Running cables through stud walls

We've just moved into a house that was converted from a bungalow a few years back; all the interior walls upstairs are plasterboard. I want to install a DAB aerial on the roof and ideally run the cable through the loft and down through the gap between the wall by our study. My draft action plan is:

Install aerial and run cable up to just above my study (need to find some method of measuring distances to ensure I'm in the right place) Drill a hole through to the cavity Drop cable down into cavity Drill hole through wall in study and attempt to locate cable Install wall mounted coax point

It all sounds fine in writing but I wonder whether I'm setting an achievable goal, so I'd welcome opinions from the experienced!

Regards, Chris

Reply to
Can2002
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the studwork ensures you wont have far to look - from above it's usually easy to see where you are in relation to the room beneath - drill through and drop a cord with a weight on it, this can be tapped on the floor if you really don't know where you are - you can then work out where your studs are and drill the access hole somewhere in between, using a straightened coat hanger you can fish for the cord - much simpler than it sounds

Reply to
Chris Oates

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ have fun....

I've never done this but how about dropping a plumb down there (it will hang nicely unlike the wire) and then attach the wire to the end of the plumb and pull it back up?? instead of trying to fine the wire

Reply to
Scott Mills

Thanks Chris

I've never worked with these walls before, but I'm guessing the studs are covered with a wooden beam (the other sections under the insulation have a foil-type surface on the top.

- you can then

I'll have to pluck up the courage and give it a try - my wife will kill me if I get it wrong!!

Regards, Chris

Reply to
Can2002

Cheers Scott!

Reply to
Can2002

In uk.d-i-y, Can2002 wrote:

Achievable - certainly; fiddly - also certainly. The long "wot I did in the last few days before getting back to work" screed I posted earlier today - "Adventures in Loft Land" or some such title - describes recent cable-fishing experience in gory detail. Those were all *internal* stud walls, i.e. plasterboard both sides; I'm assuming you have the same (since if it was an external wall you'd just come right through from outside, right?).

In which case: when you go up in the loft you'll probably be able to work out quite quickly from stable reference points - e.g. overflow pipes, end walls, etc. - roughly where the internal wall is. I find it a Good Idea to confirm the guess with a small hole drilled up through the edge of the ceiling - your smallest masonry bit at 4mm is plenty, or poke up with a bradawl - then feed a stiff bit of wire or similar (hell, bamboo BBQ skewer will do, you won't be using them in this weather ;-) up through it and see just where it pokes up. You can fill this hole with a dabette of Polyfilla or similar Later.

Now you know more certainly where the internal wall lies from the top. This is a good moment to cut the hole for the back box of your coax point where you want it; at "standard" wallbox size, about 7cm square, it's big enough to poke in fingers, and a tape measure to get a good idea of the depth of the cavity (tells you how far along from your trial hole to drill your down-hole). Plasterboard is easy enough to saw with a full-size hacksaw blade held in the gloved hand, or a sawblade you can get for Stanley knives, or similar: you certainly don't "need" a Rotozip cutter (though if your heart is set on one, far be it from me to stand between you and your tool-lust ;-) If you have a mirror narrow enough, you can now look up the cavity, shining a torch into it from a position close to your eye to carry the reflected light where you're looking. If the gods of d-i-y want to trip you up on a different part of the job, you'll find no noggins in the way. (If there are, you'll have to cut out little bits of pboard above each one, drill through at an angle, and then fill the hole, e.g. by gluing scrap bits of pboard or similar to the back of the neat piece you cut out, using glue/filler on the front side of those wings, and pulling it up against the inside surface of the pboard with a screw you put in the main bit of pboard, or a bit of string/wire looped through it; then fill the screwhole and edges when the glue/filler has set).

Now hie thee back into the loft; drill that hole in the pboard above the cavity, within a couple of inches horizontally-speaking of the exit hole you cut below, to increase your chances of fishing out the dropped cable. Drop in either the DAB downlead itself, or a handy-dandy bit of spare cable; something relatively heavy and neither very stiff nor utterly floppy is best. Attach a weight to the end if you like; I don't bother. It's useful to mark the vertical distance down to the exit hole on this dropped cable: then you know you've dropped enough (in practice drop at least a foot more, to allow for some gentle bending on the way down).

Now comes the fun bit: finding it in the cavity near to the exit hole. Working with an Assistant can help - one to drop, the other to watch and listen as it bumps and rattles its way down. But if you're working on your own, it's not too bad. You may be able to see the dropped cable near the exit hole (a white jacket shows up better in the gloom!); or you may be able to feel it if you're very lucky; or you may find an improvised hook at the end of a bit of wire coat-hanger brings you the dropped cable - worked for me on the very first attempt on one of this weekend's drops. Or you can try the uk.d-i-y Tape Measure Trick, which has worked for me in the past: feed a big loop of steel measuring tape, or the package-strapping which comes round your Screwfix parcels (favoured access tool of the car-nicking scrote), horizontally into the cavity, *before* you drop the Expeditionary cable. The aim is to get it to form a loop around the edges of the cavity. Now drop the cable, and pull the loop back out: with luck it'll bring the dropped cable with it.

At this point, with the dropped cable pulled through, relax with a beer, tea, or similar. Sod & Murphy will get you later anyway - e.g. making sure you cut the DAB downlead 50cm too short anyway, or by having your draw-wire part company from the DAB downlead even though you taped them together good&proper, or by arranging a lightning strike to take out aerial, downlead, and that nice new DAB tuner a week after you've put it in. So take your pleasures when you may...

Hope this helps - Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

It ain't easy! Stud partititions typically have uprights at 18" centres or thereabouts. But they also have horizontal studs - often at about one third and two thirds of the room height. So if you want to go from above ceiling level down to nearly floor level, you'll have to drill through not only the top member but also the two intermediate members - and I bet you don't have a long enough drill!

If you don't mind bringing the cable out near the ceiling rather than near the floor, or if you don't mind removing and making good a small piece of plasterboard in the region of each horizontal stud sufficient to get a drill in from the side, you might manage it.

Reply to
Set Square

Hi Stefak,

Thanks for all the top tips - I feel at least partially ready to embark now;-)

Regards, Chris

Reply to
Can2002

There are 2 caveats here ... either of which could P** on your chips.

First if three is any insulation in the studding, this will prevent the cable dropping ... I have always fully filled stud walls with insulation ... as it cuts down noise (now Blding regs requirement)

Secondly it is very unlikely that you will have uninterrupted space form the sole plate to the header ... i.e. between the top and bottom of the wall .... it is common practise ( and needed on plasterboard) to have intermediate horizontal noggins .... this would mean your cable would stop half way down where it meets the noggin.

Sorry if this is doom & gloom after the other positive posts ... but thought I would mention what could happen.

Rick

Reply to
Rick Hughes

Thanks Rick, I'd rather go in prepared for the worst! Out of interest, what appraoch would you take as an alternative?

Cheers, Chris

Reply to
Can2002

Cheers Set!

I have a stud detector somewhere so I'll dust it off and check where I stand.

Chris

Reply to
Can2002

before you drill use a strong magnet on the end of a string dropped down the cavity, then lift a few inches off the floor so it hangs free. Tie it off to something large on the upper floor! - careful exploration with a decent magnetic compass will pinpoint where it is. Gives you the vertical line and if you want to be really finicky you can pull it up the required amount to give you the horizontal position too.

Had excellent results using a strong magnet from an old disk drive through single thickness of brick doing this.

Over the years I've gone from taking out a half brick to just removing the vertical mortar between a couple of bricks, and just an inch or so of that. Pity that the "regs" now don't approve using the cavity as a big cable duct ....

Barley Twist (Please put out the cats to reply direct)

Reply to
Barley Twist

Yup, a definite possibity for external dry-lined walls; is it common (or indeed now required) on internal stud walls too?

Aah, thanks for the Naming Of Parts: "sole plate" being the horizontal timber at the bottom which the studs rest on, and "header" being the bit wot the tops of the studs attach to, right? Nogginses is indeed a strong possibility - mentioned in a couple of the posts - but not a certainty, in my very limited but non-zero experience.

Not doom and gloom at all, just realism. "It's not the despair. The despair I can deal with. It's the hope..." ;-)

Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

If its a wooden framed stud wall there are bound to be horizontal noggins which will stop your cable or weighted string going very far. I cut short vertical slots in the plasterboard across these noggins and also into the noggins to take the cable. Then you have to make good afterwards...

Reply to
BillR

If you do manage to get the cable into the stud wall there is a neat trick for getting it out through a small hole. Get one of those plastic covered wire thingys used to hold up net curtains and strip off the plastic. Stretch the wire out so it forms a spiral and stuff it into the hole. Spin it round by rolling the bit sticking out in your palms and with any luck the cable will become twisted up in the spiral and you can pull it out through the hole.

Saw a BT engineer do this about 20 years ago but have never had to use it myself

HTH

Nick

Reply to
Nick Brooks

Depending on your adherence to regulations, you can find where the noggins are, make a hole above and below, and chip away the plasterboard in between, and lay vcables over the top, and kmake good with plaster and skim.

Or if you are a purist, notch the noggin.

One thing about plasterboard, its dead easy to fit bits onto holes, skim and sand flat and repaint. Compared with chasing a slot down an internal brick wall...its easy peasy.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The snag is there'll be noggins - horizontal wood - between the studs, probably two, and maybe three. These are to add rigidity to the wall and prevent the studs warping which would show by pulling the clouts out of the plasterboard.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

WOW!

Thanks Dave, you really have found the first upside to a house built by a current-day "what-we-can-get-away-with" builder: they only put one noggin in per section when the built the internal walls upstairs!!!

So, only one big plasterboard square badly cut out and covered for me then...

Now, where is that drum of CAT5e and my best swiss army knife saw blade... plasterboard here we come ;-)

Paul.

Reply to
Paul

BUTCHER!! EEEVIL MAN!!! :-) I was going to add "or the saw blade on your Swiss Army knife" to the list of plausible pb-sawing tools, but it seemed like sacrilege; especially as I have in younger years used these for sawing through fresh wood and found them suprisingly effective, so the idea of blunting one to hell for a few linear inches of cut in plasterboard was below my own level of tool-torture acceptability.

Still, if you hate your SwissArmy knife that much... As for where the drum (or rather Non-Tangle [tee-em] box) of Cat5e's gone: it's still in the den waiting for me to be arsed to take it back to the loft. And our resident network geezer hasn't found his way back to work yet in the New Year (or may be in the US for all I know), so still no Pentascanner loan for me :-(

From the experiences gathered thus far, it seems that nogginses - nassty, sssneaky little nogginsses, what'sss it got between itss studsess, eh, Preciousss? - seem to be common, but not universal; hence opining that they were just one of the ways for Sod and Murphy to make their presence felt on this job, but that a less expected bugger-factor might be their preferred method of pain infliction instead...

Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

afterwards...

I'd probably use the same approach, although it can start getting messy, have a look for another route - there is usually an sv pipe going through into loft space (unless outside) have a look there, or possibbly where CW pipes go to tank if you have a non-pressurised system.

Rick

Reply to
Rick Hughes

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