Tidying cables

Er, conduit? Screwfix, Toolstation, etc. For that sort of length, it will be neater to use the "proper" stuff.

I had seen conduit but wondered if there was any sort of specialised product.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'proper' stuff.

Trying to further my education here.

Most plastic trunking tends to be white which if you have a white rendered wall would be quite unobtrusive but for any other type of wall I would use black PVC conduit, plenty of corner components to make neat internal or external corners. For 4 CAT 5e cables, 20mm diam conduit would be adequate.

Richard

If you want to enclose cables that are already installed, you will need trunking rather than conduit since you probably don't want to disconnect them so you can thread them through the conduit. Hence trunking with a removable lid would be better.

Square section plastic trunking that has a clip on lid? Come with various types of corners too.

I agree, especially if you are running the cables over any sort of rough pebble-dashed surface.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, really only works if you are willing / able to re run any existing cables though the new conduit.

A mate has a mix of CCTV / lighting on the front of his house, some clipped directly to the walls and some run in conduit and the conduit makes the exposed cables look tacky and vulnerable.

There are some fairly new flats nearby where the (distributed) TV cables are run round the outside of the buildings, just in a bundle clipped to the outside wall. Did they not know they would need a communal aerial feed when they built the places?

Personally, I would be running any such cables internally, especially on the front, though the loft and down though risers ... (but then I generally decide what goes here and she doesn't care about that sort of thing <g>). Round the back if it wasn't possible to keep internal, I'd go conduit.

Cheers, T i m

Doesn't usually last all that long outdoors. And looks amateurish.

Bill

It's because they didn't allow for Sky+. Obsolete now anyway.

Bill

Well I have some I installed at least 15 years ago and probably nearer

It depends where you put it as regards 'amateurish' I think, if it's tucked neatly into a corner or under an overhang then it's fine IMHO.

Yes, but they probably wired it in "low-loss" string.

Owain

Oh? I've never had any Sky anything (well, a mate gave me a new/unused Sky box and I took the 500GB HDD out of it before recycling the rest), so why does that need that couldn't have been catered for via the std communal cabling system ... and what new build wouldn't have built in ducting for such things, allowing for any retro-fit to any flat from the communal comms cupboard? [1]

Cool ... so I can go and prune the cable off as it annoys me. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

The head count increased as the project was completed and realising that it was going to be a lot of work and possibly not have the physical capacity for all these new links, they went over to fiber and so only used one of the 4 ducts. They then soon found the fiber was being bitten though by rats as it was a lovely underground system for them so they had to make plugs up to block all the pipes and just leaving a small gap for the fibre cable to sneak though. ;-)

Sorry, as others have already said I thought you might have seen and been thinking of the white rectangular trunking with clip-on lids that you find in sheds and hardware shops. It's meant for indoor use so is not very well UV stabilised. Round conduit is available in metal or plastic (also in corrugated plastic which can be handy if you have an awkward bit of geometry) but the plastic should be OK outside. There are various corner bits and "junction boxes", some with removable lids to make threading easier. I havn't checked what range of stuff is available from SF or TS.

We always used to call it "high loss" when I was working in a research lab, because the stocks kept disappearing.

It has lasted pretty well here. Used it on my roof terrace for the aerial cables. And painted it to be a closer match to the brickwork.

Just what would you use instead?

there's always galvanised steel trunking.

Overkill for this application. The "ordinary" wall-mount stuff is normally only used inside since the cover is not sealed. Much more expensive than round plastic conduit.

You can slide trunking under existing cables, with conduit you need to start again.

There are several sources of UV-stabilised trunking. For example:

I've used white PVC trunking outside (south and west facing) and haven't found it to degrade over 7 years.

But round trunking required the wires to be disconnected and fished through?