Seriously, you want to run wires through your car, you find a grommet in the floor or the firewall, snake the wires under the carpet, good to go, maybe have to take out some pieces of interior to get to it, or just tuck it away. Why the crap can't they build homes the same way? :).
My mom is moving and gave us her little kitchen TV. We have no outlet for cable in the kitchen, but I know I have an extra port on the 8-port cable splitter, so start to think about how to make this a possibility to run cable from the basement to the kitchen. Shouldn't be too hard, but drilling a hole through the ceiling of the basement/floor of the kitchen makes me nervous. I don't even have to go through more than one floor/wall and I'm still nervous about it :). I do have to do some drilling into the kitchen cabinets to get it to happen though. We'll see how that goes.

They make a special drill bit for what you need to do. It is about 4 ft long and is bendable to get it down the wall. The bits even have a hole on the end to tie the wires to. Drill the hole tie the wire on and pull the bit back out and the wires come with it. May or may not make it easier.

You could buy these bits in Home Depot. They are made by WWW.Greenlee.Com. http://www.mygreenlee.com/Products/main.shtml?p_search=bits&greenlee_category_id=100&adodb_next_page=2&adodb_next_page=3&adodb_next_page=4

Matt, I used to think the same thing, that it was impossible but know I am doing this all the time for work.

Here's a few tools that will make your life easy.

1) fish tape (you can get the harbor freight cheepy)http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/22-7980

2) pull string (they actually sell big buckets of string that can pull several pounds but in your case just use 20 feet of some string or small rope you have laying around)
3) fishing rods http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/LABOR-SAVING-DEVICES-81-700-/22-9210
You can use these things to get wire all over the place- taking out a can light or something can allow you to tape some string to these rods and feed them up to 20' (if there is no studs in the way) and you can find your way to the cable distributor easier than you may think.


These tools are expensive, but look at them and get the idea, you could duct tape a tent shock pole together so it does not pull apart instead of spending the money on a set. Also a shop vac and fishing line or dental floss can be used to suck up the string that is taped to your coax cable.

Or your local cable company will probably come and do a drop in your house for about $50.

Do you have attic or basement access to the room you are trying to get the new outlet?
Is this going on the outside wall of the house?

Easiest solution, after you get the cable in the ceiling above where you need it cut a hole in your drywall (hopefully you can fit your big dopey hands through the hole an fish it from the top down. Since it's low voltage use a ring like this to attach your face plate
http://www.milestek.com/prod_images/med/p0015699.JPG

Worst case if you can't get your hands in there is when you use the shop vac. also some use a magnet and a small chain on the end of the string to drop down the wall if there is a lot of insulation, you can even use the magnet on the outside of the drywall and pull the chain down if the insulation is a pain in the @ss.

I've done so many home cabling jobs since I started this job. I have 4 speakers in my covered patio that I have outlets by my patio TV and behind my computer and can select which source feeds the speakers, hid all the wires and installed a 2nd outlet behind my 50" plasma, added 2 more coax lines to my TV for HD and even sending the satellite out to my patio from the receiver inside etc.

Just remember with cable, it can split apart at any location. If may be easier to jump it over from the bedroom or living room than try to run a home run all the way back to the main box. You can attach a splitter behind jack and run 6 inches of cable from the splitter to the outlet face plate.
Good luck. Let me know if you need some cable.

Depending on the age of the house it may be more than its trying. If its like my house, you probably have a one layer of subfloor maybe 2 depending on if you have ceramic/marble tile. I don't typically run cable cause it is a pita but if its a single story house, you can try going up into the attic and fishing the cable wire down into the kitchen and run it over the rafters to an existing rg6 cable or run a dedicated drop to the outside of the house and run it along the siding. It may be just worth the extra money not to deal with it by hiring either the local cable company or calling a electrician.

It also helps to get the right cable..

See the green cable in the picture? That's a quad cable - 2 RG6, 2 CAT5e cables, in a Teflon sheaf. Made a HUGE difference in pulling it.. especially since it's 4 for the price of 1!

They make a special drill bit for what you need to do. It is about 4 ft long and is bendable to get it down the wall. The bits even have a hole on the end to tie the wires to. Drill the hole tie the wire on and pull the bit back out and the wires come with it. May or may not make it easier.


That's what we call "hail mary" bits, since you just basically drill and pray it went where you wanted it:D

That's what we call "hail mary" bits, since you just basically drill and pray it went where you wanted it:D

Wait till you have to drill thru concrete. I had a job where the interior walls were cinderblock. I went thru about 3 bits that day mainly cause they also added rebar to it.. Dunno why, but boy did it suck.. I've never dealt with something like that since.. I kind of suspect it was an addition to the house but since the homeowner was not the original owner or the 2nd it was hard to determine other than ripping all the siding off and looking for evidence.

See the green cable in the picture? That's a quad cable - 2 RG6, 2 CAT5e cables, in a Teflon sheaf.



Now that is trick. how much per foot for that stuff Tom?

Thru my vendor the quad cable 2 RG6/2 Cat5e is $300 per 500' roll.

Thanks for the tips. The house is fairly new - built within the last 10 years. It's already pre-wired in almost every room for cat-5, though I am using wireless, but it came that way, so whatever :). I think I figured out that I can bring up the wire near where the pipes go for the dishwasher and run it through the kitchen cabinets to get it to where I want. May not be the "cleanest" job but I dont think anyone will notice it... :). Was thinking of going ghetto and not doing a jack at all, but running the cable out right under the kitchen cabinet and pulling the cable through... kind of hard to describe, but it shouldn't be noticeable and if we decided to move the TV, wouldn't take too much to get it back the way it was. Don't know if thats a terrible idea or not. It would come out "under" the cabinets so if you were standing enarby you wouldn't be able to see it, only if you got down on to the level below the cabinets to look for it...

Thru my vendor the quad cable 2 RG6/2 Cat5e is $300 per 500' roll.

That sounds about right. The original price quote was over $500; but I balked, stating that I could get it for under $300 with shipping.. Next thing I knew, I was out the door with 500 ft of it!

I have some left over. I couldn't believe how easy it was to pull compared to regular cat5/rg6 cable.

I now recommend it to anyone who wants to pull more than one cable at a time.

They also make a triple, and siamese version.

Well I got my cable jack installed over the weekend! After looking back, I'm sure any professional cable installer could've pounded it out in about a half hour, it took me several hours and several trips to the hardware store, mainly because I found the drill bits I thought would be long enough, weren't... and while I was originally thinking of just going with a hole under the kitchen cabinet to run the cable through, ultimately decided to do a more professional looking install with a regular jack, etc. Now we have cable TV in the kitchen, woohoo :).

Well I got my cable jack installed over the weekend! After looking back, I'm sure any professional cable installer could've pounded it out in about a half hour, it took me several hours and several trips to the hardware store, mainly because I found the drill bits I thought would be long enough, weren't... and while I was originally thinking of just going with a hole under the kitchen cabinet to run the cable through, ultimately decided to do a more professional looking install with a regular jack, etc. Now we have cable TV in the kitchen, woohoo :).

Cool.. Lets just hope you didn't drill into a pipe :D I knew a guy who actually was drilling a hole thru a sub floor into a room and hit a water line.. :eek:

well luckily where I was drilling I could see where the water pipes went... I was a bit nervous about hitting something electrical, but made it out ok :). I ended up having to buy a 12" drill bit to get through where I needed to though.