Monday, July 13, 2015

Getting the wireless in place

Ok, this weekend I decided to tackle positioning the wireless routers where I wanted them. Since the house is really long and narrow I wanted two routers -- one on each end. The hardest part about this whole project is that the routers need to be directly connected to the main (non-wireless) router that is in my office closet. The easiest way to do that is to run cable through the attic, so I also wanted to mount the routers on the ceiling out of sight. BUT then the routers would need electrical plugs that are also out of sight, so I decided to add electrical outlets in the attic directly above where the routers were going to be mounted. The first thing I did was run a new romax (electrical) cable into the circuit box:

Here you can see the cable fish which is essentially a metal strip (on the orange spool) that is fed through a new hole that I drilled above the circuit box. In the attic, I attached the new romax cable to the fish and then pulled the fish back down from the attic (with the new cable attached):

The new cable is the yellow one coming down from the attic. Above the kitchen, I installed a new blue electrical box and wired the new outlet:
Then continued the cable to the next outlet that is above the hallway, near the second bathroom:

Then I continued on and decided to add a plug in the closet since I was using an extension cord to power the switch, modem and router:

After getting all the plugs wired properly, I went back to the circuit box and connected that end to a breaker that we weren't using (I removed the garbage disposal a year ago, so that breaker was not being used). Finished plug in the closet:

I tested all of the outlets with a tester thing and they all seem to be working fine. Next, I ran ethernet cables and the power cable for each modem through a small hole in the ceiling above where I wanted to mount each router. This is the finished router in the kitchen:

And the finished router in the hall (the white box is the doorbell):

I'm probably going to change how this one is mounted, but it's up there! Now wifi signal covers the entire house with a strong signal throughout. I am still going to add another router outside to supply signal to the patio and storage shed (where I work while watching football games), and I also need to patch the hole in the laundry room above the circuit box, but that is a project for another weekend!