Saturday, April 9, 2011

One Cable More To Go!

Hmmm...almost sounds like a C&W song title.
Got the cables from the kid's room and the Home Theater rack pulled in after crawling around on my belly for about an hour under the house.
Rather than crawl into and out of the divided areas a couple of times each, I used two big tape measures as 'fish tapes' to bridge the span. That way I only had to crawl under the bathroom once, tape the cables for the kid's room to the tape measure blade, and then crawl back to where the tape started, and retract it carefully so the cables wouldn't tangle, kink, or otherwise bind up.
I did the same for the cables to the Home Theater rack, only I didn't have to crawl under the bathroom and wiggle around all the pipes!
BTW, the bathroom plumbing looks to be in great shape, no leaks, no foul odors, so the wife was very happy to hear that after getting all the plumbing problems fixed that the house had before I met her.
And I found some interesting things laying around today while I was doing my reptile impersonation:
A 6' piece of 1" steel pipe, capped on both ends.
a 4' piece of large diameter black iron "soil pipe", probably from when my wife had the bathroom repaired.
A couple of big light bulbs.
Half a dozen scraps of coaxial cable from the cable TV installation.
Several sawed off pieces of 2x4, probably from when the house was built.
A whole box of the wire pipe hangars like you use to hang gas and water pipes.
And other bits and pieces left over from various other "projects" that preceded mine.
Before I came back up for the day, I looked at the board on top of the foundation that separates the old and new parts of the house. I found a drilled hole between the old and new parts, and it's in the correct location to use for a pass-through to get the cables from our bedroom over to where I'm bringing them all up. Fed a long piece of stiff wire most of the way through it, taped to some of the 3/16" Dacron cord (think small paracord) that I use for guying light antennas. This will (I hope!) let me pull the cables from our bedroom without having to go under this side of the house again.
So, tomorrow should be the last time I go Crawl Spacin' for a while. I'll go under the new side of the house, tape the last cable pair to the stiff wire I left in there, and stuff the cables through the existing hole. I should be able to just pull on the cord coming out of the floor hatch, and have the cables "Come To Daddy!", and be done with it.
While crawling around under there in the dirt and mud, I began to think about all the men and women who've served our country in the armed forces, and protected our freedoms to do things like own and work on our own houses. I by no means put myself equal to them for this bit of under house work, but knowing that a lot of people have crawled through dirt and mud, in the rain, while getting shot at, just so *I* could do things like this, made me say a little prayer to all who have, and who are, serving our country.

2 comments:

  1. No special finds under the house then...LOL Friend of mine found a brand new, still in the box 1938 Red Rider BB gun under a house about 15 years ago...

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  2. I still have to go under the new end of the house. Friday morning we had a repair Tech come out to fix the stove and the ice maker in the fridge. The stove needed a temperature sensor, and the ice maker needed an whole new assembly. We still had an issue with the water supply not having a lot of flow, so he suggested I screw the "Vampire Tap" valve all the way in, and then all the way out to clear the gunk out of the needle valve part of it. I pulled the side hatch on the new part of the house, and the tap was about 10" inside, so I was able to reach in and turn it. It fixed the water flow problem, and now the ice maker works. While I had the hatch off, I used my Big Beam flashlight to take a look, as that's the next (and last!) place I have to crawl into. All I could see was a blue plastic tarp somebody left inside there!
    Maybe something "interesting" is under/wrapped in the tarp!

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