New Cam for the Old House, Chose the Spot, Nailed it!

[MrSurly]

Tested out the entrance area with the 5442tze, decided on a final location. I’ll mount that cam but after some time I may swap a fixed focal length in its place after enough trial. The location selected should be final. How to get wire there was a head scratcher. Decided to access the crawl space by drilling near the doorsill then pulled a piece of 105 siding off of this seventy-year-old house.
Drilling the studs, I ran cat cable to the window trim area, secreted the connections there and buttoned it up.

All is good except the cam isn’t talking. Yep. You know it. Pulled it apart, and Oopsie!



Severed the green pair and perfectly shorted the the brown (video) pair. . Oh, well! Repaired that little booboo then worked on the back of the house area next. I had run a conduit to the SW corner of the yard and needed to pull in some UTP; I finally found a tiny bit of use for the old DTV dish, which is coming down soon. (I cut the cord a long time back)



Then back to the closet where in running the V7 switch. Trying several things to tidy up the mess.
I’ll be adding three more cables so I left some room for them when slotting the cover plate.

 

[The_Penguin]

Fun times. Hate when that happens.
By the way, I'd replace this cable, and not bend it that tightly.

 

[samplenhold]

This is a good post. It will help others to understand how to solve cam cable install plans and issues like the cut cable.

I also agree with @The_Penguin on replacing that cable. Ethernet cables need gentle bends.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I like your solution for the cover plate under the switch. Great idea!

 

[MrSurly]

Fun times. Hate when that happens.
By the way, I'd replace this cable, and not bend it that tightly.

Fair point. i'll likely just make up a custom length cable for this.

 

[MrSurly]

I like your solution for the cover plate under the switch. Great idea!

Thanks! i will accept these kudos and will NOT show you the prior failed attempts and ruined cover plates with all the holes and gorilla glue and plastic carnage...

 

[looney2ns]

Wow, 70 yr old house and it actually has wall insulation!

 

[MrSurly]

Wow, 70 yr old house and it actually has wall insulation!

Good catch! I put that there myself, actually, during a prior interior redo. Over the years I have re-worked almost all of the exterior wall, either by removing sheetrock OR exterior siding and at every turn, new electrical, vapor barrier and insulation was installed. On the exterior re-skins, Tyvek air barrier as well. When this house was built in 1950 it was (as was common in the area in budget homes) totally UNinsulated, heated with freestanding gas heaters and cooled via an attic fan. I have ONE not-yet-well-insulated room left that I am about to rip all the drywall out of and redo, hopefully before Christmas.

 

[looney2ns]

My daughter's first house was built in the early 40's. After she took ownership, I got in the attic to inspect the insulation, knew it wasn't much before she bought.
What I found, was wool insulation with paper backing that had completely disintegrated. I did find one piece of the paper that had "Worlds Finest 1.5" wool insulation".
New fiberglass 12" batts made a world of difference.
Heck, most house's in this area didn't have any insulation in them when built until the late 60's.

 

[nknetzer]

Good job on finding the problem @MrSurly , i had a squirrel make a home in my soffit and chewed into one of my cables, it was fun evicting the rodent.
I'm in the process of tearing out sheet rock and putting in R13 batts myself (1949 house). Ive finished one room so far and taking a IR thermometer to the west facing walls around 4pm, there's almost a 10 degree difference in the interior walls of the finished room vs. the unfinished room. Blows my mind how energy inefficient it is, but then again, the house was built before central heating and cooling. Like you @looney2ns when i moved in, there was the loose fill yellow fiberglass in the attic, only about 3 inches of it. I dont know how people that lived there before me afforded their power bills.

 

[looney2ns]

Good job on finding the problem @MrSurly , i had a squirrel make a home in my soffit and chewed into one of my cables, it was fun evicting the rodent.
I'm in the process of tearing out sheet rock and putting in R13 batts myself (1949 house). Ive finished one room so far and taking a IR thermometer to the west facing walls around 4pm, there's almost a 10 degree difference in the interior walls of the finished room vs. the unfinished room. Blows my mind how energy inefficient it is, but then again, the house was built before central heating and cooling. Like you @looney2ns when i moved in, there was the loose fill yellow fiberglass in the attic, only about 3 inches of it. I dont know how people that lived there before me afforded their power bills.

Power was MUCH cheaper at the time those houses were built. Be sure to pay special attention to eliminating air infiltration.

 

[MrSurly]

This is a good post. It will help others to understand how to solve cam cable install plans and issues like the cut cable.

Thanks, I wasn't real sure if there was much interest in the nuts-and-bolts part of old house installs. I am making an effort at concealing wiring as much as is practical. i have a couple of pics that I will add (from working on the NE corner) that are along the same lines and involve the attic,outside trim, four cables and cameras and even underground conduit all in one place.

 

[samplenhold]

I wasn't real sure if there was much interest in the nuts-and-bolts part of old house installs

I really think this is a much underutilized posting area of this forum. We get so many folks saying things like "I need recommendations for WIFI cams because it is impossible to run wires..." and a post like this could really help folks rethink that issue.

This is a great post. Keep it up.

 

[MrSurly]

Having a bit of trouble editing this... standby

Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll post below with some pics of the NE corner.
This house is on piers except for the North end which has a slab, so, no space underneath. All wiring to that area has to run thru the attic.
At the NE corner I’m placing two cams, plus another for the parking area, plus I ran conduit from that corner to the NE corner of the lot for another cam in the yard. I now need to run four more cat cables through the attic, through the gable, find a place to route them unseen to the soffit corner, to the parking area and another to the conduit. The pics explain the idea and the execution. Inside the attic (131*) I had no plan to waste any time so I needed the absolutely simplest , most accessible spot to run the cables quickly so I went for this location next to the gable vent.
The gable siding boards run fairly tightly near the roof decking. I used a circular saw set at 1" depth to trim the ends of the siding boards so that a channel was created, allowing cables to run along the rafter, shy of the siding surface and the trim board will easily hide the cables to the corner. A long time back, I had purchased a weird stapler (and staples) because the whole mess was on clearance for a stupid amount (think it was about eight bux). I wasn't certain I would get much use out of these odd insulated staples, but NOW it has proven useful!
Once at the corner, I separated the UTP cable to go down to the conduit, a cable going South to the (other side of the) parking area, plus two cables for local cams at the corner.
I didn't care to have the conduit up on the front wall, so i stubbed the conduit down low, snuck the wire out of it and placed it behind the corner trim boards up to the soffit area. (more pics coming)
I’ll catch grief for the sharp bend <gasp> but this is how I inelegantly transitioned from conduit to the trim board coverup.
Some of this is still temporary as I need to pull more siding off.