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Cable selecting help for 5 attached townhomes

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Ou41aw

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See Picture- Long story short, I live in an attached townhome in California that was built in 1985 and has horrible existing RG58 coax and 1980s phone wiring throughout my house, as well as the four townhouses attached to me built on my block. I am the very last house at the end of these five houses, so the fifth out of five in a row. The length from the cable demarcation closet to my house is over 165’ total. All of our attics are attached and separated by drywall firewalls in the attics, with access holes cut through each for wiring runs. All phone and cable runs use the same conduit from the panel/closet, and up into the first (Home-1)attic where they emerge from the conduit, and then all cables run together from there into each of the other 4 homes attached attics in no conduit, and then onto whichever cable/phone setup they have in each neighbors home. Currently all five of us have only old RG6 coaxial cable to the first two houses (Home-1 & Home-2) from the demarcation closet, or only ancient dual RG58 coaxial cables from old 70’s/80’s analog cable television systems ran to the last three houses (Home-3, Home-4, & Home-5), including mine at the end.

The HOA in our community, as well as the all of the local cable companies (Cox Communications is main provider here) refuse to run new wiring into our houses as it is the homeowners responsibility for indoor wiring, which I understand. I have lived in the same house for 24 years and sick of never having any type of internet connection, bad phone lines, and almost no good cable TV connections to speak of. Everything is limited and my house crawls along just to be able to have cable TV at this point, let alone high speed anything. All of the cable companies just walk away and say there's nothing they can do as the wiring is too old and our HOA would have to upgrade everybody's wiring in the 300 house neighborhood at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the HOA flatly denied due to costs and being able to coordinate wiring multiple homes together at the same time and trying to schedule with multiple different homeowners for same day installations through multiple home attics. After this many years, that's not good enough for me anymore. I do heating and air conditioning sales and design, and used to be a mechanical installer for over 15 years. I have banded together with my four other neighbors and have come to an agreement that I will go into each of our attics individually and run new coax, ethernet, phone, fiber preps, whatever is needed, to each of their attics from the demarcation closet on the side of the first house on block. I will mark and label each run for use for each of my neighbors and myself now, as well as future proofing all of our homes for the future. I will be doing all of the work myself, as well as paying for all of it for each of us to get this finally done and good wiring into my house at the end is the main goal. That is how frustrated they are, and especially myself seeing how I am the farthest away and the most affected by having almost nothing to speak of connection wise in my home.

I have offered to do this to not only improve my home connections finally and live happy, I also want to help them because they are all great neighbors of mine for many years who are also as frustrated. I know how to fish wires and have all of the tools and materials for fishing wiring long distances. What I will do is remove each of our houses existing old coax cables from the demarcation closet that runs into each of their attics, and run new coax cables into each person's home. I will also prep them a new ethernet cable, phone cable, as well as fiber optic cable, and leave long spools of marked excess wiring in each attic for them. I will be doing this all on my own time and money to help myself and my neighbors as our HOA and every cable and networking company refuse to go through each of our five separate attics and help us. Just looking for some advice and knowledge on which cabling and conduit types I should be running to each of our houses? I want the best for myself and my neighbors that I can buy right now and still be reasonable, but also accommodate the far distances, especially for my house at over 165’ away, for cabling used in today's market and for future proofing our homes. Looking for any and all help with suggestions before I start the project shortly. Once I have access into each of my neighbor's attics over the course of a day or few days, I'll be able to run preps for each home into the attic as I go along until I FINALLY get down to my home at the end. I want to run what is best for my home, since I am the furthest away from the closet, and once in my home, I can do all of my own cabling and drops throughout my own home from my own attic. I want to get this done now and for it to hopefully be the only time I need to do this for my house and theirs. They will be free to do whatever they like with what I prep for each of their 4 attics. All of us have accessible attics, and easy access for future changes to extend off any of the prep I leave each of my neighbors and myself in our attics. Thanks for any help and suggestions!
 

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Understand the frustration. Think twice about doing it though.

The insurance companies involved, the city/county and possibly the HOA, will have a field day against you if it comes to light that you personally, unlicensed, and not commercially installed new cables, even if to code, for the condo block and if there is any type of fire claim, particularly if it crosses the attic fire stops. i hope they used metal conduit and firestop caulk/grommets in the existing. The cable would be plenum grade as minimum ( i don't know CA code - confirm).

A better solution may be to trench or mount on outside of wall to your unit and penetrate the to the attic above your unit. Make the demarc point on the exterior wall of the unit. Exterior grade (wet, direct burial) cable.

If the cable co or fiber based co are only doing one block, they may not be willing to make the investment for the new run just to get to the block. They may want the entire neighborhood.

Best solution may be to have your block hire a pro to do the installation. That way you are protected as well as your neighbors.
 
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I don’t know about CA/US, but I own a property in a condominium corporation in ON/Canada and no unapproved, unlicensed or uninsured work is allowed in any shape and form even if the person doing it is called Bill Gates. This includes work inside individual units and not limited to common elements only. Similar to @degrub advice above - leave it to professionals.
 
Understand the frustration. Think twice about doing it though.

The insurance companies involved, the city/county and possibly the HOA, will have a field day against you if it comes to light that you personally, unlicensed, and not commercially installed new cables, even if to code, for the condo block and if there is any type of fire claim, particularly if it crosses the attic fire stops. i hope they used metal conduit and firestop caulk/grommets in the existing. The cable would be plenum grade as minimum ( i don't know CA code - confirm).

A better solution may be to trench or mount on outside of wall to your unit and penetrate the to the attic above your unit. Make the demarc point on the exterior wall of the unit. Exterior grade (wet, direct burial) cable.

If the cable co or fiber based co are only doing one block, they may not be willing to make the investment for the new run just to get to the block. They may want the entire neighborhood.

Best solution may be to have your block hire a pro to do the installation. That way you are protected as well as your neighbors.
All will be still be done to code, and I work with building permits and cites around me daily in my line of work, and low voltage wiring is not a code concern for our city on retrofit work, only new builds and remodels. The city will not allow a trench behind our homes as it is the top of a city owned hill and not HOA, and they do not want any work to undermine the hill, even by a a little bit, we tried. One of the next door homeowners in our group of 5 homes is a HOA board member and is also in, and said we are breaking no violations of the HOA code as we all have shared attic agreements in our community for things like wiring and plumbing between condos. This has been in discussion for a long time between the 5 of us homes, and all are in agreement. I am only running through existing attic pathways to get new cabling to my attic only. All of my cabling will now be in protected conduit and not just laying across 4 other attic joists in adjoining attics, and strapped to code away from any attic accesses. I will also be using metal conduit and firestop caulk/grommets in each firewall pass through, as they are just run through open cut holes now since build in 1985. If anyone did not want me to just prep them wiring and leave in the attic, that would be fine, but all have been in agreement. I hear what you are saying, but still we are going to move forward as we have tried all, and estimates have been rediculous just for cable runs in these pretty easy attics.
 
Ask the ISP/telecoms what they expect to see for customer cabling regarding coax, telco, data, and fiber. They should have guidance for builders/architects, etc. for remote demarc situations like this. That box looks small to include 3 media. Coax and fiber have minimum bend radii that have to be respected. i saw one of the coax in that picture with too tight of a bend, almost a crimp. check with the service providers. Or if you have an electrician friend that does new residential building low voltage work, run everything by him and include a site visit.

Proper earthing of low voltage cabling is covered in the NEC and local codes.

Again, i suggest the block hire someone licensed to take the liability. Also, if there are any issues that develop, they get the call back.
 
The HOA in our community, as well as the all of the local cable companies (Cox Communications is main provider here) refuse to run new wiring into our houses as it is the homeowners responsibility for indoor wiring, which I understand.

Dealing with HOA's is a pain and a process...

From Cox's perspective, they would love to run new COAX on the premises - it's less support calls in the long run, and the techs have everything needed to upgrade the premises...

It's complicated with MDU's - which a series of conjoined townhomes are, and governed by an HOA...

So here's how to work it - it's a business decision, not a direct technical one...Pitch it to the HOA as a community improvement that benefits everyone at perhaps a shared cost - but wait...

Get the HOA to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to Cox and other broadband providers in the area, and that RFP should be fairly specific about performance parameters...
 
Wait till you find out what lawyers charge to defend you against this so-called "agreement" that isn't in writing. Hire someone. If the rates are high, it's for a reason you can't foresee yet.

Even under the best case scenario where nothing happens, you will forever become tech support for all coax, ethernet, fiber, internet, and somehow wireless until you move.

Exactly - if one is in a block with an HOA, really need to get them involved...
 

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