August 2005 Archives

I got some quick patch concrete today. I had cleaned out the broken bits from the upper corner. I then patched it with the new concrete and smoothed it as best as possible. Placing concrete on a vertical surface is challenging. Especially with floor boards above limiting your manuverability. There is a picture of my handy work in gallery 3.

I then went around with a bottle of concrete filler to try and patch the cracks around the basement. Hopefully these will work to help me keep my basement dry.

I completed 75% of my upstairs wiring this weekend. I terminated and test all the drops in the three bedrooms. A total of 12 cat 5e terminations and 24 RG6 Coax teminations. As I went I tested them all. Hopefully this will prevent a repeat of what happened at Roger's place where we found some apparently dead lines once we were done running them. Luckily in that case we had some extra to fall back on.

I am really happy with how it turned out. You can see one of the wall plates on the side. I was able to run the wires through the ceiling in basement and then through walls upstairs. Then just mount wallplate and it looks like original wiring.

You might be asking why 4 coax and 2 ethernet. Well at Roger's house we did 3 and 3 for most locations. The theory being Phone, X-Box and Computer for Ethernet and then 2 for Satellite and one for OTA HDTV. Since at this house I know where the computers will be I only ran Phone and X-Box. I ran four Coax becuase I had 2 pairs of wires, I figured might as well terminate and test each. If it is really a problem in the future I can just put a switch for whatever needs more jacks.

Well I had the waterproofing company come out tonight. You can read the details here if you want. As it relates to the basement the short version is I am not doing what they suggested. I am instead going with and idea my dad suggested. It is to put a large kick board or floor rail of 6-8" in height around the outer wall. This way I can easily remove it and get at the wall if I need to without having to rip out sheetrock.

It is an interesting idea and I will try to refine it as my project progresses. The addition I came up with is some moisture or water sensors. I could run them under the floor and place them around the room. This way I would know if there was an issue and do something about it using the nifty gap I have created.