Drilling hole through wall at front door

mjackman76

Hi folks
Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I need to run a network cable through from the inside of my front porch, to the outside where i will be mounting a camera. The hole would be around 20mm wide, possibly 10mm if I make up the network cable myself. Id like it to look as neat as possible so ideally, the cable would run through the wall then straight into the back of the dome camera which would be mounted to the same wall ( so no cables can be seen externally). My issue is, that im guessing there is a lintel directly above the door, can I drill above it? or through it?  also is drilling through the door frame an option / advisable? Obviously if i did drill through the door frame a tiny amount of the cable would be visible. Thanks for any suggestinos in advance! (and I dont fancy a wireless camera).
MJ

grumbler

20mm is a HUGE hole for a network cable. Most pipes in your house are 15mm. The cable itself is just about 5mm and you can buy tools for making connectors yourself. Even for a LAN connector you don't need more than 15. That said, I have no idea how the camera is powered.

IMO, drilling through the frame is fine, although It's hard to imagine a 20mm hole in a frame.

In modern houses there can be a membrane right above the lintel, but I think even if you perforate it, this won't be a big deal.

FreeBear

If you are crimping the RJ45 connector on yourself, an 8mm hole will be more than adequate to feed the cable through.

grumbler

I guess that's this sort of "network cable". Ha-ha.

Personally, I'd rather cut it somewhere inside the house and then soldered back than drill a 20mm hole, especially in the frame.

mjackman76

Thanks guys, the reason for the large hole is that the camera comes with a cable which is moulded to it, this cable has one half of  a waterproof mating connector around the ethernet connector itself with a screw thread, and a longer cable which was shipped with the camera (to connect to the NVR) has the other half of the mating connector on it - so when used together they provide a waterproof seal around the mating ethernet connectors, the camera is POE. So I could butcher this lead, removing the connector so that all i need is a small hole, by doing this id probably void the warranty on the camera - but I guess that would enable me to drill a smaller hole. Its a bit of a pain and I wish id known the cameras came wired this way however the cameras themselves and the NVR is decent so dont really want to exchange for a wireless system. 

Ectophile

If you're drilling a hole all the way through a wall, it's a good idea to angle it, so that the hole on the outside is slightly lower than on the inside.  That way, if rain hits the cable, it won't run along the cable to the inside of the house.

Also, if you're drilling from the inside outwards, then it's easy to spall off a big flake of brick  just as the drill is about to break through.

tiggerbodhi

Hi, I fit CCTV for a living, well not at the moment! the normal way is to use either a camera base to "lose" the joint in mounted below the camera, not all manufacturers make these though, HIK etc do, the other way is to put a small joint box alongside the camera, can be a bit ugly, the other way is  to drill an 8mm hole for the cable and crimp your own RJ45 on the end, at the camera end of the hole open it out to 20 or 25mm to feed the joint back into the cavity, normally only a brick thick.
Avoid trying to drill through the lintel if you can, you would need an SDS drill to do it if you did try, personally would go above it and fit small conduit to the camera.

mjackman76

Many thanks again for the suggestions, some good hints and info there Tiggerbodhi and Ectophile. 
Think I will try to avoid the Lintel and go above it with a smaller hole and crimp myself. Thanks again!

iampetesmith

Also, if your camera is POE then you'll need to put a POE injector in between the camera and the router/switch (or whatever you're plugging it into) unless it's a POE switch, as most switches and routers don't provide POE so the camera won't get any power if you plug it straight into there.

Mutton_Geoff

You'll have a job to fit the connections all inside the camera mount base without tight bends in the cables that could lead to broken joints. I'd put a small weatherproof junction box over the hole where the cable comes out of the wall adjacent to your camera position and make the connections in that. Much easier for maintenance. If the camera is +/-12v plus video, you can buy baluns to send video down one twisted pair of the network cable and parallel up the remaining pairs to send the 12v down. Make sure you buy solid copper network cable if you do this, not the cheaper copper coated aluminium stuff.