OT: Combined Electrical and Coax Outlet

I've decided to go with Watson's suggestion.

...Jim Thompson

No, they'd staple the coax on the outside of the wall :-(

Years ago, when cable TV first came to Phoenix, the installer came and started to do that staple routine.

I called halt, requested a spool of coax, and told the "installer" to return in two days.

He was more than happy to oblige.

Of course it took me and the two sons both days to thread the coax around the house (flat roof, no crawl space)* :-)

• Hint for those in similar situations, PVC pipe makes a wonderful "threading" device to "shove" coax through such spaces.

...Jim Thompson

Yep. I located the TV wall hanger at the only place on the patio that's always shaded.

That's a good idea. The heat here eats plastic like there's no tomorrow :-(

I have a "Channel Plus" system. IIRC they have type-F outlets with an IR port that can send the code out on the coax.

I don't own it since I had the builder pre-wire 4 coax between the great room entertainment center and the garage location of the cable TV entrance and the Channel Plus box.

...Jim Thompson

If the box was NEC and UL approved with the divider, then it would be ok. It is not ok to just wing it and put your own divider in the box.

Box dimensions for the line side have a wire fill requirement that for #14 guage wire is 2 cuin for the line, 2 for the neutral, and 2 for all of the grounds, 4 cuin for the receptical, and 2 cuin for an internal clamp. A typical box with one duplex receptical whose circuit ends in the box needs to be a minimum of 12 cuin in volume. A boxe's size is the size it is NEC rated for, not necessarily the exact volume... you are not allowed to make your own.

It is the testing part that is missing.

-Chuck

It should work ok, it is the one that all of the cable installers use.

-Chuck

They even whine if you mix power and fiber......

For Pete's sake: we're electrical engineers. Why would we care if an outlet is "legal"?

John

And you got both NEMA and UL approval to make the divider?

Go to a store that sells tv's and has a large number of them on display. Look at what they're plugged into. What I'm talking about is a raceway thats split in the middle...power on one side and coax on the other. Its about 2 in wide by 1 inch tall and comes in up to 10 ft lengths.If it will work for waht you want to do...it can be gotten from any electrical supply house.. Hope it helps

Hello Jim,

You can get stainless steel plates that look better than the cheesy almond plastic. But whatever you do make sure it doesn't get full sun. Else it'll cook out the coax in no time. We could not avoid that for the eastern deck. So I hacked a gray outdoor wall outlet cover. An angle F-connector makes sure it can close even when the TV cable is in there.

But the best was when I bought a TV modulator after finishing the centralized TV distribution. Now we can watch Andy Griffith everywhere just by selecting channel 69. What's missing is an IR-RF-IR feedback to the VCR for skipping commercials.

Regards, Joerg

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:23:57 -0700, Jim Thompson Gave us:

Buy some white RG6 and lay it along the baseboard. There are clips which can be installed as well.

Outside walls suck. If you do decide to cut...

Those do-all spindle cutter tools out there (similar to dremel) which would allow you to cut nearly anything to your hearts content.

The cutter head, being round instead of a blade, allows easy plunge cuts to be made.

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 02:25:17 +0200, "Fred Bartoli" Gave us:

What was his signal to noise ratio?

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:43:34 -0400, Chuck Harris Gave us:

O worked at an HVAC company once where they had a 150' long serial cable run, and it was draped all over the big power conduits along the way to its destination. It also had breaks/splices in the foil shielded cable.

Needless to say, that is why it did not work, and I told them that the simple fix would be to replace the entire segment with one without break, and with better shielding. Routing it better would also have helped.

It was a CNC feed to a plasma cutter table from a VAX computer.

How was your question off topic? We can engineer an outlet for you! :-]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 16:20:58 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher Gave us:

Which has to be the most lame of mindsets. Fiber links carry no electrical currents whatsoever, and is also not susceptible to electrical interference.

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 18:34:09 GMT, "larry oravetz" Gave us:

Do you think the boys at the local consumer electronics store actually get inspections of their installations done?

What does that tell you about the actual conformance of such set-ups? Sure it works... so what? Doesn't mean that it is legal.

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 15:15:11 -0400, Chuck Harris Gave us:

Panduit sells small rectangular plastic conduits that have 3M tapes on the back for attachment. They also sell the surface mount outlet shells and faceplates too!

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 17:06:00 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

Note that I was referring to consumer electronic store employees. They are only a couple notches above burger flippers.