How do you organise and keep cables tidy? Tips please

[SimonD]

I would really appreciate tips on designing and building in means to keep cables tidy in your new build. Not just behind the tv, but what about in a games room where the kids have laptops, xbox, phones and tablet and the room just becomes this nightmare tangle of wires!

 

Much gratitude to anyone who can help my sanity here...

[ProDave]

Make sure ALL the outlets you need, power, aerial, telephone, network etc are on the wall behind where a wall hung tv will be.  Think about set top boxes and surround sound etc, where will those go and how will you route cables to them?

 

All the portable stuff most is wifi now so just provision for enough sockets to plug everything in.

 

My favourite recommendation is run socket cables horizontally from socket to socket around the room.  As long as there is 1 socket on each wall you have a safe zone all the way round so you can easily add extra sockets later if you find you need more.

[SimonD]

19 minutes ago, ProDave said:

My favourite recommendation is run socket cables horizontally from socket to socket around the room.  As long as there is 1 socket on each wall you have a safe zone all the way round so you can easily add extra sockets later if you find you need more.

 

That's a really good shout and easy for us to do upstairs in the timber frame portion of the house. Downstairs where it's masonry, the proposal was to bring the socket cables down from the ceiling service void to each socket. I reckon from what you say, it might be better to bring the cables down at strategic points, e.g. within the stud walls, and run round the rooms, chasing the walls horizontally, or alternatively, I suppose I could avoid the wall chasing and dot & dab plasterboard over? It's funny, I've had conversations with electricians about this for getting pricing for the work and it's been difficult if not impossible to get indications from them about how to approach this looming 1st fix.

[ProDave]

3 minutes ago, SimonD said:

 

That's a really good shout and easy for us to do upstairs in the timber frame portion of the house. Downstairs where it's masonry, the proposal was to bring the socket cables down from the ceiling service void to each socket. I reckon from what you say, it might be better to bring the cables down at strategic points, e.g. within the stud walls, and run round the rooms, chasing the walls horizontally, or alternatively, I suppose I could avoid the wall chasing and dot & dab plasterboard over? It's funny, I've had conversations with electricians about this for getting pricing for the work and it's been difficult if not impossible to get indications from them about how to approach this looming 1st fix.

I personally hate "plastered on the hard" brick walls and chasing cables into them.  When I moved to Scotland, where the majority of houses are timber framed, my job became very much easier.

 

I would suggest you consider lining your brick walls with 25 by 50mm battens vertically and fix plasterboard to that thus creating a service void for cables.  You could even add an extra 25mm of insulation into this service void as long as you leave a strip clear for the cables.  Your electrician who has probably never seen this and is used to bashing grooves in brick walls for cables will be enlightened and will want to move to Scotland for an easier more pleasant life.

[SimonD]

6 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Your electrician who has probably never seen this and is used to bashing grooves in brick walls for cables will be enlightened and will want to move to Scotland for an easier more pleasant life.

 

LOL. Round us that's their bread and butter. I'm not sure they'll know what's hit them. Service void in the timber frame has already rasied a few questions, especially when I explained the osb is not to be touched by any cutting tool whatsoever.

 

12 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I would suggest you consider lining your brick walls with 25 by 50mm battens vertically and fix plasterboard to that thus creating a service void for cables.

 

Indeed, that could work better and certainly doesn't involve any additional cost over the current option, actually it's likely to be far more pleasant for everyone involved. The only drawback is the plaster was to serve airtightness duty, so will have to re-look at that.

 

[Pocster]

It's difficult to plan for everything - not just needs now but in the future.

 

I put extra cat5 cables in my ceiling spaces. They go back to the unmanaged switch - not wired up or anything but "ready".

This also allows for POE.

 

You can never have enough plug sockets. No matter where you put them you always want more. 

 

As mentioned ducting or wall cavities - make things a bit easier.

[MJNewton]

3 minutes ago, pocster said:

You can never have enough plug sockets. No matter where you put them you always want more. 

 

Agreed, at least in terms of locations. I always put them in every corner and whilst my wife moans about this during the build she's the one that benefits most when she plugs in her phone/tablet etc all over the place!

 

What I no longer do is put multiple sockets in known locations for AV equipment. In one house I put four doubles and it still wasn't enough - and didn't look particularly neat anyway given the variety of plug types that went into them. Now a single double is all I put in and use multi-way adapter strips plugged into that. It keeps things hidden out of the way (you can nearly always hide such an item even behind the most sparse of equipment rack/cabinet) and can be easily scaled to accommodate additional devices. Given the relatively low power of AV gear there's no safety-related issue that might otherwise have warranted multiple wall sockets.

[Mike]

45 minutes ago, pocster said:

You can never have enough plug sockets

You can: House worth £1,350,000 has enough plug sockets for everyone in the street

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, MJNewton said:

when she plugs in her phone/tablet etc all over the place!

I use low power devices. Phone lasts me a couple of days, tablet a week. The only things that are permanent plugged in are radios and laptop, both low power devices, oh, and the energy monitor/weather monitor.

 

I monitor my power usage and it is not unusual to have 50%, which amounts to several hours a day,  when my house is drawing no power at all.

It is all about management, not the number of sockets.

[Dudda]

11 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I use low power devices. Phone lasts me a couple of days, tablet a week. The only things that are permanent plugged in are radios and laptop, both low power devices, oh, and the energy monitor/weather monitor.

 

I monitor my power usage and it is not unusual to have 50%, which amounts to several hours a day,  when my house is drawing no power at all.

It is all about management, not the number of sockets.

But do fridges, freezers, TV's on standby, the little clock on the microwave, internet router, network switch and all the other bits not draw a constant small amount of power. I'd have thought it's impractical to have a house that draws no power at all for several hours.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Dudda said:

But do fridges, freezers, TV's on standby, the little clock on the microwave, internet router, network switch and all the other bits not draw a constant small amount of power. I'd have thought it's impractical to have a house that draws no power at all for several hours.

Fridge only draws occasionally. My phone is my router.

I have purposely tried to reduce all the parasitic loads I can. And it has worked.

We too often swap convenience for ludicrously high environmental damage.

 

Just don't ask about the 600 miles extra I am driving every week at the moment, in an old diesel as well.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Dudda said:

I'd have thought it's impractical to have a house that draws no power at all for several hours.

Should have said that it is not a continuous no draw.

[Pocster]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Fridge only draws occasionally. My phone is my router.

I have purposely tried to reduce all the parasitic loads I can. And it has worked.

We too often swap convenience for ludicrously high environmental damage.

 

Just don't ask about the 600 miles extra I am driving every week at the moment, in an old diesel as well.

What about your life support machine ? Surely you can dial that down … ?

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, pocster said:

What about your life support machine ? Surely you can dial that down

There was a young man called Green

He invented the wanking machine

On the 99^th stroke, the bloody thing broke

And whipped his balls to cream

 

Keeping that plugged in for your next visit.

[Adsibob]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

 

Just don't ask about the 600 miles extra I am driving every week at the moment, in an old diesel as well.

What are you doing that? (Sorry, I’m not very good at compliance.)

[Adsibob]

What about cable management. I have a desk in the middle of the room that will need 4 or 5 sockets. I have put in a floor socket near the desk, but that only has 3 sockets plus Cat6, so will need an extension cable with multiplier coming out of there, and some way of making the 4 cables look nice as they come out the floor and up to the desk. I guess there are probably ways of making a cable tidy look less like a cable tidy, but I haven’t found one yet.

[Bitpipe]

Back to cables, My spark had a simple solution.

 

He had a double socket,  behind where the TV was mounted and next to this put in a blank socket box that was chased out at the bottom. To this he fitted the nylon brush style covers. 

 

Vertically below this, behind where the TV table sits, was another run of power, ethernet, RF and another blank box with nylon brush covers. Between these two boxes was just a wall void - you could have duct if required.

 

So TV plugged into wall and RF, ethernet and HDMI cables just ran into the blank box and popped out inside the TV table for termination. Means clean wall between the two.

 

I suppose he could have put ethernet and AV behind the TV also and just used the ducting for HDMI etc..

[SimonD]

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

It is all about management, not the number of sockets.

 With my lot is all about the sockets as otherwise they won't manage!

 

26 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

there are probably ways of making a cable tidy look less like a cable tidy, but I haven’t found one yet.

 

Yes, I'm still searching although hiding everything in the wall like  @Bitpipe's spark did is great. Similar to you I've got one design where this is looking tricky.

[Bitpipe]

1 minute ago, SimonD said:

 With my lot is all about the sockets as otherwise they won't manage!

 

 

Yes, I'm still searching although hiding everything in the wall like  @Bitpipe's spark did is great. Similar to you I've got one design where this is looking tricky.

 

It's easy to do with a service void (remember to leave a length of twine between the two endpoints and don't let your tackers block the void with insulation if it's on an internal stud wall.

 

Dot and dab plasterboard also onto a solid wall. Probably a bit tricker in a chased wall, you'd probably want actual ducting between the endpoints.

 

Also remember to protect the ends of whatever cable (e.g. HDMI) that you choose to pull through.

[TonyT]

Use 32mm plumbers pipe in between boxes and this will let you pass hdmi cables through.

[dpmiller]

14 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Fridge only draws occasionally. My phone is my router.

I have purposely tried to reduce all the parasitic loads I can. And it has worked.

We too often swap convenience for ludicrously high environmental damage.

 

Just don't ask about the 600 miles extra I am driving every week at the moment, in an old diesel as well.

Modern fridges do indeed have a "standby" consumption. Compressor control isn't just a capillary stat any more...

[SteamyTea]

16 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

Compressor control isn't just a capillary stat any more

Is on my 100 quid from Currys.

I suppose I should be a bit more precise.  Chart shows the percentage of time that draw was under 1 Wh.

The point is though, you can banish most parasitic losses if you want to.

It also shows that for my lifestyle, PV would not be that brilliant, except I could shift the E7 loads to the day (about 14 kWh over 5 hours).

Edited January 27, 2022 by SteamyTea

[MJNewton]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

I could shift the E7 loads to the day (about 14 kWh over 5 hours).

 

I might be misunderstanding but that sounds like quite a lot?

 

Our average daily electrical consumption is a very consistent 10kWh and I've always assumed this to be quite high. That's with daily dishwasher, washing machine, TVs and lights left on my the wife and daughter, computers running 24/7 etc... The complete opposite to your approach by the sounds of it?

 

Ah, but we do have gas central heating so if you're all electric that could explain the difference! No EV here too.

Edited January 27, 2022 by MJNewton

[markc]

6 minutes ago, MJNewton said:

 

I might be misunderstanding but that sounds like quite a lot?

 

Our average total daily energy consumptions is a very consistent 10kWh and I've always assumed this to be quite high. That's with daily dishwasher, washing machine, TVs and lights left on my the wife and daughter, computers running 24/7 etc... The complete opposite to your approach by the sounds of it?

 

Ah, but we do have gas central heating so if you're all electric that could explain the difference!

Just for reference of electricity consumption.

I live alone, have gas heating but I do like to tinker in the garage and make stuff.

my electricity usage from 30th November to 30th December was 573 kWh ?

[SteamyTea]

20 minutes ago, MJNewton said:

but we do have gas central heating so if you're all electric that could explain the difference

That is the difference.

 

Outside the night period, my mean usage is 0.1 kW, or 1.7 kWh.day^-1.

17 minutes ago, markc said:

I live alone, have gas heating but I do like to tinker in the garage and make stuff.

my electricity usage from 30th November to 30th December was 573 kWh

When I was decorating and using the wall paper stripper for several hours, my usage shot up.

Hated it.