# Running Cables



## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Hi,

This might be a completely stupid question but with a modern dry lined house, (plasterboard over the block work) is there a small gap behind to run cable through so i don't have to completely cut a channel out?

Seems when you knock on the wall there are a few solid areas and alot of hollow sounding areas.

I know obviously if it was plastered I'd have to chase out and I know there's studding in partition walls.

I want to do it to run shielded Ethernet cable around the house. Powerline isn't going to be good enough.

Cheers


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## Maxtor (Feb 23, 2007)

It sounds like it is dot and dab.

A few links here if it is.


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## Bustanut (Jun 11, 2011)

If it sounds hollow between the two points you want to pull the cable through you should be fine. Cut the holes at the top and the bottom and feed a pull wire through. If you need to deviate then holesaw a piece out and keep the cutout to put back in the hole when you are finished. There should be a 15 - 20mm gap behind for the cables to sit in. It’s the pull wire to feed the cables through and leave the pull wire in when you have finished to allow pulling of future cables. If the builders haven’t gone mad with the driwall adhesive you should be fine. Use either ready mix joint cement or easy fill to patch up the wall. It sands and finishes really easy.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Thanks guys, I thought maybe the hard sounding bits were noggins or something, so it's just adhesive! 

Brilliant, thanks for the help.

Now I need too see how I can it from one floor to the next, I want to position a switch etc in a central location on the middle floor, then shoot cable up the 2nd floor and down to the ground floor and across to another room on the middle floor. 

Being a new build the floors are all pre-fabbed with OSB or the likes.


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## Cookies (Dec 10, 2008)

Hi bud. 

Have you thought about d-line trunking? It can be hidden very discretely along the corners of walls or floors. I've used it to run cables up to a wall moumted telly, and you wouldn't know any cables were there, unless you knew what to look for. 

N

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## shl-kelso (Dec 27, 2012)

If the walls are internal it could be timber studwork with horizontal noggins. External walls may be dot and dab or may be studwork, without investigating further you’ll never know!

Is there any reason you want to use shielded ethernet cable? It’s a pig to terminate properly and required shielded patch panels and data modules (which are not as common and a reasonable cost increase compared to UTP), and unless you properly earth the shielding then it actually works as an effective antenna, potentially injecting noise/interference into the cable rather than keeping it out!

I’d stick with UTP cable as for a residential install it will be perfectly adequate. If you think you might want to go for 10g ethernet then I’d suggest going fibre instead for the back haul links - getting pre-terminated fibre is much easier to deal with.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

shl-kelso said:


> If the walls are internal it could be timber studwork with horizontal noggins. External walls may be dot and dab or may be studwork, without investigating further you'll never know!
> 
> Is there any reason you want to use shielded ethernet cable? It's a pig to terminate properly and required shielded patch panels and data modules (which are not as common and a reasonable cost increase compared to UTP), and unless you properly earth the shielding then it actually works as an effective antenna, potentially injecting noise/interference into the cable rather than keeping it out!
> 
> I'd stick with UTP cable as for a residential install it will be perfectly adequate. If you think you might want to go for 10g ethernet then I'd suggest going fibre instead for the back haul links - getting pre-terminated fibre is much easier to deal with.


Deffo dab and dob on the external walls and metal stud work on the partition walls.

I mentioned shielded because I want to avoid alien crosstalk (which you'll see why later), I know Cat 6 comes with a degree of protection so should be OK, 10G should work on the small runs on Cat 6 anyway but isn't particularly needed for what I want to do but mainly wanted to ask if there'd be enough room behind the dry lining, the following might be for another thread really but here it goes...

I want to run a reasonably simple A/V,Multimedia network, such as using HDMI over Ethernet for Freesat, PS4 and a Firestick. The main rooms we use are all directly above one another (town house so has a ground, 1st and 2nd floor), so want a reasonably decent set up to avoid as much lag as possible. I've seen HDMI over Ethernet kits that have no lag, that is some expense but worth it, most of these kits do require no interference, hence worrying about shielding but I may test it with Cat6 UTP to begin with too see how it performs.

Also I need to install a Freeview aerial and expand the current aerial set up, as currently there's only 2 outputs in the whole property which is annoying, only 1 bedroom has an output.

Then run an Computer/Internet Network, with face plates in every room apart from the bathrooms. Living Room, Bedrooms, Office, Kitchen.

Now I'm really starting to think about things, I think I want to also put some speakers around the place too. I think the bathrooms and kitchen and maybe the master bedroom.

I've just never encountered dab and dob dry lined walls before as this is our first purchased home and our parents houses are more traditional with plastered walls and our rented flat was too but couldn't do anything to it anyway. So wasn't sure if there's enough room behind them, now I can see there should be and I've been going round the house like a mad man knocking on every external wall feeling for clear runs from ceiling too floor.

I'm excited


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## sshooie (May 15, 2007)

Buy yourself some cable rods.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=cable+rods

Or a tape...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Electrical...84621&sr=8-11-spons&keywords=cable+tape&psc=1


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

sshooie said:


> Buy yourself some cable rods.
> 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=cable+rods
> 
> ...


You legend, that fish tape reel looks amazing! Cheap too! Definitely think it'll pay for itself!


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## shl-kelso (Dec 27, 2012)

I’d still suggest ignoring shielded cable - it’s far more tricky to feed in and terminate as the shielding makes the cable very stiff. 

Any gigabit network wether it is running ethernet for “normal” data applications or HDMI-over-ethernet, is still just standard ethernet packets so this makes no difference whether you use UTP/FTP/STP cable (unless you make a mess of the shielding termination in which case it will perform worse than UTP).

If by HDMI-over-ethernet you actually mean HDMI-over-Category Cable distribution (such as HDBaseT) then this is a completely different comms standard to ethernet and needs to be kept quite separate from “normal” data networks. However it is also designed to work with UTP cable too, so STP/FTP is an unnecessary complication and again if poorly terminated will compromise the signal integrity rather than protect it. 

Be aware that either of these technologies use compression to deal with 4k video (and also with 1080p for ethernet-based distribution), and although stated to be visually lossless it’s worth checking out if it meets your needs. You may be better instead going for direct HDMI distribution using fibre or hybrid fibre cables as these can provide full 4k uncompressed HDMI from end to end over a multitude of distances. Just note that any package that comes as a complete cable will have integrated electronics to deal with the signal conversion, and this will be subject to the resolutions/standards set by that manufacturer, and if some new mode or resolution comes along later it may not be supported unless you physically replace the cable (and it’s internal electronics).


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## garage_dweller (Apr 10, 2018)

A lot of plasterboard walls are now made with a cardboard internal honeycomb structure which is a total pain in the ass when you want to drop cable. You need to break through each honeycomb cell which isn’t easy. 


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Well a little update.

Only 3 months after starting this thread I finally started tonight. I just did a little explore to see if I could at least get something from the bottom of the middle floor down to the ground floor.










The plugged hole on the very right has adhesive all behind it, so that was a proper 'Doh!'. The hole to the left of that you can't get through to anything down below. It feels as if it goes below the floor but I think a big line of adhesive at the top of the plasterboard of the room below is stopping it.

The hole on the very left, is successful, you can get through right down to the bottom of the wall of the room below. It's a bugger really as this is the first hole I made, put the steel fish line down and a bit of jiggling is a straight drop. Result. However isn't really where I want it to come out downstairs, so I then drilled the hole that wasn't at all successful then moved to its left and made that 2nd hole to find out that wall there is a total no go.

So now I know what I've got to work with, I'll get some boxes and face plates ordered.

Big thanks to the recommendation of this cable fishing reel, it's brilliant!


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## mar00 (Jun 24, 2018)

if you intend to use dry lining boxes the face plates won't sit flush, can't see from pic depth to wall but if possible may be better to fix normal boxes to back wall, you can get shallower module for 25 mm boxes but depper will be easier,


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

mar00 said:


> if you intend to use dry lining boxes the face plates won't sit flush, can't see from pic depth to wall but if possible may be better to fix normal boxes to back wall, you can get shallower module for 25 mm boxes but depper will be easier,


There are plug sockets on the wall I'm running the cables so a 35mm boxes should be fine. I was going to use the squeeze dry lining type as a few of the switches and things in the house already has them and on the face of it I don't really notice a difference but like you say I'm sure there is.


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