Unwiring our house.

[mem-winterhill.livejournal.com]

I know this is an odd situation to hear about--but I have a feeling we aren't unique in the city.

We have an old house, and over the years it has been rental property on-and-off. There have been phone lines, new phone lines, cable, different cable, another cable company, electrical lines, satellite dishes, OTA antenna... And on and on. Certainly some of the installed lines were done by companies that no longer exist.

Periodically these are now falling off the house. One time we called 911 during a storm because we didn't know which it was. One time someone else must have called because a fire truck showed up here and I was baffled, but they said someone called in a down line. I still don't know what it was, but the truck left.

We wanted to "unwire" the house safely, but we can't figure out how. I called the city and they told me it would be an electrician we have to hire. Fine--but when we tried that, the electrician was hesitant to touch the stuff, and a lot of it wasn't electrical and would need addressing from the overhead street lines. He said we should call up the cable companies and demand they come and remove stuff. But which ones?

Today we've had another line start to drift down into a tree. I am not sure what to do. Has anyone unwired old wiring from their house successfully? It's crazy to have the fire department keep coming out for this nonsense.

Comments

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

Yes I did the same thing you are attempting now; though I did this 10 years ago when I first got my house and your home sounds a bit more "wired" than mine was. This is actually a pet peeve of mine when I see the multitude of wires, dishes and boxes on homes but as you said it being a rental for a good few years I believe the cable/phone/internet companies usually come in and do whatever is quickest to get the service up and running- I was even told by a friend who works for comcast to keep an eye on the tech hooking up new service for my other unit.

I assume you currently have 1 or 2 wires that are of use and the others are all dead; I unattached a very old phone wire and tied it to my fence where another rcn cable I rolled up and hung on the first rung of the telephone pole. If I can remember the companies themselves had no interest in cleaning up the mess on the poles. I basically have only one wire for each unit now coming from the pole at the same point where it goes into the home; but i had wired the home on the inside for all tv/internet.

I can come by and look it over with you if you want, it would be no trouble- just contact me thru here

[mem-winterhill.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks, that's nice. Yeah--sounds like you have the same scenario. It's actually not even possible to explore half of them right now because of snowbanks along the side of the house.

I guess I was hoping there was a legal, insured, city-approved strategy that we just hadn't figured out yet. But if it is essentially home brew, we'll keep your offer in mind.

[jicama]

I had success with calling RCN (my cable provider) and asking them to remove extra cables.

[mem-winterhill.livejournal.com]

But you were a current customer, I assume? I wonder if they'll be open to doing services for non-customers. I don't even know if they were the provider.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

You will have a hard time getting them to remove wires from a house if you are not a customer. I had to do it for a construction project. I had to call pretending to be the tenant who had the account, and even then I was chasing them for awhile. When the Comcast guy came to do it, he was nice enough to remove the RCN and Verizon (landline) wires while he was at it, but if not, my only recourse would have probably been to remove the wire myself and wrap it around the pole as the other commenter suggested.

Regarding your issues of the hornet's nest on the side of the house instead of the wire running to the house, you need to figure out what needs to stay or go through testing.

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

Technically the only wires that should be electrical or have a significant current are the power lines that come from the street to your house