Home networking the hard way, bought some cable rods...

[jimbouk]

Probably a long overdue purchase! I've finally kicked off "Operation discretely network the house" and am aiming to run network cables next to my internal down pipes. So far so tricky!

I've got down one floor so far, loft to the bottom of the bathroom below. With the side off the bath I can get to the boxing round the pipe and keep things feeding down. Unfortunately someone has stuck some loft insulation in the gap at the living room level, I assume just to stop noise as it's an internal wall? So yeah, Amazon (sorry world, we've got prime for a month) to the rescue, cheap cable rods arriving tomorrow. Hopefully will be able to push them through and pull back some string to help with the run.

The final drop down to the study will be interesting - the pipe is actually the other side of the stairs in the kitchen so I'm going to have to tunnel under the stairs (bought an access hatch to cover my tracks) and hope I can hack my way through (and there isn't anything else blocking it!). My boroscope has been put to good use but sadly had been yet to find an easy option. Trying to avoid cables outside as we're three stories to no way I can do it nicely!

Though I'm actually away on Sunday for a week and busy tomorrow so won't actually make progress until who knows when, but we're underway (ish). I just need to hoover and put everything back together before the family get home

[ik9000]

Can you make enough room for a conduit? These pvc ones from screwfix/toolstation will take network cables just fine.
https://www.toolstation.com/20mm-hea...conduit/p47837
https://www.toolstation.com/25mm-hea...conduit/p48027

If you can get these down then pulling the cables up becomes a doddle.

I found going under the floor relatively easy, but I had the luxury of lifting carpets and boards to work out routes. Doing it from a single access hatch will be a lot more fiddly. I found I needed three or four points along the runs from the stairs to the various sockets.

[jimbouk]

Fortunately don't/shouldn't have to go under the floor, the study to kitchen route, I'll just have a loose cable from the router to the wall backing on to the stairs then it's all hidden in the void.

Trunking would be ideal, but I don't know how I'd get it down between the floors (bathroom to living room mainly) as there isn't much space / straight lines with the hole in the floor and pipes joining. I do have a short stretch already which might help if I can get some in between the floors.

I just want to rip the walls off and do it properly!

[ik9000]

Fortunately don't/shouldn't have to go under the floor, the study to kitchen route, I'll just have a loose cable from the router to the wall backing on to the stairs then it's all hidden in the void.

Trunking would be ideal, but I don't know how I'd get it down between the floors (bathroom to living room mainly) as there isn't much space / straight lines with the hole in the floor and pipes joining. I do have a short stretch already which might help if I can get some in between the floors.

I just want to rip the walls off and do it properly!

My experience is don't bother with conduit in the floors. Do use it to get up and down between floors. The exception is where I had some tricky dwarf walls below the floor to navigate. Then conduit was a lifesaver, but only a short 1m-1.5m run of it.

If you want to do it properly then hire/buy a wall chaser and kango drill, chase out, install conduit and plaster over it. It's messy and dusty but that's the proper way. I know what you mean about finding straight lines. It took some head scratching here. I went through various options before I settled on the layout I've now installed (or am still in the process of installing tbh)

[jimbouk]

Back on this job (partially) this weekend. I've got a cable out! I'll add some pictures when I'm at my computer another time in a new post.

Cable rods + bit of string + other half pulling whilst I wiggled from the top = cable down two floors from the loft to the living room! In isolation completely pointless so next up I'll start at the bottom and hopefully get access to the bottom of the cavity.

Re walls and chasing, 20 year old house with cheap walls, they have a built in cavity as the plasterboard has battons between them and the bricks/breeze blocks. Snooping at the TV cable behind the aerial sockets for example and they are stapled to the board clearly before fitting. If they had trunked these in build it would have been perfect! If they were just dangling I could have pulled down a new cable in their place. Oh well.

[jimbouk]

The best laid plans...

My weekend go busy, and on Sunday I started feeling weird. So may day off on Monday to crack on became a day mostly in bed! Nearly better now, lingering aches / nausea / tiredness after whatever I picked up. Enough distractions, here are the pictures!

Bath panel off gave 'access' half way between the entry point in the loft and the living room below:



At a jaunty angle I could squeeze my shoulder through, sore in odd places the next day!

Next up my attempt to remove the insulation blocking the route with the 'stick of doom':



Camera attached so I could see what I was doing. The view inside:



Needless to say, a complete failure! The hook was probably too small / tight to do anything. I though about changing up to my plasterboard saw before realising I was being daft and should bust out the tool I just bought (and didn't take any pictures of in action). Stock photo of the cable rods...


String attached to the cable rod, dropped down from the top to the bathroom then pushed down with some enthusiastic wiggling into the living room! I didn't want to be short of string at any point so attached the pre-dropped network cable to the string:



And pulled, and wiggled, and went back upstairs and pulled and wiggled, then back and pulled and wiggled some more, then into the loft to pull and wiggle a bit, then back down for more pulling and wiggling.

Gave up running around and asked for some help! Me in the loft on the phone to the other half in the living room. A bit of pushing and pulling and we made it!



(Don't worry electrics off!) Victory! We parked it there with plans to carry on, hopefully have another go soon going all the way to the bottom this time once I've put a big hole down here in the study to try and crawl through to the same hole under the stairs. I'll take pictures again.

Fun times

[Rob_B]

Jealous! I so want to hardwire mine but I just know it'll turn into more work than I planned, now you're an expert you can come around and sort it yeah?

[jimbouk]

Haha, well the last house I tried and failed to do things neatly and ended up with messy holes and network cables not very neatly run vertically out the front of the house. This time I'm determined to do a bit of a better job! Might end up needing a short outside run just one floor but don't need to sort proper networking in that room until my lad starts complaining about lag...

It's always more work, and takes longer than you planned! I've also completely forgotten how to wire up the ports since last time so will have to get back researching that again (though I think my ports are a bit different than last time which doesn't help!)

[Saracen999]

Getting cables from floor to floor here (three floors) is easy. There's a service duct about 10" x 18" that goes right up through the middle of the house. It used to include a boiler flu pipe ... until building regs decided that you couldn't put a boiler in the purpose-built boiler cupboard and I had to spend thousands moving the damn thing. Still, I got a nice and now largely empty service duct out of it. Getting the cables around each of the first two floors? That's much more 'fun'.

[ik9000]

all you people with these easy runs. I had to chase and jack hammer chisel my wall. Made a right mess. I love having solid walls, but there is a downside. I have one short run still to do, only about 6 inches and I can't face it because i know how much dust it will spew out over the newly painted areas

[jimbouk]

Slowly plodding along. I actually attached a socket to the end of the one dangling wire in the living room - it all came back to me fairly quickly!

For the chopping job, I've made good progress. It was a bit hard top explain earlier what I was doing to get access from the study but hopefully this explains it!

The study has an under the stairs 'cupboard' (no door atm, sloping ~ half room height) which is behind the cloakroom in the hall. The staircase is apparently a 'left E' (goes back on itself rather than straight up) and on the other side of it is the kitchen. The main hole:



There's a cover for it (can see on the bottom right) and it's just big enough for me to crawl through.

At the back you can see the next wholes I've hacked / made, close up:



So that's the same down pipe as I've been following from the loft, through the bathroom and living room, to where you see it which is actually boxed in in the corner of the kitchen!

Pretty happy with the outer hole TBH. I realised I was going to be cutting through an upright (non-structural!) so bought some 2x2 batons and boxed round in a way that most supports everything, neat, pretty much square and will be behind a tumble dryer when finished anyway

All that's left is trying to get cable all the way from the top to the bottom! Might make up a little shelf for the patch panel in the loft first so I can chop the other end of the run wire and secure it (still on the reel currently). If it does all go horribly wrong and I can't get a wire down then I've thought of a plan B with a hole in the side of the house - would certainly rather not after all this effort though!

[Xlucine]

I got my ISP to run the internet into a first floor cupboard when I upgraded to fibre a while back, and that cupboard happens to share a wall with my study. Solid wall, but judging from the dust it was only ~4" of cinderblock so a cheap hammer drill made short work of it. Putting my NAS in that cupboard also helped a lot with the noise it made, and a couple of improvised vents in the door (with a temp controlled fan) keep everything cool.

[jimbouk]

Well good progress on the weekend, after some pushing, pulling, wiggling, hole enlarging and hooking I got the rod to the bottom and pulled some string up. Haven't run the cable down but we should be all sorted.

Hacked together a shelf from an... old shelf (top) and some bits of wood and mounted on the wall in the loft - PD switches will sit on top and chunky supports underneath to screw the patch panel into.

First two cable terminated on both ends loft to living room - tested with the novelty network (wire continuity) tester that came with the networking toolkit and we have a connection! Hopefully get a chance on Friday to do the long drop and wire down to the study and actually network something!

Final drop is two floors with pretty much no access from the other side of the loft to the other side of the living room - I might put a hole higher up in the living room wall to potentially run the rear speakers up and over at a later date to aid access (currently cable clipped around the ceiling). There is a small hole in the en suite above which I might be able to stick my arm into but it's going to be touch and go! That's the crucial one that gets me to the best 'middle' of the house for Wi-Fi (where the AP is currently via powerline adapter). It keeps me busy - next job is decorating the son's bedroom!

[Rob_B]

Christ, I'm struggling to get the motivation to do a single run up the side of a chimney and through the small space on our gable end (it'll be a bit of faff)
I'll wait for FTTP and get the guy to run it to my office instead

[jimbouk]

Right, I massively failed to follow up on this despite the work being done*.

*Still need to sort the aerial socket out as the old lead wasn't long enough, bought new cable, splitter and connectors (screw type) to neaten up the current wiring and add in this run. Not that we have missed broadcast TV at all. And there's the outside run to do to the spare room...

Drops all went OK with the cable rods - the length was slightly short as known for two floors but I'd previously removed the boxing in the en suite so could stick an arm in and move the pole the rest of the way. Cables pulled through with one person on each end again (not a one person job!). Part of the problem in the second run to the living room was due to me putting the socket too close to the corner / skirting leaving not enough room for tools, but I got there in the end. I did end up painting half the living room to tidy up the mess I'd made and sort out some patchy bits left when it was decorated - by the time you've got the pot open and a roller out it's not worth stopping! I didn't bother with the speaker cables, they're up and fine so not worth another hole in the wall at this point.

One thing I underestimated was the weight of 3 floors of cable - it's pretty heavy! Cue some cable clips to ensure the strain isn't on the patch panel. All finished:



All working great Haven't actually checked speeds but we don't do any heavy lifting of files, heck it's just for stable Wi-Fi, streaming & zoom calls. PoE is coming from the study - popped by switch next to the sockets under the stairs feeding ports 1 & 2. PD switches are great, and the pass-through to port 6 powers the Wi-Fi.

I've started on the next DIY project which is the son's room - nowhere near as interesting. Lots of filling to do as the 20 year old edging tape used in place of plastering wall & ceiling joints properly is coming off

[Saracen999]

all you people with these easy runs. I had to chase and jack hammer chisel my wall. Made a right mess. I love having solid walls, but there is a downside. I have one short run still to do, only about 6 inches and I can't face it because i know how much dust it will spew out over the newly painted areas

Oh, running cables here is dead easy, for the most part

The hard bit, having got down on my hands and knees, is standing back up again!!! Last time I made that mistake, I nearly ended up renting a crane. Kidz 2day.