1. Home
  2. Home Repair
  3. Exposed Romex wiring - drilling into beam to hide wire?
  4. Page 2

Exposed Romex wiring - drilling into beam to hide wire?

Totally illegal and bush-league. If you can pull the wire back up and drill through the beam, it would be MUCH better.

Reply to
clare
Loading thread data ...

OR - Cut flush to the stud. Cut patch 4 inches larger in both directions. Cut the back paper of the patch in 2 inches on all sides and break of the rock, leaving the front paper. Butter the back of the front paper and the edges of the rock, pop the patch in and squeegee the overlapped paper, blend in the paper, sand lightly and repaint.

Reply to
clare

Maybe you could do that, but my sheet rock skills..............I don't have any sheet rock skills.

That would be a pretty big hot patch. No?

Reply to
Metspitzer

If your sheet rock skillz are really good, you can save the patch if you overlap the studs.

Reply to
Metspitzer

This method is so SIMPLE and makes a virtually invisible patch. It works even in the middle of a panel, far from studs - fill a hole where someone stuck a fist through the wall, where a doorknob knocked through, or where you need to open a wall to pull a wire. - or a ceiling to fix a plumbing leak, or whatever. Try it, and you'll never try another way to fix a hole in drywall. I know I won't.

Reply to
clare

Hi, There is you tube demo for that particular patch work.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

main room and then into the wall to power 3 different outlets. We'd like t o redrill the attic holes to be behind the wall so this wire isn't exposed. There appears to be a ~4inch beam that we'll need to drill through (I am a ssuming this is why the wire comes into the room and then snakes back into the wall - to avoid this beam?) Is this a problem to drill three small hole s in the center of this beam? any advice is appreciated! --

Putting/working a piece of wood slightly larger than the hole size behind t he hole and screwing it to the existing sheet rock makes a good backing for a new piec of sheet rock to patch/fill the hole. Some white glue in the c rack between the existing sheet rock and the patch will make future hairlin e cracks less likely, then apply mud and finish like any other blemish in a wall.

Reply to
hrhofmann

That's called a top-plate. Yes you can drill a 3/4" or 1" hole through it for two 12 AWG Romex cables. If the second cable (the white

4-conductor one for the switched circuit) also needs to come down, drill a separate hole at least 1" away from the other. Do all the drilling first before pushing the wire down one hole, you don't want to nick a wire by drilling a second hole next to one that's already filled.
Reply to
G. Morgan

I agree too.

I don't understand this.

Besides removing plaster you could notch the wood if space is needed. maybe that's what Oren is saying.

If it is code-legal.

I ran some Romex down an outside wall, and got stuck at a fire-break. I did what was done with your place, and 25 years later, still no permanent repair. Not as ugly as yours, though, OP, and the sideways part under the window I did correctly. . When I'm ready to die, I'll let the new owners fix it.

Oh yeah, at the ceiling too, but smaller and neater than yours. I tried for hours to drill a hole in the top plate of the wall. Soffitts only

10" or so, so roof very close to plate. I think I could do it now with the smaller right angle drill attachment I have, and by starting with a smaller drill bit, but anyhow, drilling in at an angle I thought I'd succeeded when I suddenly thought, maybe the drill went through the outside wall. And sure enough it was sticking out of the house. I patched that with brown latex caulk that matched the house and 29 years later, it hasn't shrunk a bit and is still unnoticeable.
Reply to
micky

Good grief.

A - It's clearly drywall, not plaster

B - Electricians drill holes in studs, top plates, etc all the time. It's the perfectly normal way of running wire.

Reply to
trader4

There also flexible bits that help in situations like this.

formatting link

Many years ago I was running a network cable to my daughter's room. The easiest route was down from the attic, into her closet and then out through the bottom of the wall. It was easier to drill up through the closet ceiling than down from the attic, so I measured everything exactly and marked my location. The attic has plywood on the floor but not all the way to side walls. I knew that I would feel the long drill bit drill through the ceiling, then move freely through the joist bay and then drill through the plywood. That's exactly what I felt...sort of.

What actually happened is that I just missed the edge of the plywood floor and drilled through the roof sheathing. A simple cable run ended up with the extension ladder out and me crawling on the roof with a tube of roofing tar...in the rain.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

You obviously didn't read the previous posts in this thread or you'd have known he posted a link to the photos and not the pics themselves . -- Snag

Reply to
Snag

I've done that ... but for a patch bigger than 6x6 or so I get better results by screwing a piece of 1x2 lumber across the top and bottom or sides of the hole to screw the patch to then mud & tape . -- Snag

Reply to
Snag

Sorry I had that. Forgot to mention it, but that's how I could be in the attic and the bit was sticking a foot out of the wall 3 feet from the top of wall.

I also had the tool that would point the bit down, even if it was curved before entering the wall. What might have helped was a 3 foot flex bit instead of a 6 foot one, but the 6' worked for everything else.

I could probably get it right now, the part at the ceiling, and I could probably patch the part at the firebreak decently. Oh, well.

LOL. As bad as me.

Well I ddin't know you coudl use roofing tar in the rain, so some good came of this.

Reply to
micky

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.