Pulling cable through dot and dab wall..?

RedTen

RedTen

RedTen

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Joined
23 Jun 2007
Posts
552
Location
South East
Howdy!

I'm moving into a new build and unfortunately there are no network cables run through the house.

I've found a US product called Magnepull (http://www.magnepull.com) that allows you to feed the cable up the wall using a strong magnet but I can't find anything similar in the UK.

It seems like it would save so much time vs fish wire and weights etc.

Do you guys know of anything similar?
 
Google "cable access kit" which can be had for under a tenner. They are very handy to have when pulling cables. Best way is to run two reels at the the same time, gaffer tape the two ends together and the use the hook on the end of a cable access kit to pull it through.

There was a product on Dragons Den called a "Magnamole" but these don't look that useful and the company seem to have gone bust.

Edit: Just had a proper read of the magnepull site and it does look pretty cool, I would be tempted to get one from the US and pay shipping.

Dave
 
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If you want magnetic cable pulling simply order a couple of largish (20mm) Neodymium ring magnets and possiblya largish block one as well.

I used that to pull cabling under the floor/above the ceiling when I needed to run a network cable, but couldn't get the cable access kit's rods into due to the access points.

I tied a bit of string round the ring magnet, then used the block magnet on the other side of the ceiling to pull it up.
 
With dot and dab, its down to luck a lot of the time, sometimes you get lucky and you can get a rod through, other times you cant get past the **** and you have to chop into the wall
 
Adam_151 said:
With dot and dab, its down to luck a lot of the time, sometimes you get lucky and you can get a rod through, other times you cant get past the **** and you have to chop into the wall
Click to expand...

This was my experience. Dropping cables vertically was ok because you could find a hollow channel and work around it. Taking them horizontally for a set of speakers was more trouble than it was worth. I cut a chase in the wall, put conduit in and filled it in about half the time I had spent trying to work around a massive adhesive dab.
 
I'm sure the other sparkies on here will agree with me. but if you are looking for a potential route, get the rods out, Three things can happen.

A) The rods go straight through and you are left thinking "Wow that was easier than I thought!"

B) The rods just go no-where, its a lost cause and you know very quickly that you need to think of a different way to do the job.

The dangerous one is...

C) You cant just quite get them through for some reason but you can detect that there is a route through... you just cant seem to get it.

Thats the dangerous one, because it just eats time and makes you frustrated... you will win in the end but you are left wondering whether you should just have put it in trunking :P
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll order a rod kit and hope for the best. I guess I won't know if the dot and dab is random or in a line until I get in there!

The thing that worries me most is moving between floors as we have chipboard floorboards. I'm sure it will be a nightmare.
 
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