Satellite and Problems with My Pre-Wired Home

wolfbiker

New Member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2008
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this will be long-winded and i apologize, but i can't for the life of me figure out what the problem is.

my home is two years old. it was pre-wired with rg6 cable. i know this because i pulled a bit out of the wall and saw "rg6" on the cable. in each of the rooms in my house, the rg6 is wired all the way back to the garage where it is then meant to be connected to a splitter which is connected to the cable line coming into the house. in the picture below you can see the wires coming out of the wall, which then travel through the house to their respective rooms. there's also the splitter and the cable line coming into the house. this is not my current setup. this is how it was configured when i had cable.

(picture can't load; i'm too new. go here: farm4.static.flickr.com/3184/2984371189_a639a2a4e9.jpg)

what i've been attempting is to run the rg6 from the dish on the roof of the garage into the garage. then with a coupler for satellite dishes, i joined the rg6 from the dish to the cable coming from the wall going to the room where my receiver is located.

now, in the room where my receiver is located, i took the existing plate off the wall and connected another satellite coupler to the rg6 in the wall and on the other end of the coupler ran a small piece of rg6 to the receiver.

in theory, this should work, right? it should just work. all cables are rg6, the couplers are for satellites, so i don't know wherein the problem lies.

i do know that the couplers work. i know the rg6 from the dish and the piece going to my tv work as well. to test i ran the cable from the dish into my bedroom where the receiver is, joined it with the coupler and the piece of rg6 and it worked perfectly.

at first i thought the cable from the dish was too long and that i should cut it down. it was 100ft in length and i took at least 30ft off of it with no improvement. to ensure that my connection does work, i connected it to the coupler and with a piece of rg6 to a receiver. it worked.

next i thought ok, maybe when the installers were installing the wiring to the bedroom a staple cut into the wire and is causing interference on that particular piece of wire. so, in the garage i connected the wiring from the dish to every room in the house and none of them are getting the signal to the box.

needless to say i'm stumped and my wife is rather angry that there's cables running everywhere in the house now, in windows, down walls through doors, across floors etc.

so do any of you have any suggestions as to what could be causing my problem and what i could do to rectify it? this should just work and i don't get why it's not. i really don't want to drill through the exterior of the house into my bedroom and living room, but it looks like that's the only option right now.
 
Buy a cheap line tester, like this one: PVPT2 Pocket Coax Cable Tester

Put the tester on the wall plate in one of your rooms and and test the other end out in the garage with the bell. If the bell does not make a sound, my guess is your house is not wired with home runs. Meaning, instead of straight cable runs to your garage, they tied the lines from each room together in the attic(hopefully) with splitters.

Those splitters need to come out for Dish to work.

Without being there myself, that sure sounds like what is going on.

You should be able to find something similar at Radio Shack or Home Depot. Just make sure you get one that will either NOT work through splitters (like the one above) or that will tell you if it sees a splitter in the line.
 
interesting! i think i'll get one of those coax testers if i can find it. let's say they did tie all the lines together with splitters. what kind of splitter can i replace it with, or will i have to get into switches at that point?

edit: i went in the spare bedroom on the top floor and pulled some of the cable out of the wall to see which direction is was coming from. if it was going down, then i would assume it goes straight to the garage. however, this was going up, which i guess means it's going to the attic. i poked my head up there but there's literally a foot of insulation on the ground. i guess i'm out of luck and need to buy a drill bit to start drilling through the brick.
 
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I will be very happy on 10/02/08

How long of a cable run can I do?

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