Hooked up internet at a 100 year old house yesterday...

The walls were packed with that old cloth wiring and horsehair plaster. Made me wonder if running new coax through those walls is even worth the hassle or if we should just push for mesh systems in old construction. What do you guys do with ancient buildings?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai_park15d ago

I totally get the "worth the hassle" thing. I've noticed a pattern where people overthink old house tech because they're scared of the walls. The real issue isn't the coax or the mesh, it's that nobody wants to deal with the mess of drilling through 100 year old horsehair plaster and lathe. In my experience, mesh systems are the way to go for old construction because they avoid the nightmare of running new cables altogether. You just plug in a few nodes and hope for the best, which is honestly less stressful than trying to fish coax through walls that might crumble if you look at them wrong. But if you do go mesh, make sure you put one node on each floor, because those old plaster walls kill wifi signals like crazy.

victor_adams15d ago

... and that's exactly why I ended up on a weird adventure with my 1920s place. Honest to god, @kai_park, I drilled one hole for an ethernet cable and the bit came out covered in what looked like crumbled up old newspapers and horsehair. I gave up right there. Now I'm running mesh too but I learned the hard way that putting a node in the attic is a must if you have a basement and a second floor. The signal drop between those old lath and plaster walls is no joke, it's like trying to shout through a mattress. At least with mesh you can just move a pod around until you find a spot where the signal doesn't die.