My niece's bungalow is being rewired by electricians. While they're grooving the plaster I may as well add some conduit for phone, internet and video.
I'm thinking of channels coming down from the roofspace, Is there stuff I can use so we can poke down wires with the fittings already attached, so we can buy a standard phone extension lead and push it down or up?
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short straight runs, eg ceiling to socket or underfloor to socket, [16mm oval conduit will generally accept a couple of networking or [aerial cables comfortably. For a looser fit, go up to 22mm oval or 20mm [ round.
but I guess that is just for bare wires without the plugs on the ends.
george [dicegeorge] wibbled on Thursday 08 April 2010 22:39
I think I added that bit. Yes, without plugs[1]. When I chose to do what you're planning, I wondered what the best conduit size would be.
I used round 20mm in few places where it was easy, but in most places the plaster was deep enough to take oval but nothing thicker and frankly I couldn't be arsed to hack away at the bricks more than necessary.
16mm oval tucks nicely though a 20mm knockout (bit of cable protection from the metal hole edges, though a grommit would work too, but poking though ensures it stays in the right place when the plasterer makes good) - so to be sure I wasn't shooting myself in the foot, I tried a few cable types and, provided you don't kink the conduit (gentle bends are OK):
1) TV aerial cable is fine, probably two side by side may be possible but very tight, though most people wouldn't need two.
2) 2 Cat5E cables are fine. cat6 and cat7 untested...
3) 2 or 3 core mains flex (6A IIRC) - handy for dropping extra low voltage power to something if T+E is too stiff, eg some types of electronic thermostat.
4) Any size of T+E upto 2.5mm2 for sure (I used 20mm and 25mm round where I knew bigger CSA cable was needed).
I hope you told the sparkies to stick the T+E in oval conduit too for the tuppence-ha'penny it costs... You'll probably never benefit, but the day a drill goes through that cable you'll be glad :)
[1] Two ways around this: buy or borrow suitable crimps or solder/crimp a joint into the cable and hide it in the backbox. With network cables (as in carrying ethernet at 100 or gig speeds) jointing is often not a good idea, but you *can* use a Krone splice block which is an IDC punchdown for two network cables and get predicable performance - Krone is a bit like the back of a BT socket. OTOH, why not just punch down the cable into the back of a proper Cat5 plate and plug the device in? For a few, you can manage with a crappy plastic phone IDC tool perfectly well as opposed to the offical metal punch-n-snip device.
For phone lines, solder or crimps and heatshrink is fine and not hard. If you really want to poke plugs down, that will be 20mm round at least I reckon. You could nip into B&Q as I did and try a few combinations...
When the conduit's fitted, put all the cables you want /outside/ of it and plaster over. Then you've got all your first batch of cables there plus space for more as well later.
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