How to Add Cable to a Room

When you invest in the materials such as coaxial cable and a cable television signal splitter, remember that better quality equipment will produce a higher resolution image.

1. Determine where your cable service enters your home. This is usually the basement or the attic. To do this start at your cable box on your house, and follow the wire until you see where it enters your home. Once you trace it into your home, you should see the wire hooked up to another cable that enters a room. If you have multiple connections coming from your cable wire, then there will be a splitter on the wire and multiple coaxial cables connected to it.

2. Map the straightest path from your cable connection to the room you want to go to. If you have a basement connection and you have a first floor room you would like to wire, then you can come up through the basement floor into the room. But if you have a basement connection and a second floor room, then you will need to become creative at how you can drop the wire from the second floor to the first floor without needing to do major remodeling. Use masking tape and a pencil to mark where your you will be drilling.

3. Drill holes in the floors as per your markings by using a power drill equipped with a 5/8 inch drill bit. To drill through a rug make a small cut in the rug with a utility knife, and then drill down through the cut.

4. Drop the coaxial cable through the holes in the floor until it reaches the connection in the basement.

5. Attach a cable television signal splitter to the source cable, and then attach your room cables to the splitter as well. If the cable company has already put a splitter on your signal then just use that.