Going to drill a hole.....

TheOne

I'm making a new aerial socket in my lounge. I am taking the wire from the loft, down through the airing cupboard (which is above my kitchen - to the right of my plan) to the cupboard under the stairs, along the wall in there and then through the wall into the lounge. Where I plan to put the aerial socket there are electric sockets at each end of this wall. So I am wondering where the wiring for these might go. Do they come up from the floor or will there be a wire going along the wall from one to the other? In which case it probably won't be a good idea to drill a hole for the aerial socket between these 2 electic sockets.
Its a modern (1996) mid terrace house. The front of the house is to the left of my diagram. The 2 electric sockets in question are marked A and B in my plan. The proposed aerial wire is indicated by a dotted line, the round dot, being the point it comes through the ceiling.

Shazmar_2

Electrical wires tend to run up through the floor so you should be ok. To be certain buy a handheld electric wire detector to check for any wiring at the point you intend to drill, cost from around £10 from B&Q etc.

greyteam1959

At a guess I would say that the cable to the sockets comes up thro the floor...but thats a guess and you dont guess with electric as you well know.
The only sure thing to do is to buy a cable / pipe detector and trace the cables.

greyteam1959

Too slow again Shazmar beat me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TheOne

Well I unscrewed one of the sockets and the wire comes into the recess from above the socket!....
....OK they both do!

espresso

TheOne wrote: »

Well I unscrewed one of the sockets and the wire comes into the recess from above the socket!....
....OK they both do!

This is quite normal especially if you have solid concrete floors. The cables should go up/down and not be run horizontally under the plaster.

If you are fitting a new aerial point, use the best quality satellite type cable (CT100 or equivalent) as this is much better than the old so called 'low loss co-ax' cable and is double screened.

TheOne

Yeah, for some reason I thought I had some satellite cable around, not been able to find it yet though. From what I remember it's quite expensive. Was looking at a few bits in Wickes today, the back box is cheap enough, but the coax cable was about £7 for 20m or £5 for 10m, and the socket they wanted £5 for :shocked:
Reckon they'll be cheaper at a electrical wholesaler? I think I know of one I can go to.