web searching, etc.) wireless is just fine, even for the light gamer or video streaming it is fine as long as the signal strength at the device is decent.

However, in my older house that has fairly dense walls and floors and lots of old wiring that I am sure puts off decent interference I was starting to see issues. Plus add to this that our wireless items were; 2 iphones, 2 ipads, 2 appletv's, 2 TiVo's, 1 smart TV, 1 smart Blu-Ray player, one iMac and one laptop that could all be connecting at the same time to do downloads, updates, stream, etc. you start to see signal degradation. And really I started noticing this when I had broken my leg and was laid up on the couch for a couple weeks after surgery. I normally don't watch a lot of TV and only play video games when it is too cold out to do much of anything (I am not a skier) so spending a couple months stuck to the couch because of this made me realize that we had some issues in the house. On top of that, a networking friend told me once that "anything that is station should ALWAYS be wired", meaning if it doesn't move locations often then you really should have a dedicated hardline for those items.

So for me this was very apparent when I was on the couch and doing a download for one of my games and saw that my download rate was in the 20-30mbps range (which isn't bad but isn't great either). Average speed for me on any connection was really about 25mbps if the only item using the wireless at that time was the one item, more items you add the more the bandwidth/speed went down. The fact that I was able to easily double that speed on now DEDICATED connections has been an immense improvement. Normally if the wife and I tried to watch a video at the same time (me in the front room and her in the bedroom) or I was playing online on the Xbox and she wanted to watch a movie, at some point the movie would either pause or buffer due to both being so demanding on the wireless. Now we can both do whatever we want and not worry about it doing anything. Actually the other night I started a video download and then switched over to play the xbox AND she started streaming a movie all at the same time and never had a hiccup!

 

[Music Man]

They now make the connectors that you shove the wire completely through the connector before you crimp it.
it makes it a lot easier than trying to see through the plastic if the color is correct and that it is shoved in far enough. Cost a little more but well worth it if you don't do it often.

https://www.amazon.com/Platinum-Too...r=8-9&keywords=Platinum+Tools+rj45+connectors

 

[gregnash]

yeah those are shielded and I did see similar for a non-shielded environment. However, one crimp out of the dozens I made wasn't bad for a complete newbie.

Also found these tool-less RG-6/Quad (cable coaxial) compression ends that I may give a try instead of purchasing the compression tool and everything. Ideal RG6 TLC (Tool-Less Compression) F-Connector (4-Pack)-85-069 - The Home Depot Seem pretty simple and the concept looks sound, all I need is the stripping/cutting tool which is all of about $5 from Amazon or Monoprice. But that will be for another time when I am bored and want something to do around the house.

 

[thatcabledude]

Nice job! If you are going to buy one of the two tools, I would recommend the crimper and a few proper connectors. You can easily prep the cable with a pocket knife. Just don't score the center conductor.

 

[gregnash]

Nice job! If you are going to buy one of the two tools, I would recommend the crimper and a few proper connectors. You can easily prep the cable with a pocket knife. Just don't score the center conductor.

I was looking at actually just purchasing those press-on toolless connectors and getting the cutter/stripper/prep tool since it is considerably cheaper than even a cheap crimping tool. Haven't gotten that far yet but sure that I will, hate that the living room has a cable running along the wall and halfway around but doing that involves moving some heavy furniture that I just replaced.