I’m sure there’s a knack to this but I can’t figure it out.

I want to run a coax cable from the Virgin box on the wall to the other side of the living room.
Problem is, there’s a wood burning stove in the way so I can’t run it the most direct route along the wall.

The floor is raised wooden boards and the wood burning stove is up on a brick pedestal so to me the obvious thing is to drill a small hole in the floorboards by the wall box, another one on the other side of the room and somehow run the cable under the floorboards.

Go on then, how do I do it? It’s not far, about 5 metres.

With or against the joists?

Take floorboards (small sections between joists) up in between the holes to guide the cable.

Brake cable outer feed through then attach cable and pull. Through hey presto job done !

End of thread job done !

You’d be extremely lucky to do it with any sort of cable, it needs rods and a couple of boards up if with the joists, against them means taking a few more boards up

Brake cable outer

😆

Tie a piece of string round the waist of a trained mouse, use the string to pull the cable through.

I’m thinking something to do with magnets.

Lidl, I think (although it may have been Aldi) are doing a set of rods a week or so ago for not much. If you’re lucky there might be some left..

Really, it’s going to come down to whether you’re running it parallel with or perpendicular to your joists. Are the floorboards just old fashioned square edged or tongue and grooved?

Good point Jamie, tie a magnet on the mouse’s back to make sure it doesn’t get lost.

Remote control car?

Tent poles of the fibre glass type or alloy if your rite posh !

Good point Jamie, tie a magnet to the mouse’s back to make sure it doesn’t get lost.

Could keep track of it with a compass.

I’ve used a couple of techniques in the past. If it’s a straight run then use a long piece of wire. I’ve used in the past a length of welding rid. About 2mm thick, so it’s stiff. Tape the wire to one end and thread it through.

I used a technique the other night to route cable over noggins in my ceiling using a length of 15mm plastic tube over a run tat was about 6 feet. I threaded the pipe over the top of the noggins then threaded the cable (cat6 network cable) through the pipe then withdrew the pipe.

Tent poles are a bad idea, you’ll no doubt fail on your first attempt to push through, then they’ll all come apart and get jammed under the boards when you try to pull them back. I worked with a sparky for a few years on and off, we never had a proper set of rods, just used lengths of pvc conduit or trunking lid.
This assumes you’re running parrallel to the joists, or there’s space below them.

Brilliant. STW comes up with the goods again.
They appear to be tongue and groove boards and the cable will run parallel to the joists but the real floor is about 2 foot down. The joists run high above the floor. I could get a body down there. Or a very large mouse.

You’ll have to take up at least one board at each end of the run. A pain to do with T&G, especially without the right power tools, you’ll probably have to cut through the tongue and across the board [ make sure this cut is over the middle of a joist ! ]

Right, I’ve resigned myself to having to pull up/cut some boards. I suppose if I can cut enough board out to get my arm down there I can throw the the whole reel of cable hard and hopefully get it far enough to grab from the hole on the other side.

Remote control car?

I do know someone who did just that, 1/18th scale car along the joists above a ceiling!

If I wasn’t fussy about the floor boards I’d use a hole saw to cut a big enough hole at both ends of the run to get my hand through and then use any of the methods mentioned above, to run the cable (and a draw wire!)
You can keep the disc of floor board from the hole saw and using this and a couple of bits of timber underneath the floor to “make good” the hole.

Don’t take the edge boards up, come away from the walls where the cable will come through by about .5m and take up a section of board there between two joists. Just enough so you can still reach under to get the cable up at the egdge. It’s much easier to work with your arm under the floor if you’re not squashed up against the wall, and reduces the run under the boards that you need to thread by a meter.

I’m still concerned about where I cut the board. If I cut either side of the joist, the bit I cut out will be fine when I put it back but surely the boards on the ends will be weakened….

DON’T Cut to the side of the joist !!!
you need to cut across the floorboard on a line the runs down the middle of a joist. The boards either end that you’re not lifting will still be sat on half the joist. The section you lift will then go back down and sit on the remaining halves of the two joists.

I had this exact issue a few years ago when wanting to run cables for rear surround speakers. I cut two small sections out of the floor boards (one at each end of the room) and used a big sturdy tape measure, extended it across under the floor boards, attached a piece of string and let the spring inside the tape measure pull it back across, I then used the string to pull the speakers cables across. Hey Presto !!

Yet1man; that’s a genius idea! 😀

Whats the other side? Drill through wall, run along, drill back the other side. IF your kitchen units are the other side you can just pull the kickboard off 🙂

Drill outside.
Take co-ax up front wall and feed through guttering.
Attach cable to a drone and fly over the house.
Feed back through guttering on other side and drop cable to ground (attaching a mouse will help).
Drill from outside to in, blowing out about a m2 of plaster.
Force mouse through the hole. (Any remaining mouse will seal the gap).

Gonna have to take your boards up I reckon dude. Will be quicker and far less faffy that way.

A wireless multi room TV solution across the room might be easier than lifting floorboards etc?

With such a large void under joists you run a reasonable chance of being able to just lift the boards at one end and fish the cable out.

Push as much coax as you can down the hole at one end and then get a long pole or similar with a bit of flex in it – I used to have a long telescopic fisherman’s pole thing – and bodge a hook on the end.
The reason for pushing loads of cable down the hole is, it’ll form loops on the ground and make it much easier to fish out.

Am i missing the oobvious or something ?

Large crawl space……

Drill one coax sized hole each end.

Feed in cable at one end

Enter crawl space

Retrieve cable , pull to where you need and feed upwards.

Bosh.

Am i missing the oobvious or something ?

Well he’s not said that he has access to the void so maybe that?

I’m of the opinion that if a job’s worth doing its worth buying a power tool. OP you need one of these :

Samuri, can you not just run the cable behind the stove? – it’s not going to melt.

He just hasnt found the access point yet in that case 🙂 ( or some muppets laid a wooden floor over it as we found in my mates kitchen when renewing it. Made his plumbing alot easier 🙂

Surely there must be access somewhere. Have you checked under carpets etc. in the hallway and other downstairs rooms.

No access point. When we moved in I removed all the carpets because they smelled of wee, no obvious access.

The stove is sat on a huge piece of slate we put in which butts up against the wall, the cable would have to run over that so even if we run it behind the stove, it’ll look shit.

The coax carries virgin’s special signal from their box to the tivo box. I doubt I could find a wireless setup that would transmit that and I’m not transmitting HDMI across the room. I want the TIVO box under the telly.

Neighbours house on the other side of the wall.

Cut along top of joist, noted. Buy expensive and very specific power tool I’ll never use again, noted. 😉

Thanks everyone one. Love you. /grinds hips.