I have a cabinet recessed into the wall of my garage where all of our TV, phone and ethernet cables come together and are terminated. The house is 20 years old and had 2 Coax for DirecTV, an ethernet cable and a phone line run to pretty much every room. So there are currently about 15-20 Coax cables and 15 Cat5e/Cat6 cables coming down through the double top plate of the wall where that cabinet is located.
I am going to install a new switch, router, modem etc. in the room above the garage and will need to run about 20 patch cables up from the punch down modules in the cabinet to the switch in that room. Unfortunately, there isn't much room left to drill more holes in the top plate. I came up with 3 routes that might work:
- I could try and pull most of the Coax cable which is no longer being used back up through the top plate and use those holes. This might be tough because I don't know if they are attached to the studs or how well the terminated ends will fit back through the holes.
- I could disconnect the Ethernet cables that are coming from upstairs and send them back up and terminate them in a patch panel at the new location. But there are only 10 cables coming down so I don't think that will give me the room I need for 20 patch cables.
- I could come out of the wall with conduit and go up through the ceiling and bypass the top plate. I'd prefer to keep everything hidden in the wall, but this may be my only option.
I thought I would check and see if anyone else had run into this issue of trying to get many wires down through a top plate before and if there is another option I haven't considered? The garage has a storage truss roof and the wall in question is an interior wall (not at the outer edges of the trusses) so I don't believe it is load bearing. Maybe that gives more flexibility in terms of more holes in the top plate?
Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks!
