You can do it yourself for free. Mark demands a case of beer, and I’d want a nice bottle of rum. Waldo might be prohibitively expensive, though.
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I’d have a puncher’s chance of being able to run the ethernet and coax into the closet, and I’m fine with connecting the wall plates, but I’d have to run power in there too. That’s an existential threat.
I draw the line at playing with electricity.
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Adding an outlet is pretty easy, but I would not recommend if you’re not comfortable with your skill. Any electrician or handyman should be able to do that pretty easily and cheaply. The worst part of Ethernet wiring is making all the fucking patch cables.
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Orangewhite orange, greenwhite blue, bluewhite green, brownwhite brown.
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Sounds like most of the worst part (pulling cable in a hot attic) is already done for you. You can DIY the rest in one Saturday for under $200 including all parts and tools. Terminating Cat5/6 in keystone jacks and a patch panel is tedious, but it’s not hard.
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I have watched some videos about doing that, and I’m confident I could handle that. I have to get the lines back from the attic into a closet, though. Also, as I said above, I’d have to run power into the closet which is almost certainly beyond me as I do not have an obvious place from where to take a line.
Chicken and egg: if it’s easy, it’ll be cheap to have someone do it properly. If it’s hard, it’ll be more expensive but likely beyond my abilities anyway.
Eh…not necessarily. It’s not hard, but if it’s a lot of cables it’s tedius and time consuming, so it may not be cheap to hire someone to do it. Of course, that may be worth it because you don’t want to spend your valuable time doing it, but easy doesn’t always mean cheap.
As for getting them from the attic to the closet…if it were me, and they were all going to a closet, I’d just run them down the outside of the closet wall. I wouldnt’ bother trying to feem through the wall. It’s not as sleek looking, but it’s an equipment closet, so who cares. You may feel differently, however.
Not quite on topic, but what the hell: I’ve got uninsulated metal garage doors that face east and get full sun all morning. They radiate heat into the garage something fierce, so I want to install an insulation kit. (Right now, 8:30am and 80 degrees outside, an IR thermometer says the inside of the door is 140 degrees; it will get much worse as the morning goes along.)
Choices seem to be between foam panels (possibly a source of noxious gases in a fire?) and a sort of radiant barrier. Does anybody have experience with either?
The closet is built-in, but on the 2nd floor so I should be able to come straight down into it from the attic. Thinking about it, I may be able to draw a power line down from the attic too…
You’d definitely be able to get power from the attic. You’d have to tap into an existing line and install a junction box (unless you wanted a dedicated circuit straight to your breaker, just for the LAN stuff), but it should be straight forward enough. The power I’d run through the ceiling header and down the interior wall, proper box junction box, cable support, etc. But the ethernet, I’d just drill a hole in the ceiling into the attic, make up a PVC raceway and run the cables on the outside of the wall, rather than drilling through and trying to fish all those cables through the header and inside the wall.
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I did foam panels.
And weather stripping.
And insulated the walls.
And added a mini-split.
I would add, ID tag the end of the wires as you go along. Or purchase a tone generator and probe…
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A bar and a stripper pole help too.
Seriously though, I haven’t done mine, since it’s detached and uninsulated everywhere else, not sure doing the door would help much, but if I did, I would go with a simple radiant barrier type. Probably the easiest to install, and do just as good a job.
Take it from Sphinx…no one knows tiny colored wires better.
Definitely going to need one of these as none of the lines are marked.
So out of curiosity…are they just run up to the attic and coiled up? Where do they terminate? How long are they and are you gonna have to extend them to get them to your equipment closet? Just curious what the planning was, as they obviously had foresight to run the cables, but not enough to dedicate a hub space.
Yep, coiled up in the attic. Quite likely I will have to extend them to get them to where I want the hub to be. Agree, they were this close…
So I ordered two packages of the reflection barrier stuff, which turns out to be bubble wrap with mylar fused to both sides. Each kit has eight pre-cut 2’x4’ panels and adhesive pads for mounting them to the door, and the total ($108 or so for both) was less than I would have had to pay Home Depot for the same material in bulk. I put it all up yesterday and then measured the temperature this morning: 95 degrees on the back side of the barrier at 9:30am in full sun, compared with 140 degrees on the back of the metal door on Friday at 8:30am in full sun. The garage definitely feels cooler (errr, not as hot), although I haven’t actually measured that. I should have done this a long time ago.
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Ah…a crisp 95 degrees. All you need is a pumpkin spice candle in there.
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