Ducting in the walls

Hi all, I'm building a one off house which I want to wire for home automation (computers, telephone, internet,etc...). I have designed in a Comms room to house all the routers, hubs, telephone switch etc.. and this will be placed on the ground floor (the house is a dormer style bungalow). I intend to run two sets of channel ducting along just under the roofing thruses in the attic (the full length of the house). From these I intend to drop pipes (perhaps water mains piping or something simular that is approx 1

1/2 inch and plyable from these ducts to carry CAT "V" etc.... however while upstairs will be studded partitions where I can route the piping through, I will however be using 4" or 100mm solid block for all internal ground floor walls. Does anybody know what's the best way to incorporate the piping with blockwork and still end up with no ducting showing above a plastered wall and all sockets that are flush mounted.

Regards

Seamus Mc Loughlin

Reply to
Seamus Mc Loughlin
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I usually use 35mm metal boxes and put 25mm electrical conduit up the wall into the void. You may need to cut the conduit into the wall slightly to avoid protusion. ..

SJW A.C.S. Ltd.

Reply to
Lurch

Ho hum.

I'll make a couple of points here.

(i) I have never ever moved into an office with 'ducting for cables' where it proved possible to actially use the ducting. Its always blocked, in the wrong place, inadequate diameter or some other reason.

(ii) the easiest way to work on a ne house is to lay millions of cables everywhere, mark each end, and coil them up for later use. Forget ducting, just lay cables.

(iii) rat sruns in teh loft are teh easiest way to achieve horizontal coverahge. In my case I boarded out the loft and ave pipes and cables in wooden ducts stuffed full of insulation. These keep the pipes warm. Mains cables are laid over the insulation for cooling.The divts run under the eaves mainly.

(iv) you may find it more prtactical to dry line the block walls downstairs, and use the void as cable space. Otherwise if you are buliding from scratch, you can lay cables under nailed on capping for small volumes, before plastering. Another option is to simply leave a vertical gap in the wall, or buld a fals pillar, and drop wires down that - use plasterboard to cover the gap and skim. Or chase cahnnels fo trunking down the walls if using the celcon type soft internal wall blocks.

(v) Ultimately, hard wire as much as you can and accept the last 5% will require ripping and chasing and making good.

(vi) Don't forget loudspeaker wires for surround sound systems. Or co-ax for TV. Ive got a far bit of that STILL coiled up unused..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Then again, if you'd done this 8 years ago, you may have put in 10baseT cables, ... all of which are as much use as a chocolate teapot, and you'd need to replace with cat5 now. How long will cat5 be viable?

Reply to
Ian Stirling

I would consider anyone putting in Cat3 8 years ago short-sighted...

I have seen various figures quoted for this but basically it comes down to how long you think gigabit ethernet will be sufficient for your needs (10Gig ethernet runs only on fibre in practice).

I can imagine the main bandwidth-intensive application for home networking being high quality audio/video distribution in the nearish future. You can just about get 100 DVD-quality streams down gigabit ethernet at the same time.

So, until it is commonplace to distribute video in a domestic situation at very much higher bandwidth rates than DVD currently uses you will probably be safe with Cat 5. (Well Cat5e if you are going to be picky)

Reply to
Alistair Riddell

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