Sticky situation - adhesive question .. oh ha ha (sorry)

[KD]

Hi all, I've just spent several hours carefully sticking my adhesive backed speaker cable right around the living room to connect up the rear home cinema speakers. Some 20 minutes later the wire has detached itself from the double sided adhesive strip i.e. not the adhesive strip from the wall so I have some dignity remaining. As such I now have some flat cable with no sticking qualities whatsoever. My question is: What adhesive is strong enough to stick and hold speaker wire indefinitely to plasterboard (plus the usual new build magnolia paint) but will, if required, allow you to remove it without destroying the plasterboard later ? I wouldn't normally ask the question about removing the cable but there's redundancies at work in the next few months so we may have to sell up remove the speaker wire. The cable run is about 9 metres in length.

Thanks for any help, Keith

Was I pi**ed off when it started unsticking itself :-( IXOS stuff from HiFi Bitz - do not buy it, it doesn't work. The last lot I used was fine though (3 years ago).

I am considering feeding this cable through the walls but this seems like quite a big job for a reasonably lazy so and so like me. Is it a very big job ? I've already got fish tape from Screwfix.

[Grunff]

There is no adhesive which will do this. The main problem with PVC insulated wires is that they are very high in plasticiser. This continuously oozes from the PVC. The only adhesives which will work well on plasticised PVC are epoxy and styrene resins. Neither will ever come off your wall.

[Mike John]

Try a hot-melt glue gun, spots at about 6 inch intervals, sets quickly = and "rolls off" with fingers when set if needed.

Mike

indefinitely

[Dave Liquorice]

Good grief what on earth is 18m of speaker cable made from if selling it can provide income to cover redundancy! B-)

IMHO glues are useless, the fail eventually, though they are getting better. Whats wrong with good old cable clips or staples?

[Pete C]

Might be possible to use some quick setting clear epoxy like Araldite on the wire as a bonding agent, then the sticky stuff still on the wall should be able to hold onto it successfully.

Hot melt as Mike suggested would be easier to try first.

cheers, Pete.

[Ian Stirling]

Hot-melt, as mentioned by the other poster, can work well. It takes a few moments practice to make a hot-melt blob, press the cable into the blob, wait a moment, then complete with a blob on the front of the cable, so you've got a blob completely surrounding the cable, which can help in some cases.

[Dave Plowman]

You say it's a new build - presumably with solid floors? Running a wire along a wall for any distance is likely to be very iffy - without making access holes every so often. I'd say the easiest way would be to remove the skirting board.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Frankly nothing. Either it stricks to teh paint or its no bloody good. If it stiks to teh paint it will rip it of the wall. Assume that you will have to redecoireate and unse superglue.

[Lurch]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:24:19 +0100, in uk.d-i-y Dave Plowman strung together this:

Easier still, tuck it behind the edge of the carpet.

[Dave Plowman]

New build house? Rear speakers on a home cinema setup? If ever there was laminate flooring stereotype...

[KD]

If only we had carpeted floors :-) That's what I did at the last place. Looks like the skirting might have to come off :-(

Thanks all

[Al Reynolds]

I left all my home cinema wiring in when we sold our new build house after three years. The new owners were quite happy that it was all there.

Al

[James Hart]

I put the wiring in for my sister's setup before she had the laminate laid, as an added complication she wanted the room arrangeable in 2 directions so I wired it all up to one position and then took a parallel set of connections round to the alternate position.

[geoff]

In message , KD writes

Sounds like what you really need are some cable clamps

e.g. plastic bases with double sided sticky and holes through which you can feed a tiewrap

[Capitol]

or the aluminium type where the cable is retained by the pressed out lugs,

Regards Capitol

[KD]

Hi, I've never seen these - have you got a link ? The result I'm after is that this long length of flat cable lies totally flush up against the wall. At the moment I'm about to pull the beading up from the around the laminate to see if the gap is big enough to hide the cables. If not then I'll buy thinner cables or pull the skirting off. It's a bigger job than I'd hoped ... oh well, at least it'll look neat when it's finished.

Thanks, Keith