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Spring installations (or, fun in the attic)
Posted by
Shinyshoes
,
26 April 2011
·
175 views
Spring has arrived and it is time to get to the projects I have been listing over the last couple of blog posts. It was finally warm enough this weekend I could get started on the attic work I have been putting off.
I dusted off the ladder and hopped up into the attic. I got the measurements I needed to find the boxes in the ceiling of the garage. We did the insulation in the garage roof with batting rather than blown in so it wasn’t that messy. With few problems, I was able to find the boxes and cut in the 2 speakers. Then I cut the hole in the wall for the Nuvo control plate, then back up into the attic to fish a cable down to it. When we pre-wired, I didn’t know for sure where the control panel was going to go, so I just ran 4 extra Cat-5 cables to the garage and left them sitting on top of the insulation so I could feed them down to the appropriate hole (and to provide some spares should I damage a cable or have future projects that I didn’t account for.) Things went relatively smoothly and I terminated the cable in the garage and moved on to the ensuite. All the cables were pre-run so that installation went quickly. Cut the hole, terminated the wire, mounted the plate, done.
Next I went downstairs and terminated both Cat-5 cables into my punchdown panel. I made a patch cable and wired in my ensuite plate and ran upstairs to make sure it was working. Nothing. I tried using a factory patch cable and checked my punchdowns to make sure I didn’t miss-align the cables but all checked out, still nothing. I figured I had traced the wrong cable or something so I moved on to the garage. I moved the factory cable over to the garage port and went out to the garage to check that plate. Nothing…..
What the hell???
After much frustration and many choice words I finally figured out that I had got the 2 cables backwards downstairs and had punched the garage cable into the ensuite port and the ensuite cable into the garage port. I quickly switched them around and tested the ensuite plate and everything was good. I then made a patch cable for the garage and plugged it it. That is where the fun began.
As soon as I plugged the garage plate in, I started getting weird things from all my other Nuvo plates. For example, I could turn the kitchen plate on and the music would come on, but the display still appeared to be off (just the time showing). I could change sources and volume and everything as normal, but the display wasn’t showing right. I unplugged the mechanical room plate then plugged it back in and it said “nuvonet not detected”. After unplugging the garage plate, everything went back to normal…….
I knew the actual plate was ok because if I plugged it in directly to the punchdown panel, everything worked fine. I was starting to wonder if I had a bad cable, but a little google-ing revealed that I might have too long of a run. I pulled all the slack out of the wall in the garage and trimmed off about 15 feet. Then I did the same in the basement and trimmed about another 10 feet. I re-terminated everything and it seems to have worked.
Phew.
Next on the list is probably going to be the deck speakers. This will be even more labor intensive than the garage because I have to install the boxes in the soffit, cut in the speakers and install the Nuvo controller. Also, the deck is behind the kitchen, which means I will be competing with the blown in insulation as well. I guess while I am up there I may as well install the other speaker box in the living room and convert it to 7.1 No sense getting all itchy from the insulation more than once if I can avoid it…..
I dusted off the ladder and hopped up into the attic. I got the measurements I needed to find the boxes in the ceiling of the garage. We did the insulation in the garage roof with batting rather than blown in so it wasn’t that messy. With few problems, I was able to find the boxes and cut in the 2 speakers. Then I cut the hole in the wall for the Nuvo control plate, then back up into the attic to fish a cable down to it. When we pre-wired, I didn’t know for sure where the control panel was going to go, so I just ran 4 extra Cat-5 cables to the garage and left them sitting on top of the insulation so I could feed them down to the appropriate hole (and to provide some spares should I damage a cable or have future projects that I didn’t account for.) Things went relatively smoothly and I terminated the cable in the garage and moved on to the ensuite. All the cables were pre-run so that installation went quickly. Cut the hole, terminated the wire, mounted the plate, done.
Next I went downstairs and terminated both Cat-5 cables into my punchdown panel. I made a patch cable and wired in my ensuite plate and ran upstairs to make sure it was working. Nothing. I tried using a factory patch cable and checked my punchdowns to make sure I didn’t miss-align the cables but all checked out, still nothing. I figured I had traced the wrong cable or something so I moved on to the garage. I moved the factory cable over to the garage port and went out to the garage to check that plate. Nothing…..
What the hell???
After much frustration and many choice words I finally figured out that I had got the 2 cables backwards downstairs and had punched the garage cable into the ensuite port and the ensuite cable into the garage port. I quickly switched them around and tested the ensuite plate and everything was good. I then made a patch cable for the garage and plugged it it. That is where the fun began.
As soon as I plugged the garage plate in, I started getting weird things from all my other Nuvo plates. For example, I could turn the kitchen plate on and the music would come on, but the display still appeared to be off (just the time showing). I could change sources and volume and everything as normal, but the display wasn’t showing right. I unplugged the mechanical room plate then plugged it back in and it said “nuvonet not detected”. After unplugging the garage plate, everything went back to normal…….
I knew the actual plate was ok because if I plugged it in directly to the punchdown panel, everything worked fine. I was starting to wonder if I had a bad cable, but a little google-ing revealed that I might have too long of a run. I pulled all the slack out of the wall in the garage and trimmed off about 15 feet. Then I did the same in the basement and trimmed about another 10 feet. I re-terminated everything and it seems to have worked.
Phew.
Next on the list is probably going to be the deck speakers. This will be even more labor intensive than the garage because I have to install the boxes in the soffit, cut in the speakers and install the Nuvo controller. Also, the deck is behind the kitchen, which means I will be competing with the blown in insulation as well. I guess while I am up there I may as well install the other speaker box in the living room and convert it to 7.1 No sense getting all itchy from the insulation more than once if I can avoid it…..
