Hi All, Does anyone have any advice on cutting channels in brick walls for conduit. Two friends of mine have recommended using a small angle grinder to cut two slots in the brickwork and then chisel out the middle.
I'm not too worried about mess as the house is a bit of a building site anyway.
Thanks in advance, Martin
============================= Certainly not adviseable, Conduit is hidden when plasterd over.
Grouch
Agreed but how else do you conceal wires between floors, especially if there are no cupboards. I'd have thought its excepted these days to find wires buried in walls. The instillation of any product requiring the drilling of a hole in a wall usually recommends you check there are no wires or pipes hidden.
Martin.
======================================= When people say check for any Wiring buried in the Wall does not mean exactly that, what they mean is under the plaster.
As for this point can you be a bit more elaborate.? How do you conceal wires between floors, especially if there are no cupboards.
Grouch
I have several (50+) CAT5 cables to get from the ground floor to the first floor. There are no cupboards on the ground floor so running them up a wall in a cupboard is out of the question. So my only option is to run them up the wall in the hall way. The plaster is only about 1/2" thick so unless I run several pieces of slim conduit I need to run maybe two pikes of 40mm x
30mm conduit. I am planning on cutting 35mm into the wall which will involve cutting the brick as well as the plaster. To I will end up with a 5mm skim of plaster over the conduit.Martin.
Messy, but gets the job done.
A diamond wall chaser, expensive though.
Only if you're daft enough to put parts of your body in the blade whilst it's spinning!
Yes, but they're seriously underpowered for any decent work, stick to a mains one.
It will be once you get a grinder in! ..
SJW A.C.S. Ltd.
Not your only option, but certainly the most aesthetic.
Do you mean channeling, this is nailed over cables then plastered over.Conduit is a round pipe fixed to walls by cleats.
Why not hire a wall chaser from the hire shops, if you have quite a bit to do its worth it. Shouldnt take long with a wide, thin, flat bolster chisel though. rob
Depends on what you mean by better.... ;-)
Several choices (in no particular order):
Hammer & chisel - not too much dust, but hard to impossible work depending on your bricks.
Angle grinder - if you go this route then invest in a diamond blade for it - they cut cleaner, faster, and with less mess (they make a thinner cut - so less material in the air). One diamond blade will also outlast many many (probably hundreds) of "ordinary" abrasive discs)
Channelling bit in a SDS drill (hammer mode) - less mess and less airborne dust. The special bits also also let you extend channels behind skirting etc. May not be up to much with hard brick though.
Bolster bit in SDS drill, not as neat as above - but the bits are cheaper and it will hack harder brick if required. May also be better if you want a channel of "non standard" width.
Wall chaser - some of the beasties are like a pair of angle grinder diamond discs spinning side by side so they cut parallel lines. They also have much better (i.e. some!) shrouding to allow for dust collection.
Either of the last 3 would be preferable to the straight angle grinder I would have thought.
nope - not especially - try to avoid using any major limbs as a blade brake though.
For the sort of job you describe a mains powered one would be the only sensible option.
It is hard to describe the amount of dust (thick heavy stuff that settles *everywhere*) you will create with a grinder in a confined space. Put it this way - by the time you have cut 2 meters of slot, you will not be able to see the wall in front of your face - let alone where you are cutting!
In message , Martin writes
Did you really mean 50? (yes, I can quite see how you could be using that many, just checking really - it's rather more than 'several')
Not necessarily a bad idea.
An angle grinder will work, but it will create a massive amount of very fine dust. Having done this once I would try to avoid doing so in the future, I certainly would only try to do it again in an unoccupied house with a lot of other works going on.
It is safe enough (as angle grinding goes) my main problem was actually seeing the wall, once I was halfway up though dust caked goggles...............
I can't say I've seen a cordless anglegrinder, but I'm sure they are around, but will lack some oomph I suspect. A basic mains one is cheap enough.
You can get wall chasers which will do a better job, and make a a less mess, you could hire one.
An alternative is a SDS drill with a couple of chisel bits. The ease of this option depends on the hardness of the bricks. I wouldn't want to do is every day but as a one of it'd be ok. If you don't have an SDs drill, then I would think someone running 50 CAT5 cables around the house is probably doing enough work to justify one.
For that many wire's I'd probably run them up in a corner of the room, and box them off (then plaster over and decorate). There's bound to be a location where it wouldn't look out of place - like in a corner next to a door.
Mal
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