Front of my house, Sky? Something else?

ChilliBob

Guys, I'm scouting around the front of my house to decide where to drill through it to push an external socket through to charge our car. On one side, fairly tucked away is a white thing stuck on the wall, that looks to go up to a sky dish (which we are and will not be using), also there's some odd raw plug with a bung in it?!



In an ideal world I'd yank (carefully, I can see some mortar is lose around it) the white thing off, cut the sky cable poke my cable through and use a bit of CT1 or similar to attach and seal it all.. 

But.. I have no idea what this white thing is, or this rawlplug and bung jobbie. 

Answers on a postcard.. or actually.. . as the post is very slow here, how about below cheers!

ChilliBob

And from the inside it looks like this 

Belenus

That odd raw plug with a bung in it is almost certainly a hole drilled and fitted with a rawlplug that the dish installer used to secure his ladder while working on the house.

That is a H&S requirement these days.

It is left there to be reused again next time.


That white thing is simply a cover to help prevent water ingress where the satellite dish cables go through the wall.

My advice is to carefully remove the cables without cutting and roll them up and store them neatly outside. You cannot be certain that you will never want Sky or FreeeSat satellite TV or some future technology.

If you ever sell the property an existing satellite installation may be a small extra selling point.

ChilliBob

Am I safe to remove the white thing? Is it likely to have some gaping hole underneath or something sensible smaller than a finger or two?!

Interesting about the ladder thing, never would have guessed that! 

Belenus

It is safe to remove the white cover but be prepared for some brick and mortar to come with it as they are normally glued on.

You will only find out about the state of the hole when you remove it. Judging by the inside it looks like a typical quick job with little care taken but you could be pleasantly surprised and find a neat hole.

Ideally that hole should be slightly angled upwards from outside to inside to resist water getting inside.

Those cables carry no perceptible voltage unless you have a satellite receiver or other device attached inside and switched on. Even then that will be low voltage and not dangerous.