Wiring home - sanity check & ideas
- Thread starter DragonQ
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
That gets a bet messy...
VDSL/phone signal to the patch panel.
Patched across into a port in the study to go to the router's VDSL WAN port.
The LAN side of the router back into a different port in the study back to the patch panel.
Then from the patch panel to the central switch.
The router next to the patch panel is a better option. A decent AP to install centrally isn't that expensive. It also keeps the cable length (and number of joints) from the master socket to the router to the minimum.
VDSL/phone signal to the patch panel.
Patched across into a port in the study to go to the router's VDSL WAN port.
The LAN side of the router back into a different port in the study back to the patch panel.
Then from the patch panel to the central switch.
The router next to the patch panel is a better option. A decent AP to install centrally isn't that expensive. It also keeps the cable length (and number of joints) from the master socket to the router to the minimum.
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
Where is this conduit going?
If you're planning on installing 50mm conduit into the walls behind the plaster you're insane!
Edit:
Any cables that are running in the ceiling void don't need any conduit. They can just lay on the ceiling's plasterboard.
Vertical runs in the walls only need conduit to make changing them later easier.
Last edited:
Yes I was going to use conduit to make future expansion easier. Thinking about it though, I don't need it for the actual cable I'm going to lay, just for any future cabling, so 20 mm should be fine.
I guess accessing the floorboards is easier than getting into walls but if I'm going to run a conduit in the lounge wall, for example, why not have it go all the way to the under-stairs cupboard instead of just vertically up and then stopping?
I guess accessing the floorboards is easier than getting into walls but if I'm going to run a conduit in the lounge wall, for example, why not have it go all the way to the under-stairs cupboard instead of just vertically up and then stopping?
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Posts
- 12,082
Empty conduit is a waste of time. Cable is cheap so if you think it may be required in the future pull it now (you don't have to terminate it).
If you use rigid oval conduit it'll fit into the plaster depth. If you're lucky it may even fit into the gap between the plasterboard and the brick and avoid any wall damage.
If you use rigid oval conduit it'll fit into the plaster depth. If you're lucky it may even fit into the gap between the plasterboard and the brick and avoid any wall damage.
Conduit in the walls is fine but doing each cable run entirely through conduit will present other problems.
I used zero halogen flexible conduit to do mine but I was unaware at the time that once the conduit was in place you couldn't actually pull cable through it due to the bends that the conduit has to take. In the end I had to make up my cable runs through straight lengths of conduit and then pull the conduit. The other issue that presents is having to make more holes in joists as less cables fit through conduit than a hole. Also how do you then traverse a vertical drop through a hollow partition where the hole at the top or bottom is drilled through metal stud work, the width of which dictates the size of conduit you could use. The sharp hole in stud work will almost undoubtedly snag the corrugated conduit not to mention it will make a mess of insulation material inside the partition wall as you pull the conduit through. You also need to research where you can make holes in joists if they aren't there too, regardless of using conduit.
In essence you don't really need the conduit unless you're passing it up / down a block work wall and then the rigid stuff is what you want. You'll only get a couple of cables through oval conduit so a double gang / quad euro faceplate will need two conduit drops.
You should investigate the vertical drops in the partition walls to the extent that your not passing cables vertically next to a vertical stud support. If they're metal stud supports, one side facing the inside of the wall will be an open side. The reason for this is that the stud supports have nails shot through them to hold the plasterboard in place and these nails are exposed inside the hollow stud work. Obviously you'll also need to investigate the vertical drops don't involve the placement of faceplates where electrical cables are running horizontally between electric sockets at faceplate height. Although this is unlikely it wouldn't be impossible or break the regs if it were horizontally in line with a visible faceplate on either side of a wall. When you have the floor up most likely you will see some electric cabling going down the partition walls so that will give you some indication to its whereabouts. Each faceplate in a partition wall needs to be investigated prior to its placement otherwise you may discover that a vertical stud support runs right through where you want your pattress box to be.
As bremen has said, it's better to spend the money on putting more cable in now and saving on the conduit.
I used zero halogen flexible conduit to do mine but I was unaware at the time that once the conduit was in place you couldn't actually pull cable through it due to the bends that the conduit has to take. In the end I had to make up my cable runs through straight lengths of conduit and then pull the conduit. The other issue that presents is having to make more holes in joists as less cables fit through conduit than a hole. Also how do you then traverse a vertical drop through a hollow partition where the hole at the top or bottom is drilled through metal stud work, the width of which dictates the size of conduit you could use. The sharp hole in stud work will almost undoubtedly snag the corrugated conduit not to mention it will make a mess of insulation material inside the partition wall as you pull the conduit through. You also need to research where you can make holes in joists if they aren't there too, regardless of using conduit.
In essence you don't really need the conduit unless you're passing it up / down a block work wall and then the rigid stuff is what you want. You'll only get a couple of cables through oval conduit so a double gang / quad euro faceplate will need two conduit drops.
You should investigate the vertical drops in the partition walls to the extent that your not passing cables vertically next to a vertical stud support. If they're metal stud supports, one side facing the inside of the wall will be an open side. The reason for this is that the stud supports have nails shot through them to hold the plasterboard in place and these nails are exposed inside the hollow stud work. Obviously you'll also need to investigate the vertical drops don't involve the placement of faceplates where electrical cables are running horizontally between electric sockets at faceplate height. Although this is unlikely it wouldn't be impossible or break the regs if it were horizontally in line with a visible faceplate on either side of a wall. When you have the floor up most likely you will see some electric cabling going down the partition walls so that will give you some indication to its whereabouts. Each faceplate in a partition wall needs to be investigated prior to its placement otherwise you may discover that a vertical stud support runs right through where you want your pattress box to be.
As bremen has said, it's better to spend the money on putting more cable in now and saving on the conduit.
Last edited:
Well, the initial job is done. We ran into so many stumbling blocks I can't even remember them all but the gist of it is that I was able to do the barebones but not any of the "nice to haves". The primary issue was that the house doesn't have floorboards; it has tongue-and-groove floor panels, which are much harder to remove and replace without buying replacement panels. Essentially we couldn't do any of the preliminary work to find out what was viable and what wasn't because we couldn't just take up the floorboards and put them back afterwards.
The primary issue was finding a route from the first floor to the ground floor without taking up the floor panels. Eventually we discovered that there was a service box which contained a few pipes. Annoyingly, the floor panels ran through this too so it was not possible to create a route using a saw. However, the existing hole for the giant waste pipe had a bit of space around it, so I bought a cable rod access kit (best £25 spent on the entire project) and was able to feed the rods through an access port on both floors. In the end I got 8 cables through before it got pretty tight in there. Initially the plan was to route the cables behind the skirting (not having access to the floor) but 90% of the walls in the study were plasterboard on breeze blocks with no cavity. Thus, it was easier to route them in the carpet underlay instead and also move the faceplates to the two cavity walls instead (see diagram below).
After this, it was time to sort out downstairs but at this point we only had a few hours left. Again, breeze block got in the way and also routing in the skirting was impossible because the skirting is interrupted by the back doors. So we went under the carpet again and only ran two cables - there is other work to do downstairs, including recarpeting and painting the wall behind the TV, so I can add more later during that work. One cable runs to the BT master socket and the other runs to a Cat6 Euro module, which is not yet in a faceplate. We'll install a backbox in the breezeblock when doing the rest of the downstairs work in the future.
All my wired machines get 930-950 Mb/s using iPerf and file transfers of ~115 MB/s. I've included a bunch of photos of the work and results so far, plus the current layout schematic and network diagram.
![wiring [2016-06-01].png](http://dragonq.uk/files/house/designs/wiring [2016-06-01].png)
![Home Network [2016-06-01].png](http://dragonq.uk/files/pc/screenshots/Home Network [2016-06-01].png)
The primary issue was finding a route from the first floor to the ground floor without taking up the floor panels. Eventually we discovered that there was a service box which contained a few pipes. Annoyingly, the floor panels ran through this too so it was not possible to create a route using a saw. However, the existing hole for the giant waste pipe had a bit of space around it, so I bought a cable rod access kit (best £25 spent on the entire project) and was able to feed the rods through an access port on both floors. In the end I got 8 cables through before it got pretty tight in there. Initially the plan was to route the cables behind the skirting (not having access to the floor) but 90% of the walls in the study were plasterboard on breeze blocks with no cavity. Thus, it was easier to route them in the carpet underlay instead and also move the faceplates to the two cavity walls instead (see diagram below).
After this, it was time to sort out downstairs but at this point we only had a few hours left. Again, breeze block got in the way and also routing in the skirting was impossible because the skirting is interrupted by the back doors. So we went under the carpet again and only ran two cables - there is other work to do downstairs, including recarpeting and painting the wall behind the TV, so I can add more later during that work. One cable runs to the BT master socket and the other runs to a Cat6 Euro module, which is not yet in a faceplate. We'll install a backbox in the breezeblock when doing the rest of the downstairs work in the future.
All my wired machines get 930-950 Mb/s using iPerf and file transfers of ~115 MB/s. I've included a bunch of photos of the work and results so far, plus the current layout schematic and network diagram.
Last edited:
Correct.
Good work. I used CAT6 throughout my house but on the fluke tester it would only run to gigabit speeds due to bends and interference etc etc, good enough for internal use though. If I had the chance to do it again I'd also run a pair of HDMI cables from master comms area to TV points as sometimes you can't beat a simple cable and the long ones aren't too expensive. Looks like you managed a decent job considering the limitations!