Issues running cables outside through an attic, need some advice and planning.

S

Sunny7

Young grasshopper
Aug 22, 2019
58
23
US
Hey all, I'm completely new at home maintenance stuff and while I've done it a few times, I'm still also new at running cables. To give a bit of back story, my first time running cables years ago I bought some old generic Chinese outdoor analog camera system that came with 4 cameras + a DVR. My plan back then was to just place them on the 4 corners of the outside the house I was installing them on. Like in the pic.

wUYQsNY.jpg



But what I didn't know was in the attic, there's 4 corners that's blocked off with yellow instillation deep inside that look like this
86AHcq4.jpg

Close up
ZLfIAdw.jpg

So every time I tried to drill a hole outside to one of the corners, I would get into that boxed up area and could never get a fishing rod to be seen let alone reach the attic. So my next though was to move a few feet away from that boxed area outside, meaning my cameras needed to be moved back from where I intended them to go, which also made me rethink my camera placement.

This was years ago before I did my research on cameras and just slapped something up. Now I have a new system and I want to set up some IP eyeball cameras but not sure how to get around the boxed area problem or should I even bother with the corners again. It would really help if I knew what that boxed area I keep mentioning is called. Right now I have 2 Dahua IPC network cameras IPC-T5241H-AS-PV and IPC-HDW5231R-ZE, the IPC-HDW5231R-ZE one is already up just like in the 1st pic but kind of pointing slightly closer to the dead end or its covering half of the dead end road. I ended up reusing a hole I made awhile back from the first set of cameras I had since I couldn't reach a fishing rod in the corners. For my 2nd camera, I was thinking the corner on the right by the side door as I need something for the front yard as nothing is pretty much covering the front. And once I got a 3rd camera, I had plan to move the 1st camera up a bit to try and aim for that corner again and cover the other half of the front yard as I don't think I can cover the front yard with 1 camera with the way the house is shaped and the 3rd camera will cover the dead end road.

But yeah, you can kind of see how crappy this set up is starting to be. What's bothering me is how this house is shaped which has a lot of blind spots that makes it hard to cover areas with few cameras. The whole "Never mount cameras higher than 7 or 8ft" thing is moot to me since this house sits on top of a pretty steep hill so its another reason to rethink my positions. I'd post more pics of the house but its night time when I was making this topic.

So should I bother going for the corners in the attic or should maybe do a center approach? And can someone explain to me in detail what that boxed up corner is? Again I'll post more pics when I can.
 
How about a real image or two, taken outdoors, looking up at the soffit (the horizontal covering under the roof overhang), similar to below on the left ?


soffit-with-eave2.jpg soffit-with-eave.jpg
 
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@TonyR Describes my exact roof except where his shows a 2x2 above the soffit, I have a 2x6 sticking up on its edge so its a bit higher of a "ledge" behind the soffit. Once you drill a hole into the soffit from the outside (or remove the panel entirely) you are essentially into the attic space. I run a wire fish from the outside up the hole I drilled and into the attic space. Then I crawl into the attic and go to the edge and grab the wire fish from the inside and attach the cable. Then head back to the outside and pull the fish through the soffit hole.

All attics are a pain in the ass to deal with. You may have to move some insulation around and get down on your hands and knees and start crawling.
 
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If you're creative when using the snake, note a snake works far better than poles in this case due to the added flexibility, you can get the snake to follow the roofing for a fair amount of distance. The trick is to put the snake in with its natural bend following the roof line for about a foot, that is with the natural curve of the snake curling down. Then rotate the snake 180 degrees to make the natural curve go up. That'll keep it up out of the insulation as it tries to run up the roofing until its own weight drops it down on top of the insulation. I also use a "fishing pole", any kind of long pole or stick, with a coat hanger hook taped to the end. Using these techniques I usually never have to leave the center of the attic and crawl out on ceiling rafters to reach a snake. If a soffit panel can be removed it gets even easier.
 
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I've got a 50 ft. Ideal steel fish tape, 2 sets of screw-together fiberglass rods that comes to 12 ft. and a 12 ft. telescoping, fiberglass "Grabbit" pole. Everyone knows about the first two but this last one isn't as common and have used it several times. It really helped me 3 years ago running 4 CAT-5e's under a single wide trailer...never had to crawl under that nasty thing, as the perimeter skirt shut out all air and sunlight and its crawl-space was chock full of mold, mildew and God knows what else. The Z-shaped blade on the end has knife-like edges in and out so it will push or pull a cable, it grabs the insulation with the knife but doesn't harm the covering (unless you don't have a decent, low-friction pull to begin with). Comes with a snap-on LED lamp for the end to help in poor light.

grabbit.jpg
 
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I'm more of a DIYer, Tony. I bend a two way hook in a coat hanger and tape that to a Diversabit to extend my reach. I just installed a PIR, this morning, in the corner of my "office" at the eave side of the house. Used the snake, reached over with the "hook" and had the wire in the room in five minutes. Keep in mind the wire exits the ceiling less than an inch out from the corner of the walls.
 
Cameras will be too high anyway unless looking for a simple overiew. You need them 6-7ft off the ground to capture faces. Maybe time to start thinking about dropping cables up or down the wall cavities.
 
I just had the same problem, I have flexible soffit as shown above (post 2). I removed the Soffit to find the best way to by pass the wood. I ran the wire along the inside of the soffit and turned into the attic when I found a clear space. I used a flexable pole to pull the cable into the attic.

Note this is not the time of the year to be working in the attic.
 
@Sunny7 It might help if you post a pic or two of the soffit area and corner from outside.

Also, I have had good luck using an endoscope mounted on the fish rod. It allows you to view what is going on inside. I use it on my iPad. Has helped out a lot for running Cat5e and lots of other things around the house and RV.

 
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Back, I almost had to wait til tomorrow since it started storming all morning to afternoon

This is the front(this is only good shot of the front I had before I had already send these to my PC and found out I messed up the shots sorry, I'll take another later)
IMG_20200703_174036816_HDR.jpg


Front view from the front door or what the house sees. Note that I'm not holding the camera side ways, that's just how the house sits.
IMG_20200703_175029654_HDR.jpg


Right side of the home if you follow my first pic in my first post.
IMG_20200703_174008150_HDR.jpg


Left side down the hill, just to see how high the home sits. You can see where my IPC-HDW5231R-ZE cam is placed on the right, my old camera is still up on the left corner.
IMG_20200703_173735881_HDR.jpg


A close up of the left side. As you can see its mostly wood underneath. On the far right is the flood light, a really old one at that. Since it wasn't working, I thought about taking that down but wasn't sure if I would have messed anything up and plus I'd have to go through that yellow instillation. The big wires you see in my first post in the attic is mostly from the flood light. If you look closer you'll see a patch of white ducktape in front of the camera, that was a 2nd hole I was trying to get to while trying to avoid that boxed area in the attic. I still ended up hitting that area and wasn't able to run cables through it, so I ended up reusing the old camera hole I made from my old camera. I just didn't expect the new camera to cover this well in that spot compared to the old camera. The IPC-HDW5231R-ZE is a great front yard camera, which is why I plan to move it up a bit.
IMG_20200703_173815224_HDR.jpg




Heres a closer look of the wooding
IMG_20200703_174314194.jpg

So what can be done without me injuring myself(or my wallet)?
Edit:
Also I haven't sat down and read everyone's replies yet, just wanted to post these pic real quick.
 
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I'd bet you can work through that vent both to snake into the attic and to snake over to the corner. I think the floodlight might be in the way, though.

Personally, I'd consider exiting out of the soffit and running the cable behind the corner molding of the siding to get the camera lower for better ID. You'd need a siding wedge to mount the camera, but that's pretty minor.

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samplenhold said:
@Sunny7 It might help if you post a pic or two of the soffit area and corner from outside.

Also, I have had good luck using an endoscope mounted on the fish rod. It allows you to view what is going on inside. I use it on my iPad. Has helped out a lot for running Cat5e and lots of other things around the house and RV.

Click to expand...
I've got the almost identical Depstech endoscope and it came in very handy last year to locate a sheet metal screw rattling around in the bottom of a new clothes dryer. I must admit I didn't think of using it the way you did but I can definitely see now where it could help in certain situations...thanks!

+1 regarding an image or 2; I asked the same thing in the second post....a picture is worth..well, you know the rest. :cool:
 
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sebastiantombs said:
I'd bet you can work through that vent both to snake into the attic and to snake over to the corner. I think the floodlight might be in the way, though.

Personally, I'd consider exiting out of the soffit and running the cable behind the corner molding of the siding to get the camera lower for better ID. You'd need a siding wedge to mount the camera, but that's pretty minor.

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Click to expand...
I would go for the sidings but this home's siding panels need to be replaced at some point as they are starting to break off. In fact, this was on my last list of to do list since its not an issue at the moment and still have some more really important home repairs I need to take care of first(When you put off doing stuff for so long, things start to add up lol). So I feel like I still may have to continue going for the soffit unless I see some other mounting method.

I may not get perfect face detection but the tripwire function has become very useful to me. Its a very small quite neighborhood and barely any cars go by as there's only 1 entry/exit with very few people outside other than doing yard work and even better, rarely see any animals roaming around so stuff like tripwire, anti-loitering, etc. is really perfect for this kind of neighborhood added to the fact that the IPC-HDW5231R-ZE has a wider range, really helps cover more ground. As I get more cameras I may change them around for different functions but for now I just need to get to a hole outside.

As for tools, for years I've thought about getting a snake cam. I just never went through on getting 1 lol. You bet I'm kicking myself for not getting 1 sooner. I'll post an updated pic on what I'm planning later.



Edit:
Alright, these are the 2 camera placement methods I was thinking about

Camera 1, I move it up to the front. Camera 2 and 4, I saw the idea on tv by having 2 cameras covering each other's blind spot by placing them back to back where camera 2 will cover the right(I tried to make it look like it was covering the right more) while camera 4 will cover, not only the driveway but also the side door and can see who's at the side door more easily. As for camera 3, the reason its the 3rd camera is because it, along with camera 1 and 2, is important I cover those areas first. A 5th camera in that area would be great for things like face detection as a camera can't be seen unless someone walks up to the door and their face is smack dab up for the camera to see.
wUYQsNY_ex1.jpg




A 2nd method I had in mind was this placing cameras in the center facing forward. It seems simple and nowhere near the corners but I'm not sure how they would look. I'll have to do some testing later on. Another thing I thought of was drilling holes in the same spots as Method 2 but having the cameras placed the same as method 1 and I just pull the cables from the cameras to the holes in method 2, into the attic. Only down side to this is my cables would be exposed and probably going to need mounts to keep the connectors hidden unless I still drill a center hole and place the connectors in the soffit and just pull and run the cat cable outside. Though, it just seems like it'll be a lot easier to just go with method 1 and fish better + a snake cam.
wUYQsNY_ex2.jpg
 
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