Home Automation - Find pre-wired cables

Mine is a new home that has a central wiring closet where all the phones and cables terminated. It has a small patch panel in there as well.

I want to put a TV in a room that I didn't order a cable outlet before the house was built. I "think" the builder did wire every room even though I didn't order outlet in every room. However, I am not sure.... how can I be certain? I think I can use a cable toner but can I tone out a cable behind a dry wall? In that room where I want to put a TV in, there is a phone jack and I was hoping to find a cable end behind the phone plate but there isn't.

More than likely if you don't have a blank plate in there, you don't have cable in there. You're not going to find a coax cable just hanging in the wall, they are always terminated at a box, which then has to be covered by a plate. So if it's not in the phone, and you don't have a blank plate, you probably don' t have cable.

That doesn't mean you don't have options, however. If this wall is shared with a bedroom or another room that does have cable on the same wall, you could always split the signal from that box.
You could run a cable under the trim and carpet around the edge of the room. Or, of course, you could go through the attic or crawl-space to get to the wall. I guarantee you have a lot of options for running the cable if you have to.

Now, to answer your question, yes you can use a Toner to find coax cable in a wall. You may only get a faint signal if it's against the back of the wall, but if you use a brand new battery, you should be able to find it.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

Silly question...you didn't take any pictures before they put up the drywall that you've forgotten about, didya?

Yeah, you're right Karen, that IS a silly question :) J/K. Actually, I think what Gary is saying is that he bought a house that the builder wired for him. The builder SAID he wired all the rooms, but Gary can't find the wires. So he's trying to find a cable in this room. Having experience pre-wiring houses (and wiring phone and cable outlets) I'm going to guess that no one has any pictures of the pre-drywall stages or wiring. No one thinks that far ahead :) But wouldn't it be great if we did??? Oh well, you know what they say about hind sight...

well a lesson for me... I should have ask for detail diagram during the final walkthough. Guess too late. There are like a dozen coaxil cables (not terminated) in the wiring closet w/o labels. There are only 4 cable outlets so I have no clue where the others hookup to.

Tried using the toner but signal too weak.

Talked to the company who contracted by the builder to do all the wiring... they don't have wiring diagram as well. They could come and give me quote though... every nice of them :eek:

Check your local codes to see if they were supposed to terminate all the phone/cable outlets in a box. If so, then make them come back and find the cables/wires for you and put them in boxes. I know in GA you can't just leave the coax for cable/satellite hanging in the wall, it has to terminate in a box somewhere. You can however leave it in the attic, did you check there? Make sure they didn't just leave it tied up in the attic somewhere for later use. You should be able to track down some of those wires in there.

Regarding termination - does this apply to cable closets as well? Currently I have most of my RG-6 runs hanging in a closet under my stairs -- they don't need to be connected, so they're not. And while I could certainly terminate them in a box, it seems rather silly to me since I'd then have to add a patch cable from a splitter/amp to the wall connection if I did need to activate them.

Also, where are the codes for this? The city of Roswell just makes vague references to standard codes, but I wasn't aware of the 1999 NEC covering low voltage wiring in detail.

This is just for new homes, for the final inspection. If a company goes into a new home and wires it with phone and cable, they have to end the run in a box (not necessarily terminate it - I was using that more as a layman's term.) In other words, you can't just leave coax and phones hanging in a wall somewhere in the bedrooms, you have to put the ends in a box. Of course, for homeowners, it's totally up to them. Does that make more sense?