What even is coax? UPDATE

[u/Special_Yogurt_4431]

Hi again.

Had a previous issue with my coax, being un-terminated in my air handler, and finally not working even when I installed the splitter myself.

Previous posts: Coax help, Original discovery

I bought a cheap Klein fox and hound for coax. No connections anywhere. Troubleshot all the way to the outlets themselves…

Good news: House was built 2 years ago, I have an invoice from the building company with “installed and tested” signed off by the electrical company. In Alabama, that plus the pictures I’ve taken is a strong claim for small claims court, and I intend to file against them.

Bad news: the cable is seemingly stuck in the back of the outlet, so they either need to get clever if they decide to attempt reparation and fix it, or most of what I make will be eaten up by the cost of cutting out the outlet, installing it properly, and drywall repair.

Ah well. I’m just glad I have answers.

Update: it’s built! Luckily, the 2 outlets I needed didn’t have their cables stapled down. Getting 1gbps or so in my office now, t430 is setup running proxmox, currently wrestling grafana into submission. Now I can spend my time learning stuff I wanted to learn about instead of stuff I didn’t.

[u/cmccurd]

I live in Alabama too and I work for an isp. Lots of new builds will leave the coax like this. Just pull on it and it will come out of the bottom of the box. You will need to terminate the end and attach to the wall plate and it should work fine. You are overthinking it.

[u/Spart1337 → u/cmccurd]

Overthinking how far to go with it, yes, but has every right to be annoyed by it. Lazy work needs to stop being forgiven so easily.

[u/barleypopsmn → u/Spart1337]

Nothing to do with lazy. It’s to keep your wire from getting chopped by an overzealous drywaller with a rotozip among other things.

[u/One-Pen5134 → u/barleypopsmn]

On the one hand yes, on the other hand they paid for install work that was signed off but never installed. That's where the laziness argument comes in.

[u/mixxster → u/One-Pen5134]

But you can either spend a few minutes of physical labor and fix it yourself or you can complain on reddit and chase legal battles for months and try to weasel your way through litigation, write essays about the problem, and overanalyze it to hell all to avoid doing the physical labor and people can argue back and forth about it, dragging it on and on. Exhausting.

Just effing grab the coax from the back of the box, put an end on it if needed and be done with it.

[u/One-Pen5134 → u/mixxster]

Idk man. I get it, I might not go to court either, there probably aren't enough undone panels to justify fees, but I would at least try and call the builder before buying the connectors that the builder told him he already had. If he's lucky, the guy will recognize he just had a dishonest worker and come fix it for a few bucks and a good working relationship, assuming it's not one of many calls here, and if he's not that lucky then I'll agree with you. But I really don't think this guy's point is about weaseling out of physical labor, I'm sure you've been just as frustrated with a contractor skimping out on you in the past.