Singletrackworld members are great fans of “Show me your bike / shed etc” and there seem to be plenty with OCD tendencies too so I’m hoping you can help with some suggestions of how to neatly route cables from a BT master socket around or across blank walls and doorways without digging out the plasterwork!

All suggestions and photos welcome! Thanks.

😀

I wanted to run CAT5 from where the wireless router was (upstairs office, back of house) to the other end of the house (downstairs lounge, front of house) so I could connect a second wireless access point without having to configure a wireless bridge… All the flooring upstairs is large sections of chipboard so lifting it all wasn’t really practical.
I ended up using a Router to cut a 5mm deep and wide slot in the chipboard right across the upper floor and then lifted the flooring in the corner of the room above where I wanted the other router. I then drilled through to downstairs and used trunking down the wall to complete the passage. The CAT5 pressed neatly into the routed slot and the carpet then went back down… not a quick job, and it created quite a lot of mess, but the finished job is almost completely invisible!

I ended up using a Router to cut a 5mm deep and wide slot in the chipboard right across the upper floor and then lifted the flooring in the corner of the room above where I wanted the other router.

Should’ve used a wireless Router. 🙂

If anyone in Leeds would like 9ft of plastic cable trunking box, its free to a good home…

Mine runs from my room and runs 20 foot through my room and outside into the extension to the router. It involved drilling 4 holes in the fitted wardrobes, running the cable up the outside wall and down into the extension where the router is. It follows an existing phone line so was easy enough.

Could use wireless but the signals shite.

Get some external telephone cable (the proper twisted stuff, not the flat tat that ruins your broadband)

Drill out through wall by master socket, run wire around house, then drill out where your router is, stick an extension socket on the wall, and terminate. Stick another broadband filter on the new socket, and plug in your router 🙂

Run it out and in of property,just make sure you use decent single strand conductor multicore cable not cheap crap meant for alarms will drag bb speed down.bt openreach will only run surface mounted extension cables for good reason ,have replaced or disconnected many diy extensions run under carpets or hidden under boards or plaster.and smiled putting charges in .

I’ve never smiled when charging a customer end user…except for the one time I went to a house with two sets of electric gates, a classic Ferrari in the garage, and some slavering dogs that I’d been warned to stay away from that meant I couldn’t get to half the house, and a silly woman who insisted she only had one phone connected to the phone line. (despite having an 8 bedroom mansion) As the day wore on I found a sky box, three phones, external bell, a fax machine (I found that as she was trying to send documents whilst I was faulting). I ended up returning the next day and found another socket in the kitchen, into which a faulty broadband filter was plugged. I removed the filter and charged her about 9hrs @ £60 p/hr. She didn’t seem to care!

Smiling is company policy ,if i dont get offered a brew ,there going to get a charge. 😉

Phone balns on either end of a cat5 cable. Nice and tidy in the study

Erm….less so at the business end…..

Thanks all.

Internal routing
Even with Powerlines or wireless you still need to run a length of cable from the master socket to the router. If you have nice set up this might just be a few inches but you still need a power socket near enough to the master plug. I’ll look into whether I could buy an extension cable for the thin router power cable.

External routing
The house had this before but the cable had deteriorated over time. Because the house is old and has had several stages of extension, the ideal location would still require drilling right through two thick external walls to position it – a bit more of a job than I’d like.

I’ll see what I can do with the indoor wireless options but I’m still limited by those external walls for impairing the signal. Oh, and it needs to be small child proof – why do they like tugging at cables so much???

petrieboy – that’s the swan analogy!

My BT cable (no longer used) is tucked in the 5mm gap between the bottom of the skirting board and the top of the floorboards, so is completely hidden from view.

Random – its exactly that! Everything works perfectly, no wires are on show anywhere and when the cupboard door is closed, the frantic paddling is completely hidden. It might look a mess but I can tell you what cable goes where blindfolded.