4 ms·

Do I understand correctly you're proposing to just run it on the outside of walls/ceilings? How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go through? M

• toast0 4y ago
  > How would you ever again close doors that it needs to go through? Most interior doors have a gap between the bottom of the door and the top of the floor, and you can cable in the gap if you don't mind the look. If the threshold is carpetted, you can often squish the wire into the seam where the carpet meets the door frame. You can get one, maybe two, runs into a room that way, so don't put your central switch in a room like that, and if you need more than one drop in a room, put a switch in the room.
  • tass 4y ago
    I’m picturing this as a tripping hazard, unless there’s some kind of well to shove the cable into (like your carpet example).
    • toast0 4y ago
      Even without carpet, you'd tack it so it stays pretty close to the side of the threshold. 'Nobody' uses the outside inch or so of the threshold, so it's not going to be a tripping hazard. If you are going across the threshold that's different, but in that case, it's better to go over the top of the door frame.
• adrian_b 4y ago
  The interior doors in most houses that I have seen have wooden frames in which it is very easy to make holes for passing cables. Some newer houses might have door frames made of plastic or metal, instead of wood, but even in such cases it is much easier to make a clean hole through the door frame, instead of through a wall. I have made many such holes in door frames for passing Ethernet cables or TV coaxial cables. When you do not want to touch the walls, such cables can be routed on the edges between walls and floor and they can be masked by a cover having the wall color, to be invisible, except where passing through a door frame.
  • jjeaff 4y ago
    Why would you prefer to make a hole in your doorframe rather than the wall? Sheetrock is so much easier to deal with. But perhaps you are referring to a concrete construction, which is uncommon in the US.
    • adrian_b 4y ago
      Making a clean hole through a door frame takes a few minutes at most, with an electric drill machine, after which you pass the cable through the hole, you crimp the connector on the end of the cable and you are done. At least in Europe where I live, I have not seen any walls through which you can make clean holes with high probability. Almost always there is some small damage, which must be repaired, e.g. by filling with plaster and/or repainting. In most cases you also need a percussion drill machine, not just a simple drill machine. Here most walls are made either of concrete or of bricks. So at least in the kinds of walls that I have seen, passing a cable through a wall requires more time, more diverse skills and a larger set of tools and materials than passing a cable through a door frame, which requires only that you have and know how to handle a drill machine and a cable crimping tool.
    • xxs 4y ago
      >referring to a concrete construction While common outside the US, most of it in newer constructions tends to be light concrete which is trivial to drill. But even 40MPa concrete is fine with an SDS, rent one if you don't wish to spend money on. In short drilling through outer walls is not difficult either.
• wrycoder 4y ago
  Do it like the real high class cable installers do: run the wires on the outside of the house and just drill through the walls where you want the drops. Looks fine from the inside!