HACKER Q&A
📣 lifeisstillgood

Best Practises / advice for Home Ethernet Cabling


Ok, so I feel I should know this but anyway ... I live in a nice three story newly built UK house - lots of plasterboard (sheetrock?) over timber frames, also lots of aluminium backed cladding - and so lots of terrible wifi reception.

So I want to run ethernet cable from my fibre ingress point to at least a location on each floor, where I will install some sort of RPi wifi access point.

A conversation yesterday with a visiting electrician (fusebox tried to set itself on fire) made it worse as they laughed at the idea - the amount of drilling through floorboards and plasterboard seems immense and various google searches turn up nothing helpful. My big issues seem to be :

1. Conceptually the idea of dropping a wire down from top floor to bottom then pulling the wire up seems simple but

2. There are battens and floorboards between that simple vertical run - how do you get in and drill through those

3. How do you run horizontally? I don't have a simple vertical run and will want to go across the ceiling at least once - again the problem of finding and pulling a wire but now without gravity.

3. The existing wiring (tv coaxial) could be followed but in my limited understanding they would have run this before plasterboaring - so it will go through small bore holes in joists and also will likely be cable tied to joists so I cannot use coax cable as a already in place guide / pull wire.

So it looks like my options are to cut sections of plasterboard out just below and above each floor, reach in and drill up. then make good. And I am still not sure how to go horizontally. And my attic is actually the kids bedroom so getting into the remaining space is ... challenging.

So, HN - before I make laughably horrific holes in my house, your experience and suggestions please?

  👤 davman Accepted Answer ✓
In my new-build (2016) I couldn't bring myself to drill into the floor, and you're basically looking at taking the plasterboard off and redoing it IMO. I ended up giving up and going with Ethernet-over-power when I desperately needed hardwire, with Powerline Wifi repeaters as well.

Now (last Friday) moved house to a 2013 build so I'm a bit more comfortable with putting holes in things.

👤 LinuxBender
Without seeing your home I can't really answer, but I will add a few additional things you may need to consider. If you are putting Ethernet cables in the wall, they need to be plenum rated cables. If the drywall is already up and there are no conduits for signal cables phone, tv then you probably can't make new runs without tearing up a lot of the drywall. This gets progressively more expensive as you run into studs and beams that get in the way. Avoid drilling through load bearing beams. If there are conduits for signal cables, look to see if the contractor was experienced enough to leave a pull rope or pull string in the conduit. If not, you can use a flexible "fish" tool which is a flexible cable on a spool that is rigid enough to be pushed through a conduit. Your hardware or electrical supply store should have these. If utilizing a pull rope, its a good idea to have people at both ends and 2-way radios or intercoms.
👤 mike47
One idea might be to speak to a home security/burglar alarm company. I've had alarms retro-fitted to a couple of houses in the UK and both times the installers were very creative in routing the cables almost invisibly. (There were inevitably one or two stretches that could not be hidden).

If you have to run cables over the surface of the walls, can you box them in and redecorate the boxwork? Can you run the horizontal cables through coving around the edges of the ceilings?

👤 sloaken
Lining in the UK I use TP Links little boxes that plug into the house power system. They work pretty good (not great). Have to unplug them about every 6 months to reset. Been using them for 3 years now.
👤 5bolts
could you go through the outside wall? then its just one hole on each floor. one out from the ingress point, 2 in (one per floor).

fill with caulk, cover insides with jack plates..

I'd just get one of the many mesh network devices and spread them out though. I use the google ones at home myself, love them.

i've done the powerline networking thing too, worked fine.