How Can I Drill This Hole?

[Dave Ronyak]

I need some help, well, actually, maybe a lot of help.  I am trying to install RG 60 CATV cable throughout my 50+ year old house, which has had 2 additions before I bought it, the last some 20 years ago being a sunken living room (LR) and a new master bedroom (BR) beyond it.  I want to run new cable to an existing cable outlet box in the wall between the living room and bedroom, both of which are fully finished with oak baseboards and new wall-to-wall carpeting.  The old cable is RG 59 which is characterized to not be suitable for digital TV.  The wall is load bearing for complex roofs of these two rooms.  From opening up a cold air return in that wall in the LR to see a partial X-section of the construction, the floors of these adjoining rooms overlap approximately the thickness of the wall. The wall between the LR and BR appears to be constructed as follows, when described from the bottom side upward.  In the unfinished basement underneath this stud wall is an 8" concrete block wall which fully supports the LR joists.  The 2X12 LR joists set 12" OC with double blocking of 2x12 between the adjacent joists.  On top of the 2x12 LR joists is a single layer floor of 3/4 plywood.  On top of the plywood LR is a 2x6 standing on edge which supports the floor of the bedroom which has two layers, a bottom layer of 3/4" plywood and a top layer of 3/4" strand or particle board.  Drywall of the LR covers this 2x6 standing on edge. On top of that particle board floor layer of the BR is, I think a 2x4 sole plate and normal 2x4 stud wall with 1/2" drywall on both sides.  There is also additional blocking within the wall cavity between the two floors (LR and BR) which helped position the first 2x10 joist of the BRI which is offset upward relative to the ends of the 2x12 joists of the LR and prevents me from running cable horizontally within the narrow cavity between the LR and BR floor layers!  Taken altogether, I need to drill a approximately 10' upward at a slight angle from vertical to reach through the upper sole plate into the stud wall cavity.  Access to position a drill from the LR basement is also hampered by two 7" round HVAC pipes which run perpendicular to the LR joists about 8" away from the concrete block wall, barely enough room to maneuver my drill into the space!  Using an angle head chuck and a "steerable" modified forstner style bit [made in China and marketed by "Bad Dog"] , I began to drill a hole from the basement side of the LR floor, positioning the drill bit just outside [toward the center of the LR] the LR side side of the 2x12 double blocking, and angling the bit slightly toward the BR so as to drill through the 3/4 plywood flooring and diagonally through the 2x6 standing on edge.  That worked well to reach the cavity between the horizontally spaced 2x members between the LR and BR that support the BR floor and stud wall above it.  But the distance upward from the LR floor sheet to the BR floor sheet is such that none of my forstner and spade drill bits will reach to and through the BR floor.  If I use an extension, the drill assembly is too long to position end of the drill motor with angle drive on top of the concrete block wall.  Adding any of the extensions I have to any of the the drill bits I have requires me to increase the tilt angle of the drill from vertical causes the drill bit to go diagonally cross the cavity between the LR and BR floors and hit the drywall of the BR before it comes through the double thickness floor of the BR and the 2x4 sole plate above it into the wall cavity where the receptacle box for the cable is.  The only drill bits and extensions I have found thus far are thus either too short to reach all the way through to enable me to keep the correct tilt angle from vertical or too long and the drill bits are too short.  I don't think one of those long, flexible auger bits made by Greenlee commonly used by electricians is likely to work because the distance between the 2 overlapping floors of the LR and BR are too close together and all the blocking between them will prevent the bit from making a long radius bend like it can when drilling from an wall box down through the plate and floor below in a traditional wooden stud wall construction.  Any thoughts and suggestions on how to complete this drilling effort or otherwise run the cable are welcome.

I do not currently own a Festool drill.  Does the angle head attachment "lock" into its various positions relative to the drill motor?  My freewheeling angle head accessory unit [by Milecraft] is awkward in the tight location I am trying to use it, in part because it requires installation of an auxiliary handle which sticks out perpendicularly to the both the drill motor and the drill bit.

 

[ROb McGilp]

Hi Dave,

The C12 eccentric chuck does lock in place anywhere in relation to the drill. There is also available the rightangle chuck, but I'm not sure if that's what you need.

Hope that helps,

Regards,

Rob

 

[Dan Lyke]

As Rob mentioned, there is a right angle chuck, and it locks as well.

 

[Jim McFarland]

You may have confirmed RG59 does not provide adequate signal and if so I apologize in advance.  If not, I recommend you try your existing RG59 before replacing with RG6.

I have 4 35' strands of RG6 from a Dish Network quad dish which then connect with RG59 cable ranging from 50-75' in length.  The signal quality at all 4 receivers is excellent.  I only have Standard Definition receivers so maybe I'll have the same problem if I upgrade to HD

I am by no means a video expert and again I apologize if you've already tried the RG59.

All that said, I've been trying to justify a C12 with the right angle chuck so this may be just the ticket!

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Thank you for your helpful replies!  I'm thinking of trying an extra long twist drill with a right angle drive chuck.  I'll have to insert the bit up into the hole first, then secure it in the chuck because the combined length of the bit plus chuck won't fit, and if I use a shorter bit, the amount I can vertically move the drill is insufficient to drill through the layers that are about 7 inches up within the recess above the bottommost floor.

Dave R.

 

[brandon.nickel]

I'll take a different tack on your question and suggest avoiding making the difficult cable run.

Can you tell us what the highest channel in your lineup is?  It would also be helpful to know the signal strength in dBmV at your service entrance point.  Your cable company should be happy to measure this for you. 

I've designed and built several cable television networks over the years and while minimizing cable length is a worthy goal, you can usually run a quality cable a long way before you'll have problems.  If you use a quality RG6 cable, your attenuation at 100 MHz is going to run ~3 dB/100'.  If you go higher (many digital cable networks go to 500 MHz+), the attenuation is greater.  The service connection for your neighborhood (the fiber to copper transition point) likely has a distribution amplifier putting out around +40 dBmV.  They usually shoot for +10 dBmV at the service location.  Your electronics are usually happy anywhere from -5 to +10. 

So, if your cable company can give you a hotter signal (+/- +10-15dBmV) you could run up to 500' of cable before you even start approaching the lower limit.  Digital cable is great for this because it works flawlessly right up to the point that it starts dropping out.  There are two things you'd need to watch out for if you do this.  One is that the highest frequencies attenuate faster than the low ones, so you need to design for the worst case.  2nd, if you have a "hot" signal (ie >10 dBmV) you want to make sure there's enough cable (or splitters) between the connection and your tuners to cut it down into the range that the tuners can accept.  In essence you need to have the cable lengths similar.  Don't run one 250' cable around the house to the BR and one 6' connection to the LR.

This may not be helpful at all, but it's an option you might want to look into.  Without a cable length limitation, you may be able to find an easier path through your house.

 

[woodshopdemos]

Dave,
  You have a lot of drilling and fishing ahead of you. Can't you remove shoe molding and maybe baseboards and run the cable here. There is no code telling you not to. Your vertical runs can then be greatly reduced and much easier -- in one riser per room/floor.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Dave,
   You have a lot of drilling and fishing ahead of you. Can't you remove shoe molding and maybe baseboards and run the cable here. There is no code telling you not to. Your vertical runs can then be greatly reduced and much easier -- in one riser per room/floor.

John,

The fishing shouldn't be too bad - the distance is not large - and the two people working at it can easily hear one another.  In retrospect, what I should have done is checked and updated all those cables BEFORE the walls and ceilings were painted, the carpets replaced and the oak baseboards refinished.  Back then the simplest solution might have been to carve out some drywall, drill and install the cables, then patch and paint.  But I was not thinking about watching TV then.  I know my good wife could not handle doing any of that now, for fear that the paint would not match, even if the whole wall was repainted.

Brandon,

Thanks for the cable TV info.  It is already very helpful to me - especially your point about keeping the cable lengths approximately the same.  I think my setup is quite good in that regard - all three branches are 40 - 50 ft from the splitter.  My cable service provider is Warner, and the channels do run well into the 200 level.  I am installing RG6 Quad which the manufacturer states to have been "swept" tested through 3 MHz, with Ideal's axial compression style fittings which are claimed to be weather resistant.  The cable was the best quality I could find at HD [and at that time I knew a lot less about cable than now!].  It has more layers of shielding than the RG6 [not Quad shielded] lead in supplied by Warner before 2001.  All of the cable types in my house including the new RG6Q appear to have the same type of hard plastic core insulation over a single copper wire center conductor.  Warner installed the newer RG6 lead in [about 90 ft long] before I bought the house, but only ran it to a single bedroom.  Warner also supplied a little amplifier fitted to an older RG-59 cable lead-in about 150 ft long whose output goes to a 3-way splitter, one of whose outputs goes to the 1080p digital LCD TV I bought this past winter.  I connected the newer RG6 lead in to that amplifier and splitter using new RG6 Quad cable, the additional length being about 50 ft.  But the output from that splitter to the digital TV is still RG-59 which runs 30 - 40 ft.  Warner has not been back to try my "new" lead-in setup to see if it would work the digital TV with its 40 ft of old RG-59, but they were certain the old cable lead in to that amplifier et al would not because every channel was fuzzy.  All three rooms wired to my "new" setup from a common splitter [also supplied years ago by Warner] work very well in receiving the standard analogue cable signals provided the booster amplifier is energized.  I have not tried directly connecting my new RG6Q lead in to that 3-way splitter.

Do you recommend that I ask Warner to come and try the existing setup [digital TV fed through the RG-59] before continuing efforts to replace that RG-59 branch circuit?  That would surely simplify my life and let me get back to other things Festool !!

Dave R.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Gents,  my hole drilling and TV cable routing problem is solved, thanks to my good wife's suggestion.  From the living room, I drilled through the bottom of the wall box about 1/2 inch inward from its front edge, holding the drill axis inclined at as slight an angle from vertical as I could attain so as to go through the double layer of floor sheeting lying about 10 inches below.  [In accordance with Murphy's Law, this particular wall box was set back the full thickness of the drywall.]  I used a scrap of Formica sheet to protect the wall from the rotating chuck of the drill.  After making a starter hole into the flooring sheet with a 1/4 bit [so I could then peek through the hold in the wall box and see where I was hitting the flooring], I switched to a spade bit in a 14 inch extension.  After drilling though with that spade bit, I could see some light from above when my wife shined a flashlight up through the earlier drilled hole through the floor of the sunken living room and its 2x6 on edge that is immediately behind the drywall, and she could see dim light when I shined a flashlight down, and I could guesstimate the direction of the misalignment of the holes through the upper floor layers and the hole through the lower floor layer and 2x6 on edge.  So I then switched from the spade bit to one of those 1/4 bit and rasp combinations that are sold for carving outlet holes in wood paneling and drywall [before Rotozip and other miniature handheld routers], put on my leather work gloves to enable my hand to work as an intermediate bearing to help guide the drill extension and proceeded to press the rotating drill shaft sideways to carve the hole through the upper flooring layers a bit sideways.  This also cleaned up the hanging splinters from breakthrough of the spade bit which otherwise caused earlier wire pulling attempts to snag.  Now a light shined from either direction was much brighter when viewed from the opposite end of the pathway.  Then my wife pushed up a small wire from below and I fished and hooked it using a homemade fishhook from a scrap of 12 gauge wire.  Then I taped the end of the TV cable onto the wire inserted from below and we pulled the cable through!!

The bottom line - we can benefit from more participation of ladies in this forum.

Dave R.

 

[brandon.nickel]

Sorry for delay in responding Dave.  Congrats on making a difficult fish.

Quad-shielded RG6  is the best stuff you can get.  It's nearly impervious to interference as the foil and braided wraps nullify different frequency spectrums.  This also make it REALLY difficult to fish as it's very hard to bend.  It also uses slightly different crimps than the standard "RG6" crimps you'll find at HD.  Despite what they tell you, there are significant differences amongst manufacturers of RG6 cable.  The only standard is the center conductor and dielectric diameters.  The shielding and outer jackets vary hugely.  I usually use Belden's 8281 and Canare 75-ohm crimps

Be careful with splitters.  Ideally you'd have a 3 dB drop on a 1-2 splitter, but in practice it's usually 4.5.  If you go to a larger splitter, you get more attenuation.  So, use the smallest splitter you can.  Also, try to home run the signal cables.  If you have a multiple splitters, the cables at the end of the run will have much worse signal quality than the ones that don't get split out.  Some splitters are not rated for digital cable.  Look for a 3GHz rating on the splitter.  Most new ones will meet this.  Also, if you have unused wall outlets (or splitter taps), I highly recommend buying a package of the 75ohm terminators at Radio Shack.  They prevent the unused wire from acting as an antenna and picking up ground hum and interference. 

RG-59 doesn't have nearly the headroom of RG6.  That means the attenuation at higher frequencies is much, much greater than with RG6.  If you've only got a short run, either will work fine, but the longet the runs get, the more trouble you'll have with the higher frequencies (channels).  This can also be affected by the "tilt" of the cable feed.  Usually the cable company will "push" the higher frequencies with more power in an effort to equalize the signal at the end of a long run.  If you have them measure your signal strength, have them measure bot the lowest and highest channel at both the service entrance and the end of your RG59 run (if they are willing).  That will tell you exactly where you stand with regards to needing to run better cable.  If you have sufficient strength at the highest frequencies, there's no need to run different cable.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Thanks, Brandon, for the additional information.  I had no idea about those unused cable outlets acting as antennas and will cap them as you recommended.  The Warner cable man is scheduled to come tomorrow to install the digital decoder box.  I have gone over your recommendations with my wife so she can quiz him about the Warner supplied splitter and booster amp both of which are labeled to only 900 MHz.

You're right, that Quad jacketed RG-6 cable is very stiff compared to RG-59.  I used Ideal brand axial compression fittings designed for the Quad cable.  HD had this type and brand of fittings in RG-59, RG-6 and RG-6Q sizes.  Due to stiffness of the RG-6Q cable, it was a challenge to fold it and a two-way splitter into a standard duplex receptacle sized wall box, more so because of the way I was forced to route my cables.  I also left the old cable in that wall box [but disonneceted downstairs].

Time to get back to thinking about Festools and woodworking - and watching some TV!  Does anyone know where the Festool Owners Group channel is?  Has Matthew started that yet?

Dave R.

 

[brandon.nickel]

One more note before closing off this thread:

"it was a challenge to fold it and a two-way splitter into a standard duplex receptacle sized wall box, more so because of the way I was forced to route my cables"
Be careful with making tight radius bends in a 75 ohm cable.  The impedance is defined by the dielectric material and the distance from the center conductor to the shield.  If you make extreme bends in the cable you can get a drastic point impedance change.  That can cause signal reflections (ghosting) or dropouts in the digital signal.

I've had to track down many, many video problems caused by a kinked cable.  Your RG6Q probably has a relatively solid dielectric, but with some of the cheap foam-core cables this can be a significant problem.

Ok, back to the world of wood.  Sorry for the diversion everyone.

 

[Michael Kellough]

...I've had to track down many, many video problems caused by a kinked cable. 

That is what I've heard so I was chagrined when the cable installation subcontractor kid took the spool of cable across the street and left it on the ground and then simply pulled the cable off the end of the spool (instead of un-spooling properly) so it twisted and developed a half dozen hard kinks before it even got to my house. After connecting it to the anchors and pulling tight I can't imagine how the core survived the compression at those kinks.

I complained to the "real" cable company installer and he tested the signal and it was very good. My digital signal and broadband never appeared to suffer from the kinks. After a few years and continually rising prices I switched to DirecTV and phone company (Verizon) DSL. The DSL was recently upgraded to fiber optic. Verizon is trying to get approval to provide video via FIOS. Eventually, we'll really have options.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Following my request for installation of the cable decoder box, the Warner cable man came back yesterday.  Apparently, no one told him that my wife and I had already run the new RG6Q cable.  He was impressed with our installation.  He changed out the splitter in the wall box adjacent the digital TV (the other "out" cable goes to another wall box on the opposite side of the wall in the bedroom), since that splitter was not one recommended or provided by Warner.  He checked out the signal strength across the full spectrum of channels by calling his office and having them send some sort of frequency sweep test signal, and said that I had a very strong signal across the entire bandwidth, which includes channels up into 4 digits.  The splitter he changed was in the wall box where I had to severely bend the cable, but I guess it did not hurt too much.  I and my family are still marveling at the quality of the picture.

All that is left to do is plug my extra hole in the basement and the excess space in the hole through which the cable extends with some 3M Firestop caulk.

Dave R.