Feeding Cable Through Wall

[transeurope]

When you feed a cable through a wall, how do you fill in the gap? Particularly if the cable has a plug larger in diameter than the cable?

Your advice would be appreciated...

[Frank Watson]

A plug that's larger in diameter than the cable? Remarkable...

[Nick Nelson]

Polyfilla, or you could put the plug on afterwards.

Nick

[Dave Plowman]

Anything with a plug on it means flex, and flex isn't meant to be treated as 'permanent' wiring so shouldn't be plastered in etc.

[Simon Avery]

Hello transeurope

Um...?

You don't. I can think of three exceptions:

1. A heated towel rail in a bathroom where you wouldn't have a plug anyway (a fused switch exterior)

1. Groundforce-style water feature plugging into a RCD in a house's socket. If this, cut off the plug, put it through the wall and replace the plug with a RCD plug (rather than a plug-through type that might get used elsewhere leaving your garden exposed)

2. Non mains equipment that you can't find a socket for (unlikely, they do 'em for cat5, phone, speakers etc in a variety of finishes). If that, cut, poke, rewire.

[transeurope]

My goodness it was a simple enough question! I can't believe the people had so many problems understanding it!

The plug that we are talking about is a SCART plug, it comes prewired onto a video camera, if you cut the cable you invalidate the warranty. Stupid, I know, but I don't make the rules...

Given the fact that many of these cameras are obviously worth only a few RMB when they leave the factory in China, I would far rather not give them the excuse of invalidating the warranty when one of them inevitably breaks down during the year.

I am sure someone is going to tell me how perfectly pleasant Argos or B&Q were after they had cut the cable and the camera broke down. I too have had excellent customer service occasionally from these outlets. I have also had some right plonkers deal with me, so I was wondering if anyone had come up with a solution.

Also, please note that my original post said "particularly" when the plug has a much larger diameter than the cable, not "exclusively". Holes in walls should be filled in under all circumstances, IMHO and I was looking for recommendations as to what people use.

Believe it or not, I had thought of cutting the cable. I doubt if the people who chose to unleash a torrent of sarcasm will have anything meaningful to say now that I have outlined the problem in big letters so they can read it slowly enough to understand. If anyone does have a meaningful solution to my original post, I would be most grateful.

Sorry for the length of this post. My original post was brief, succinct and polite. I am sorry I have been forced to use this amount of space to accommodate people who failed to read it.

Thanks to Nick for answering my original post and giving a succinct and polite reply. Polyfilla would have been my initial thought also, but perhaps there are other options? A special word of merit to Simon for for being so ingenious in finding ways of not answering my question....

[chris French]

In message , transeurope writes

Maybe this tells you something about the clarity of your original post?

Then maybe saying why that wasn't an option would have been a good idea? It was inevitable that someone would mention that.

What are you on about?

I've just re-read the previous replies - one could be considered to have been sarcastic, and then only mildy so IMO. Others may both have answered the question you thought you were asking (or even have been off the topic), but they were not sarcastic.

Well by being so rude to people who were trying to help you've probably guaranteed that .......

As were the replies.

Has it not occurred to you that people misunderstood what was being asked because your post was not clear?

For instance some people thought that you meant a mains cable on an appliance - there is nothing in your post to indicate that this was not the case - if it had been then the advice given would have been very useful.

What sort of wall is it internal or external?

[transeurope]

People didn't jump to any conclusion. They merely let their imagination run rampant rather than reading the question and displayed their "wit". I phrased it the way I did so it would be of help to others who may face a similar problem not involving video cameras, who may be looking through the archive.

The question was about feeding cable through a wall. I was hoping to maximise the utility of the post in deja, as I have often found topic headings misleading, and the search facility less than helpful. I do try to read through archives before posting. In fact I have never had to ask a question in this group before, I found all my answers in the archive.

I don't think I mentioned cementing it in. I presume that Polyfilla would be easy enough to poke out again? I have also purchased some kind of cement sealer. Anybody have any experience of this? It comes in a gun similar to what silicon sealant comes in.

I am hoping that neither sets as hard as cement. Obviously I would be in trouble if I used that.

[Richard Caley]

t> The question was about feeding cable through a wall. I was hoping to t> maximise the utility of the post in deja, as I have often found topic t> headings misleading, and the search facility less than helpful.

There is such a thing as a question which is too general. Given the number of different kinds of cable and wall that exist your's was clearly well up there with `how can I fix my car'.

[Chris Hodges]

In this circumstance (and btw well done for coming up with a situation none of us thought of for a non-wireable plug) I would buy+cut/make a scart-scart extension, and thread the cable through the wall before terminating.

If that's not an option, then a big hole and possibly foam filler with polyfilla on top, or nail scrapwood to back the polyfilla (you could also replace polyfilla with 1-coat plaster for economy.

[Andy Dingley]

Depends - Will you ever need to open the hole up again for further cabling ? Is the hole visible, and needs to be neat ?

Easy way is a squirt of intumescent mastic, so as to maintqain the firebreak integrity (Screwfix do it - not expensive). If it's a particularly large hole, then a couple of plugs of plasterboard can fill up most of the hole first.

If it's a large hole (probably a removed brick) with regular cable access needed, then I make a pair of screwed-down fixed doors to go over the mess. These are a square of thin ply backed with two layers of plasterboard, screwed in place and sealed with intumescent.

[Christian McArdle]

You will find that if you leave out the specifics, you'll get a lot of guesswork and it will go off topic quickly. What works for a SCART lead doesn't work for another type of cable. Even if you don't realise the importance of information, so leave it out, others might.

For example, you have since introduced the requirement to remove the lead subsequently, which is a very important difference compared with the original question and would lead to a different solution. You'll probably damage the cable trying to remove Polyfilla, so you should probably use a different technique, such as plasterboard, which wouldn't work if it is an external wall. etc.

Christian.

[Mark Evans]

Usually it's easier to fit the plug after running the cable :)

[Robin Prater]

I would buy+cut/make a

You can buy all the bits from CPC or Maplin. A chassis mounting socket would be fairly easy to fit on a standard plate and you don't need all 21 pins. Connections are:

1 Audio out Rt 2 Audio in Rt 3 Audio out Lt 4 Audio Common ground

6 Audio in Lt

16 Fast video blanking 17 Video ground 18 blanking ground 19 Video out 20 Video in

Use lap screened cable for the audio and RG59 for the video

Robin