Moving to a new home new home wiring

luis2k10

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Hello everyone I hope someone might be able to assist me with.
I am moving into a new home soon hopefully if all goes well. I currently have a VIP 211 , VIP 922 and a 301 receiver. The installation was a standard installation with holes drills on the outer wall to feed the cables inside the home. What I want to avoid is having to get holes drilled in the new home I'm moving too. Any one here might have an idea how much it would cost me to avoid having to do that. The new home is not setup with prewiring inside the walls and I think there is also a crawl space up in the attic. Would it be smart financially to try to pursue this or will the costs be a bit too high? And also I'm assuming a dish tech will probably not do this right.?
 
I do it all the time. Make sure to chose walls for your tv's that can be wall fished from the attic. If you use an outside facing wall for your tvs, or have cathedral ceilings a wall fish would be difficult if not impossible. Dish Techs will run the wires for you the best we can. We need 3 feet of crawl space and no fire breaks =D
 
A Dish tech is going to do a standard wiring job by drilling holes and running cables on the exterior of the home. Your not going to get them to do an interior wall fish unless you pay them extra. Besides that, even if you did, it would more than likely have to happen on a return trip.

Doing the wall fishes yourself is not very hard to do
 
How much extra should I expect to pay if I were to run a cable say from one room on the first floor to another room on the first floor through the attic in a 2-story house? I don't think I can do it myself. I have no idea how to fish through two floors.

I am thinking of rewiring my house for a hopper/joey installation. May have to run a couple of new cables like described above. Can I count on Dish installers to do all that during the hopper install, or should I hire someone else?
 
How much extra should I expect to pay if I were to run a cable say from one room on the first floor to another room on the first floor through the attic in a 2-story house? I don't think I can do it myself. I have no idea how to fish through two floors.

I am thinking of rewiring my house for a hopper/joey installation. May have to run a couple of new cables like described above. Can I count on Dish installers to do all that during the hopper install, or should I hire someone else?

I would call an electrician.
 
Ok so I might try doing it myself cutting a hole on the drywall with a utility knife and placing a cover over it. If I want to upgrade to the new hopper system is it still just one cable per room. The vip 922 is one cable in from outside but it gets split before the receiver with a dish pro plus separator.
I know it a lot of questions but I would like to be informed well in advance of the move. Thanks
 
A Dish tech is going to do a standard wiring job by drilling holes and running cables on the exterior of the home. Your not going to get them to do an interior wall fish unless you pay them extra. Besides that, even if you did, it would more than likely have to happen on a return trip.

Doing the wall fishes yourself is not very hard to do

This is false btw. I do wall fish wiring everyday. And we dont charge extra. If you get a retailer to do the install it might be a different story, but Dish Techs do this all day long
 
ShawnDishInstaller said:
This is false btw. I do wall fish wiring everyday. And we dont charge extra. If you get a retailer to do the install it might be a different story, but Dish Techs do this all day long

So, how would you run a cable from the first floor all the way to the attic? And would you charge extra for that?

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Dish techs do not have the tools to perform a two-story wall fish. Even most electricians will have to cut an access hole in your drywall somewhere to perform it. Dish techs do perform single story wall fishes though. And whoever you get to run the cables, always have them run a "home-run" or straight cable from each room to a centralized location (attic, smartbox in a closet, outside near power meter, etc.). Do not start running lines from one room to the next, this makes reconfiguring wiring a PITA! If all cables go to a central location connections can be made to reconfigure it anyway you want. If you're going to pay a contractor to do it for you I'd have them run 2 3GHz rated RG6, and 2 Cat6 cables to each possible TV location. This should help future-proof you.
 
Good points! Thanks!

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Ilya said:
Good points! Thanks!

Sent from my iPad 3 using SatelliteGuys

I rewired my house and did home runs of 3 RG6 Quad and 2 Cat 5 to each tv. It isn't hard. Just plan it out and run bundles. Always better to have too many connections. Find a shop that does computer/telco work. See if you can pay someone for their time and order the cable and stuff yourself.

I honestly think you could do it though.
 
I seen in other people's posts in other threads that they have a distribution panel. How would I go of building that. Is it possible and easy to do? If it is possible then I would like some assistance if possible. Here is the layout of the house I am in escrow in.
houselayout.jpg

I currently have Dish Network with 3 receivers VIP 211, VIP 922, 301. I would like to build a distribution box if possible in the back of the house near the laundry room. I can either attempt to put it inside or outside the house. What would I need to install a panel?

I also have an OTA antenna that I would like to install if it won't make things too complicated. At this point I would want to have a receiver in each of the rooms as in this layout.
houselayout3.jpg

The second tuner on the 922 is SD only which I am ok with for now but will like to eventually move to both hd in the not so far future with an upgrade to the new Hopper system.

It looks like escrow might close around the first weekend of May so i still have month to think this though and to see if my plan is even feasible.


Thanks for all your help.
 
Last edited:
I seen in other people's posts in other threads that they have a distribution panel. How would I go of building that. Is it possible and easy to do? If it is possible then I would like some assistance if possible. Here is the layout of the house I am in escrow in.
View attachment 75806

I currently have Dish Network with 3 receivers VIP 211, VIP 922, 301. I would like to build a distribution box if possible in the back of the house near the laundry room. I can either attempt to put it inside or outside the house. What would I need to install a panel?

I also have an OTA antenna that I would like to install if it won't make things too complicated. At this point I would want to have a receiver in each of the rooms as in this layout.
View attachment 75807

The second tuner on the 922 is SD only which I am ok with for now but will like to eventually move to both hd in the not so far future with an upgrade to the new Hopper system.

It looks like escrow might close around the first weekend of May so i still have month to think this though and to see if my plan is even feasible.


Thanks for all your help.

You would need to run an additional line to the room that you are planning to put the Hopper in the future for the OTA antenna. I would put the distribution box inside the house if I were you.
 
I just did this last week. Ran Dual Shield RG6 3Ghz and CAT5e to each of my outlets. I had to cut open a couple holes in the finished ceiling below my main floor. I bought some $13 plastic access panels from Lowes to cover them, looks great. Get some fiberglass pulling rods, makes it easier.
 
IIRC, the official in-house Dish rules are, one interior, first floor wall-fish is free, after that they're $50 a pop. In all honesty though, you may want to choose a different company to do said fishes. In house techs only have very basic wall-fish tools, and lots of techs don't do them.
 
Cyrll said:
IIRC, the official in-house Dish rules are, one interior, first floor wall-fish is free, after that they're $50 a pop. In all honesty though, you may want to choose a different company to do said fishes. In house techs only have very basic wall-fish tools, and lots of techs don't do them.

True dat!!! We get very little training for wall fishing, so it is very unlikely with the "talent upgrades" Dish is doing that you will get an installer that even has any skill at wall fishing.
 
Few, if any, installers will do a two-story wallfish. It can be pretty tricky, especially if the first floor walls don't line up with the second floor walls. My house is like this. To do the structured wiring in my first floor, I had to drop the lines into the subfloor. I did that by creating an outlet opening on the second floor for a keystone plate there. I then used that opening to drill into the subfloor. To get access to the wall below, I had to pull back the carpet (I was going to put in wood, anyway) and cut a rectangle opening between the floor joists. I then drilled the hole into the top plate of the wall below and fished the lines down. I then screwed some 2x4 pieces to the existing joists and put the subfloor piece back down on them and screwed down to the new 2x4 pieces.

If you think you will be dropping additional wiring down the wall later, I would suggest running some blue smurf-tube down the wall. Put some twine through the smurf-tube before putting it in place. The great thing about smurf-tube is that it gives you all kinds of options for wiring later. Who knows what you'll want in those walls five years from now.
 
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