Best way to Cat5 my house

[Drobbins]

Update: I have been talking to the missues and i am going to do this properly, get the cables put in the wall and run them into points around the house.

The one thing i donn't seem to be able to get my head around if i put the panel into the wall when i am in the loft how do i know where the hell the hole is downstairs?

[GoNz0]

get the wife to shine a torch through the hole

[GaryRW]

Update: I have been talking to the missues and i am going to do this properly, get the cables put in the wall and run them into points around the house.

The one thing i donn't seem to be able to get my head around if i put the panel into the wall when i am in the loft how do i know where the hell the hole is downstairs?

I think you're talking about the way I did it, i.e. running the cable down through the gaps in the walls.

All I did was remove wall boxes that were already there. i.e. for the Xbox in the lounge, there were plug and tv sockets all where I wanted the network sockets. Having taken all them out, I had a few holes to peer through. Then up into the loft, poked the long pole thingy down through the gap between plaster board and external wall, roughly as far away from the front wall of the house as the sockets were in the lounge.

Don't get me wrong - I was very surprised when I went downstairs and saw the pole sitting behind the hole in the wall!! I would strongly suggest having a second person sitting downstairs to look while you do the poking from the loft end - I got quite in one weekend running up and down...

The advantage with using holes that were already there was that my wife couldn't quite see the need to do all this, and wasn't happy with the idea of me carving out holes in the walls when I wasn't convinced it'd work!!

Apologies if this isn't what you were talking about at all

On a side point, B&Q had this wall box system that allows you to mix and match different types of connectors, any 2 in one wall box. So I replaced the tv aerial socket faceplate with one of the B&Q aerial sockets and a RJ45 socket in one wall box, and I didn't need to cut any extra holes in the wall.

[aidanjt]

get the wife to shine a torch through the hole

This, and use a coat hanger to hook and pull the cable through.

[Lee`]

Not actually been released yet, but when it does this could be a handy, but expensive solution;

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Powe...king/Coax.aspx

[peterb]

Stick to cat5 - cat6 is bigger and less flexible than cat5e, and cat5e is good to Gigabit speeds. If you are doing long runs in a cavity wall, then an electicians pull through might be a wise investment (thin metal tape - bit like a steel maesuring tape but thicker and narrower - usually used for pulling cable in conduits, but can be used for cavity walls etc) You can run cat5 round the top of skirting boards or at the edge below the carpet (not so easy) if you have fitted carpets though.

Stud partition walls can be a problem if they are constructed on a wood framework as you will encounter the cross bracing pieces.

If you run cables externally either run convential cat5e in a conduit, (can be unsightly) or use external grade cable (expensive, less flexible, but rugged).

Don't skimp on the runs - leave plenty of slack cable in the wall, and wherever you are putting one cable in, put in two - if you are thinking you need 2 cable, put in three or four.

[jamin]

Don't skimp on the runs - leave plenty of slack cable in the wall, and wherever you are putting one cable in, put in two - if you are thinking you need 2 cable, put in three or four.

Amen! That's good common sense advice mate! Learnt the hard way? lol!

IMHO you are going to struggle dropping cable runs behind plasterboard from the loft to ground floor. Theres too much that could get in the way. Its not worth cutting a hole in your wall, only to find you cant get the cable down because you hit an unseen obstacle. Although if you have an aerial cable running from the loft down conduit to the ground floor, you should be able to fit at least 2 cat5 runs along side.

If you are positive you want to risk it, then I would use a fibreglass rodder along the lines of what BT and other comms companies use to pull rope/cables through underground ducts. This is rigid enough to push through or around some obstacles. An electricians fish just isn't rigid enough for my liking.

[GaryRW]

Its not worth cutting a hole in your wall, only to find you cant get the cable down because you hit an unseen obstacle. Although if you have an aerial cable running from the loft down conduit to the ground floor, you should be able to fit at least 2 cat5 runs along side.

If you are positive you want to risk it, then I would use a fibreglass rodder along the lines of what BT and other comms companies use to pull rope/cables through underground ducts. This is rigid enough to push through or around some obstacles. An electricians fish just isn't rigid enough for my liking.

I stuck the fibreglass poles (http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Hand...0/sd170/p75799 - and no I'm not on commission ) down from the loft first. They're 1m each, and though they're flexible, they're unlikely to double back on themselves in the wall. If you're able to stick 5-6m down, you're probably down to the ground floor

With sticking those down first, I was vaguely confident that the rods were roughly in the right place before I started pulling off the faceplates from existing wall sockets. What didn't help was that the wallboxes behind the socket faceplates had been plastered in, so I made a little bit of a mess taking some of those off. I had to buy a couple of new backboxes, and not too much hassle to get them looking good again.

There was one really awkward drop, and on that one I had to do the faceplate thing on some sockets in the upstairs bedroom and do the drop in 2 goes - again I was lucky there were sockets where I needed holes in the wall