I apologize in advance for the sketch. This is supposed to be a layout of my house with all of our television/internet cables laid out—but it really looks like a soggy cardboard box with scribbles all over it.
Nevertheless, here's the mess I've found when I started pulling apart the cable system:
- Everything from the cable feeder to the cable box is good. This is the red line on the drawing, down to the blue box. This all makes sense.
- This is where it gets weird: we've got two lines running directly inside the house, and a third that snakes it's way around exterior of the house, stapled just under the roofline. This is the green line that circles around to the left.
- One of the interior lines splits and runs into three connections (small green x marks) on the right side of the house. Makes sense.
- The other interior line runs directly into a coil in the attic. This is now feeding my network box.
- And here's where it gets really weird: one final line splices off of the exterior line, runs halfway across the garage ceiling, runs into the attic, and then halfway across the house until it terminates in a coil.
What a mess. Lazy cable TV installers FTL.
Did you finish your happymeal before or after making this crayon masterpiece?
The phone line situation is similar in my house. The demarc is in the center of the rear of the house. There's a phone jack in the bedroom just opposite the wall from the demarc, which is sensible. Then, a wire runs along the bottom of a soffit to the kitchen, where it drops ungracefully to a hole in the brick wall and into the kitchen. A third wire runs around a quarter of the house, then into the attic through a hole in the wall, then down the entire length of the house... and into the shop. Nice work, installers.
Clearly after. I would be far too amused with my Lizardman toy to actually draw that picture.