After seeing the tour of my home network, many viewers have requested a video explaining
how to install a network jack into the wall.
OK, so we're standing in front of an unfinished wall.
And the reason I wanted you to see this is because there is no sheetrock on this side
so you'll know exactly what you're up against.
Now, if you look up at the top, you'll see this is what's called the top plate.
And there's going to be at least two 2x4's up there and sometimes there may be three.
So you've got quite a bit you'll have to drill through.
It's important to consider that in most cases you will only be able to use an interior wall.
In most cases the roof-line will prevent you from being able to reach the top plate of
the exterior wall, and even if you could, the roofline would be in the way of the drill,
and even if you could overcome that, the wall will be filled with insulation so there's
no way to feed the wire down.
You'll need to go to the hardware store and pickup one of these old-work boxes.
You'll also need a network jack and a plate.
OK, because of the way this room is shaped, and the living room is taller than the rest
of the of the attic, you've got a small little short wall here.
But, once we remove that, you'll see the top plate that I was talking about.
We're going to have to drill through that.
So the first thing you'll need to do is verify the cable you have is long enough to reach.
You can approximate by running it on the ground floor.
You'll need to use a stud-finder and mark the studs on the wall.
I like to use masking tape to mark where the studs are.
Normally when people are searching for studs, it is because you want to screw something
into them.
However, in this case we're trying to avoid them.
If there are any nearby outlets of any kind go ahead and take off the plate so you can
meaure how far the box is from the floor.
This way you can be sure your new box lines up with the existing ones.
I just use another piece of masking tape to help me out.
So to mark your place on the wall, turn the box around backwards and find the little marker
holes and make 4 little dots on the wall.
Once you have your dots, you can draw a square on the wall.
Now take a razor blade and begin to cut a hole in the wall.
This is a learned skill that just takes some practice.
I usually just go over the same lines several times alternating the direction.
Eventually it will go all the way through the wall.
Once you remove the piece of wall, you should be able to sitck your hand in there and find
the cable you dropped down the wall.
Now you can install your old-work wall box.
The next step is to strip the insulation off of the cat5 cable.
Then seperate out the colored pairs and try to straighten them out to some extent.
Next you can use your fingers to align the colored wires onto the network jack.
Once you are sure they are all in the right place, use a punch tool to properly terminate
these wires.
It should look like this when you are all done.
Now you can mount the jack into the wall plate and push any excess wire back into the wall.
Once you mount the plate to the wall, you are essentially done.
One more thing about the exterior wall situation.
it is actually possible to do.
When I first got an electric car it was necessary to run a 240V wire to the charging dock from
the breaker box.
But the breaker box is on an exterior wall.
So I had to cut the sheetrock so that I could have access to run the wire up into the attic.
I've been too lazy to repaint the wall after doing this.
So it is possible, but not much fun.
Well, I hope you liked the video.
I would just like to point out that the house I was showing in the video is not actually
my house.
It's actually a family member's house.
They bought a smart TV and wanted to be able to connect it up to their home network so
I decided to run a network jack for them.
Now, I had been planing to put this off probably until October.
Because, Hey!
we live in Texas.
You don't want to get up into an attic in the middle of July in Texas.
Fortunately, we had this cold front come through this weekend.
And I woke up Sunday morning and it was 68 degrees outside and raining.
And so I decided this would be a good time to get up there and do that network jack install.
So you go to have this one a little bit early.
Alright well, tell me what you'd like to see in the next video.
Until next time, see you later!