Drilling a wall to pass cables through...

mr1974

Hi there,

I need to get cables (electrical/Ethernet) into a room from another. I saw the guy who installed my satellite dish use this large drill tip to drill the wall from the outside of the house, I thought I'd do the same for internal walls and I equipped myself with a long tip for the purpose. Walls seem easy to perforate.
Questions:
1 - Is this the correct way of laying cables around the house? (for the room to room bit, at least)
2 - Where do I drill the hole? Of course where I need it, but what spots in the wall are best suited in this respect?
3 - Shall I have the cable directly through the wall, or do I have to lay down some sort of pipe in the wall, so that (potentially multiple) cables can be passed through at will?
4 - How do I cover the two spots where the cables\pipe comes off the wall? The sat guy used two black patches, alongside the actual cable. I am not sure where to get those patches (and what their name is) and if they are at all a viable solution if I am to put a pipe through the wall as per 3.


Any comment welcome!
TIA

penrhyn

On the Ethernet front have you considered a wireless connection?
Are you running tempory mains cables through the wall i.e an extension cable, or do you intend to have it connected into your ring main, in the latter case you will need an electrician to do it, or if you do it yourself get the work certified afterwards.
Before drilling any holes in your walls you need to check for buried water or gas pipes and electrical cables, so you need a pipe/electrical/stud finder.
Having said that I would imagine that you would want to find an inconspicuous spot for your cables.

Normally electrical cables drop vertically down the wall to downstairs plug sockets with the wiring running round the ceiling, upstairs points will have ascending cables.

Little_John

Not sure about the electrical cables but ethernet can just go through the hole I use a 6mm drill bit giving a small bit of play to get the 5mm cable through easily, you would be advised to but the electric cable through a seperate hole.

Positioning the hole is up to you, you should try to aim to go through the morter between the bricks but you wont know where that is if the walls are plastered so just make the hole in the bets place to keep it hiden easily. the oint you break through the other side is where most damage to the surface occurs try to judge your distance and apply less preasure when you feel you are about to break through after all it should ba a layer of plaster and soft compaired to the bricks.

Wireless is ok but there is still the lag of the encryption used and can be slow.

allycat999

Just a thought but do you really need to drill through the wall, we have three computers all online through a router and the cable is laid under the carpet at the edge between the gripper and the wall. It took a while to do as we had to take up two 'gold joiners' between three rooms but there is no cable noticeable and no holes. Yes it would have been easier to have a wireless network but I am not convinced about the safety of it so prefer the wired route. One point to consider is that there is a maximum metre length of cable between router and computer - cant remember what it is though

Doonhamer

allycat999 wrote:

Just a thought but do you really need to drill through the wall, we have three computers all online through a router and the cable is laid under the carpet at the edge between the gripper and the wall...:

It's best to put the cable the other side of the gripper if you can. Between the gripper and the wall is for the carpet to curve down allowing the gripper to work properly. A sharp chissel is good for cutting a gap in the gripper to get the cable to the inside.

It's best if you can get the cable under the floor or up into the loft. Think what would a plumber do to get a pipe to the next room.

allycat999

Good idea going into the loft we will hopefully be moving soon and as the computers will be on several floors we will be using that method.

Little_John

The cable lenght isnt a factor unless you live in Buckingham palace or somthing as big I have used almost a full box (305m) of cable when I did a tempory point in the new hospital near kings cross station while it was a building site.

raymond

penrhyn wrote:

Are you running tempory mains cables through the wall i.e an extension cable, or do you intend to have it connected into your ring main, in the latter case you will need an electrician to do it, or if you do it yourself get the work certified afterwards.

Part p only applies to kitchens, bathrooms, outdoors and adding a NEW ring. Adding sockets to an existing ring is not notifyable

Rex_Mundi

When I networked my place, I ran all the cables through the loft and buried them in the walls coming down (using conduit). I then connected this to an RJ45 faceplate so I could just plug any computer to the wall to be connected to the network. Length of cable shouldn't be a problem. You can run Cat5 cable up to 100M in one run before you get any loss of signal.

I would advise you to use Cat5E cable. This has the capability of running signals up to 1000Mbps. Although your current router will probably only run up to 100Mbps at the moment, this will 'future proof' your network for a few years coming. I found B&Q was cheap for cable. I bought 100M of Cat5E there for about £17. PC World wanted £50 for the same amount.

Wired networks have a couple of advantages. They are far more secure than wirless networks (you are not broadcasting your signal out into the street and into your neighbours place). They also run faster because you don't need the additional encription when sending signals.