So, here I am stuck up in my attic. Drunk on Vodka and Monster Energy drink. Well, not stuck per se, but I’m here for a while. So I’m gonna blog about my experience installing ethernet, with no prior experience. I reserve the right the edit this as we go along. Here we go…
Step one, drill a port hole through the ceiling for all ethernet cables to go up through the attic and down into the closet to the switch and modem.
Hello my long lost brother! I have fought the same battle a couple weeks ago and although the fight was bloody I emerged victorious!
One of these holes is where I broke off a $45 flexible drill bit, forever stuck in 7" of wood that took me 5 attempts to properly get through.
Do not give up until your devices are wired in! All of my desktops are now wired together and it’s great. The wife barely notices all the holes in the wall. The trick is to cover them with drapes and furniture.
We had to go through a 4"×4" wall cap to get to the interior wall, so I know your pain. No broken bits though. Gotta clear the chips every once and a while.
Next, we ran one wire to get the length of the run from the living room to the network closet. We are running 4 wires to the living room, so it was easier to make one length, and match the other 3 cables.
Routing the cables.
After we got the length of the run from the living room (~52 feet), we ran out the other 3 cables to match out in the street.
Extra long tape measures help to establish how long your first cable was, and how long the other cables need to be to match. This is only helpful if you are making multiple runs to a single outlet.
Once we had our four cables measured, we bundled them up with electric tape to make it easier to feed through the wall.
Up the wall, and down through our custom PVC pipe that will end up sticking up perpendicular to the ceiling, and up through the insulation in the attic. But for now, we will lay it flat until all the cables are run through it. Like so.
And down to the temporary, ghetto network setup in the closet. Coax and ethernet wil be fed to the closet.
Definitely no fun running cables in a loft. I’ve recently run cabling for 4 downlights in my “VR” room so I could remove the centre light whcih I kept hitting. Also ran the two power cables for the tracking base stations (Vive). Then installed a 1st floor switch connected to the router and gaming PC. Then a ground floor PoE switch connection up to the 1st floor switch. Finally 3 PoE security cameras from around the house back to the ground floor PoE switch (plus another PC, NAS & Smart TV).
I still prefer LAN where possible and leave the wireless for my phone mostly.
Lol 
Well that ended up fairly well for a job that started with 'I’m drinking in the attic and I think I’m going to run cable". Even have a conduit! Good work. I ended up running mine to underneath some stairs. My coax and phone lines come into my basement in a hole cut in the ceiling in the middle of a room so i’m relocating all my data connections to one central place under the stairs with some proper shelves.
Oh, we’re not done yet! @Shambles
We just ran 2 cables to my bedroom, and 2 to my brother’s bedroom. So with the 4 we ran to the living room, it will be 8 runs total. We canceled the guest bedroom run.
Featuring my brother’s hand
Moar cables…
Please xplain what the hell is happening here.
Adding to that, here is a helpful diagram for anyone reading this that is wondering what cable goes where.
Probably the last post for this thread from me.
If anyone has any questions about our method of running cables, or anything else, feel free to ask! I think we came up with a pretty good solution. If any mod sees this thread, DO NOT CLOSE IT. Thanks.
Top of the PVC pipe in the attic. All cables, including the coax, run through here. I made it to where the cables wouldn’t hang directly on the pipe, because the only thing holding the pipe up is the drywall. Not ideal, but it’s the best we came up with. The pipe had to be long enough so that insulation could be sprayed and not have insulation or dust get through the pipe.
End result in the closet.
