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Just4Fun20 · 02-20-2018, 02:22 PM

Everyone here has been great. I thought I'd give back a bit and let people know what I did about running cables.

First, I'm an engineer, a geek and I'm still working so I needed wiring for a cell phone antenna plus Ethernet cable both to the basement (and soon up to the roof).

I'm sure it's possible to run cables into the slides. It's easy to see the trays but I opted not to do that. My floor plan is 44W but it probably doesn't matter.

I chose to go up through the center bathroom floor. In my rig there's a large vent in the kitchen. This basically leads under the cabinet in the bathroom. It comes off easily. There are two screws but you only need to remove one. Inside is a lot of room maybe 2 feet by 1 foot. It's only 4, or so, inches tall, but lots of room to run cables.

I (carefully) measured (twice... or more) and drilled a hole up through the basement. NOTE - don't use a spade drill bit, instead use a small hole saw. The layers make the spade bit not work well.

This gave me access from the basement to the inside. I used a waterproof plastic conduit box to keep things sealed up, gluing and screwing it into place. I put a router under the sink in the bathroom, along with some other gear (like a cell phone amplifier).

I have some gear (server and printer) right under that in the basement but one of my challenges was to get cabling to the roof of the rig. In this case a cell phone omni-directional antenna. I mounted it on the front side of the fiberglass piece on the back. That is... if you head to the very back there a a fiberglass faring across the entire back. On the front of that is a vertical surface. I mounted the Omni antenna there.

For cabling I drilled I hole in that same vertical surface and again used a plastic conduit box to keep things water tight. Routing the cable down through though the fiberglass enclosure was a challenge and required a wire snake. I cheat a bit and use one of those little cameras. You can pick them up for under $30. It has the advantage of having a light on it, which I used to help me find the end. I drilled a second hole down in the engine compartment. There are a bunch of wires and hoses going up into that space, all sealed with foam. I went up next to all that. NOTE, I left a string in place so that I can easily pull additional cables in the future.

From there it was a matter of running it, through the cable runs, around the engine and forward through the middle. I went out in the wheel well, just in front of the front axle. I had to drill a hole there an then came in over the top of the water tank. Pretty easy from there to go forward into the main compartment.

I hope that's clear, for anyone interested. Probably the biggest revelation was how easy it was to go up through the floor into the bathroom. Now I have a WiFi booster (currently ground mounted but I'll run a cable up to the roof for it too) and a Cell Phone booster (with Omni antenna on the roof) built into the coach. I have a Yagi for the cell phone and I can use that for weaker signals. It uses the same cable so I'll just disconnect the Omni and hook up the Yagi. I also mounted a cell phone panel antenna on the roof of the RV. The amplifier whip antenna's were OK but the flat panel is better and give better signal separation from the roof mounted omni (or yagi).

As a reminder, I'm still working so connectivity is important. Not everyone needs to go through all this effort.

Good day all.