Putting cables into dry walls

ed110220

If you have dry walls what is the easiest or best way of putting electrical cables into them?

At the moment they are in surface-mounted conduits which look awful along with surface-mounted sockets.

Where I have reconstructed the walls by stripping off the old boards, replacing them and getting them skimmed it's been easy to put the cables in first (upstairs walls were originally lined in hardboard(!) which I've been replacing) but downstairs they are already lined in plasterboard but not skimmed.

Would you take off the whole board, put the cables in and then put a new board on or just cut out enough to get the cable in?

diable

Chase the cables in then use bonding to fill the gap and skim over. If you chase in deep enough you could use the conduit in the hole to protect the cable.

vaio

Nah, cut the hole for the box & "fish" the cable from the top or bottom.

If you have noggins in the way either make a local hole to overcome that or, id you don't mind spending some money, you can get extended flexible drill bits that might do it.

Last time i did it I used a 3 or 4 inch hole saw to cut a circle of plasterboard from above the noggin, made the cable slot in the noggin, screwed the circular bit of board back in place and it all disappeared when plastered

fluffpot

Don't chase plasterboard - it just makes a mess! Use a padsaw to cut out sections you can get your hand into and then fish cables as above. Keep the pieces (label them so you remember where they went) then batten out the back of the whole with a bit of 2 x 1 and screw cut out bits back to this. Fill or re-plaster

Good luck

ed110220

Thanks for the advice.

At the moment the room is papered in heavily patterned and textured wallpaper which hides the joins between the boards, which were never skimmed.

I'm going to get them skimmed to provide a nice surface for painting, and thought I might as well hide the cables and put in flush-fitting sockets/light switch and extra sockets while I'm at it.

One issue that may complicate things a bit is that three of the walls are normal timber studwork, but the party wall is of concrete blocks with the plasterboard nailed to horizontal battens like this:

diable

vaio wrote: »

Nah, cut the hole for the box & "fish" the cable from the top or bottom.

If you have noggins in the way either make a local hole to overcome that or, id you don't mind spending some money, you can get extended flexible drill bits that might do it.

Last time i did it I used a 3 or 4 inch hole saw to cut a circle of plasterboard from above the noggin, made the cable slot in the noggin, screwed the circular bit of board back in place and it all disappeared when plastered

ah ha I misread the post and thought it was breeze block, I'd ignore my post and do vaio suggested and have a pad saw handy

must get my eyes tested.........

Gloomendoom

So where's the complication? There is room for cables underneath the plasterboard on both walls.

ed110220

Gloomendoom wrote: »

So where's the complication? There is room for cables underneath the plasterboard on both walls.

Only that the battens will have to be notched as there is no room between them and the breeze blocks of the party wall - the cable drops down from ceiling height to sockets.

Gloomendoom

ed110220 wrote: »

Only that the battens will have to be notched as there is no room between them and the breeze blocks of the party wall - the cable drops down from ceiling height to sockets.

Notching the battens shouldn't be a problem. Remember to never run the cables diagonally though... unlike the bloke that wired my house.