I hope this is appropriate here. I figured it fits the general theme of things considering if we’re self hosting there’s gotta be some hardware involved.
I’ve got a house built in the 1960s US. I’m working on upgrading my security infrastructure to a PoE system as my previous choice of wireless system was a poor decision on my part. I have all my ‘gear’ if you will in the basement but I don’t have any convenient drops from the attic to my basement. I need to do a total of 8 drops from attic to basement. I’m not too versed in wiring things through a home (ie. minimal damage to walls and such) I’ve done long runs in warehouses but that was essential all open space.
My main questions are:
- is there any specific conduit I should be looking at to pull the runs through the walls?
- Is there any specific tools that I need to know about to make this job easier? I assume one of those line pullers would be handy in this case ( the hell are they actually called?
- Any other tips and tricks from those of you who have done something similar?
Any advice for Victorian era terraced houses in the UK where every wall is solid brick :/
Wb the ceiling? Then paint the wire to match the walls LMFAO. I’ve also seen people cut channels in drywall then spackle over the wire (this can be a problem if you go to hang something though…)
Yeah the correct way to do it is to chisel a channel in the plaster and embed the cable in the plaster, but thats quite an ordeal to do, a lot of older houses here have plaster on brick interior walls, the same plaster you find in old houses in the US where you’d have lathe and plaster instead because you mostly build houses from wood. (Also we call drywall plasterboard)
https://www.homedepot.com/p/DIABLO-1-in-x-10-in-x-12-in-SPEEDemon-Red-Granite-Carbide-Tipped-Hammer-Drill-Bit-DMARG1210/312593049
Yep, big fucking hammer drill and drill bit. Make sure you have some solid ear protection and kick everyone out of the house while you drill.
Yeah ended up doing that in a couple of places, for me its not practical to have bundles of cable running from a central switch, because of having to run a cable through a hole in the wall, hiding it behind skirting boards (baseboards) and under floors (where there are crawl spaces). My work place is based in a really old building and theres just bundles of ethernet everywhere running across floors and loosely attached to walls etc, wish they spent the time, effort and money of equipment running fewer 10Gb runs to floors then having 10Gb to 1Gb switches for the workstations.
That is hard :( I did a bit of work with an 1880’s Victorian but that was in the North East US so it was plaster and horsehair but hallow walls even on the outside.
Do you want to take some pictures and I can see if there is anything I can think of? Chances are if they plastered right on top of brick/stone than pulling off the baseboard like you did and running everything behind them may be your only option for hiding cables.
Nah, thanks but I think I’ve got a handle on the options, my original reply was more a tongue-in-cheek “cries in brick wall” type thing. I mean it has its positives, I could hang a wall mounted rack anywhere without any prep or checking :)