Hot, Wet and Tight....

That was my weekend, spent under the house, in a tight, muddy and hot crawl-space. It started as a project to re-arragne the computer room. It ended up as a way to move the computer room entirely, move the TV Room and moving the library. So movign the TV room meant running at least one new cable tv line run. At first we tried doing it through the ceiling. That was a no-go, and I ended up breathing in fiber glass insulation and dust and sitting in a pool of my own sweat for an hour.

I was dripping water after that and because of the way the house was made we decided it would be easier to come up through the floor.

So Saturday I went under the house...



It was muddy apparently a large part of the yard drains under the house. It was hot, no breeze and stifling heat. We had put out rat poison earlier in the week, and I found Sven, dead. A Norwegian wharf rat that succumbed to the poison. He hadn't been dead long though since he was still pretty stiff. Helen poked some bags to me through a vent on the side of the house and I drug Sven back out side where I had Helen hose the dirt off of me.

We got cable tv crimpers and some coaxial cable and som ends and Sunday Morning I went back under. I used a long 3/8" drill to poke holes in the floor. It worked well and I spent about an hour running cable and trying to keep it from knotting up while dragging it around in the mud and dirt. Underneath Maggy's room I pushed up the first cable, it sucked because there were spider webs everywhere and they got all in my hair.

Attaching the cables to a three way splitter was hard as the third cable didn't want to go on, I spent about 20 mins fighting with it. I had no flexibility in moving the cables around much and doing in laying sideways in the mud and spiders just got me frustrated. Finally I drug the last of the cable over to where I had put the hole for the living room... And thanked God that I hadn't drilled an inch lower where I would have put a hole in and electrical wire!

I crawled back out, tools in tow. Helen hosed me off again and I went inside to shower again and crimp on the ends.

The new cable runs work great and the living room looks nice too. One out of three rooms isn't too bad. I figure we'll get the rest done through the week. I was totally drained by Sunday afternoon, I wanted to keep working and moving things around, but I was so tired I couldn't move. I just sat and mindlessly watched tv...