awesome wiring idea for new construction or during new roof/soffit install

[signal15]

I am installing security cams, and was thinking about how nice this would be.

Run several loops of alarm wire, cat-6, and/or romex around the house just above the soffit. Bring each end back to the same location so it's a giant loop. For installing future lighting, cameras, or other HA/security equipment, just cut a hole in the soffit, locate one of the unused runs with a toner and snip it in half, and terminate each end. The unused half can also be used at a later point for connecting devices on the other side of the house.

Just something to keep in mind the next time anyone builds a house or has the soffits removed for some reason. Just a couple hundred bucks of wire, and you'd never have to worry about pulling wire up into soffits again. Anywhere you wanted to put a device would already have network and power wire available in that location.

If anyone has a good idea on how to do this without tearing everything apart, I'm all ears. I'm waiting for a hail storm to take out my roof so I can upgrade to a steel one. I could set the depth on my circular saw to just cut through the sheathing and then cut a 3-4" wide channel above the soffit all the way around. But until that happens, there's no way to do it without taking down the soffit.

 

[Neurorad]

No attic, I'm guessing?

 

[signal15]

No attic, I'm guessing?

I have an attic, but I cannot get access into the soffit area from there because of massive amounts of insulation and screens to keep bugs out.

If I stick my head up in one of the soffits, I can see the other side, but it's 70 feet away, and there's no way I push a fish tape that far down it without it getting hung up. The only ideas I've come up with are:

- Take down the soffit, install wire, put it back up (that's a ton of work)
- Attach a string to a crossbow bolt and fire it down to the other side, then use the string to pull the cable through. (would be fun even if it didn't work. 70 feet is a long way when you can only have about 12" of drop)
- Use this to build a sweet robot that could crawl through it and pull your wire with it: http://www.vexrobotics.com/products/

I used to have one of those robotics kits, and it was AWESOME. You could totally build something for pulling cable in ducts or soffits with it.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

They make a dart gun attached to a fishing line spool for this purpose. Or maybe use a helium baloon and your leaf blower?

 

[signal15]

They make a dart gun attached to a fishing line spool for this purpose. Or maybe use a helium baloon and your leaf blower?

The helium ballon would get popped from the shingle nails sticking through on the back of the roof sheathing. Plus, 70 feet is a long way to go.

Plus, I only have a lot of space in the soffits that are perpendicular to my trusses. The ones that are parallel are only 4" high. My best bet in a finished house is going to just be to pull a bundle to the attic and then cross connect to each camera location from the attic into the soffit. It's a huge PITA. My attic is nearly 30 ft high in some spots, so there's plenty of room to move around. But there's 2 feet of blown insulation in the bottom, so I can't walk on the bottom of the trusses. I have to play monkey bars in there right now and need both hands and feet. I'm building catwalks, but I'm only about half done, and they don't run down near the soffit areas, just across the middle. It's very difficult to get around without falling. And if I fall, it could be another 20ft drop once I fall through the sheetrock. If I were going to run catwalks around the edge, I'd need to start building stairs or ladders also.

Hmm... I just had an awesome idea for a device that would be really really simple to make that would work awesome for running wire through ducts or soffits. Maybe I'll post the details at some point, I need to try this out.

 

[Sacarino]

Or maybe use a helium baloon and your leaf blower?

I vote for the balloon idea for the entertainment factor of watching a guy try to position a leaf blower under my roof in order to make the balloon bounce around properly... roofing nails might make short work of the helium though. Either way it'd be fun to crack a beer and watch!

I've actually done something similar to the OP's idea except I had the wiring (single run, non looped) pop out at the apex of my gabled roof and drop down to the corners inside the soffit. A little help from gravity goes a long way. Looks like a big (somewhat misshapen) H when viewed from above. It's a lot easier to get up to the apex compared to down into the eaves, too...

 

[apostolakisl]

How about this. Take some unsuspecting cat, tie some fishing line to its collar, stick it in the one end, cover the hole with a board or something, then call it from the other end. Put some tuna fish or something down there and run the can opener.

 

[wuench]

How about this. Take some unsuspecting cat, tie some fishing line to its collar, stick it in the one end, cover the hole with a board or something, then call it from the other end. Put some tuna fish or something down there and run the can opener.

I just pushed flexible conduit into my soffit and secured one end. Then opened the soffit and attached the other to a retrofit electrical box.

I like your idea though, I am almost wondering if it could be extrapolated to every room in the house. Just loop a standard set of wires around the room run back to a central place...

 

[signal15]

How about this. Take some unsuspecting cat, tie some fishing line to its collar, stick it in the one end, cover the hole with a board or something, then call it from the other end. Put some tuna fish or something down there and run the can opener.

But why would you need to cover the end you stuck him in? Just spray him with a hose.

I do like the idea of running across the attic and dropping down from the tops of the gables. In fact, I will probably end up doing this. Now I just have to wait for the attic to cool down enough to go up there.

 

[Neurorad]

Not sure I understand - you drill a hole into the soffit from the exterior, pass a fishtape/fishstix through the hole, and then find the other end in the attic. If the tape/stix are long enough, you can easily pass it to the center of the attic where your catwalk is/will be lcoated. You don't need to get to the soffit from the attic, you just need to reach the tape/stix.

I haven't done any soffit installs yet, but this is what I picture. What am I missing?

 

[wuench]

Not sure I understand - you drill a hole into the soffit from the exterior, pass a fishtape/fishstix through the hole, and then find the other end in the attic. If the tape/stix are long enough, you can easily pass it to the center of the attic where your catwalk is/will be lcoated. You don't need to get to the soffit from the attic, you just need to reach the tape/stix.

I haven't done any soffit installs yet, but this is what I picture. What am I missing?

I think the tricky part is there are obstacles. For example, if you have blown insulation like me, there is cardboard blocking off most of the soffit. That makes it difficult to fish over into the attic. Fishing down is easier because you can see you are over the cardboard and in the soffit somewhere.

 

[signal15]

The original point I was making is that if there were loops run around the soffit and the ends were located in a wiring closet, there would be no need to go into the attic. My attic is a pain in the butt to get up into, a pain to get around in, and in the summer it's over 150 degrees in there. The house is 48 feet front to back, and the center ceilings in the house are 4ft+ higher than the rooms on the edge of the house, it's very difficult to get climb down in the edges to find the end of your fishtape because of the height differences and because there is very little to climb on, and the fishtape is probably lost somewhere under 2ft of blown fiberglass.

The catwalks will only get me from one side of the attic to the other, and then up over this rotunda thing, they don't provide easy access to the "lower" areas of the attic.

If I just needed a single run to a particular point, then it would make sense to go through the trouble of dealing with the attic. But I need at least 6 runs for cameras, 4 for motion, and some romex for some additional lighting.

 

[cgpsp]

How about this. Take some unsuspecting cat, tie some fishing line to its collar, stick it in the one end, cover the hole with a board or something, then call it from the other end. Put some tuna fish or something down there and run the can opener.

Awesome idea... but then I realized it would probably only work for CAT 5 wires.... hmmmm

 

[jumbodogs]

If all you have is just fishtape try picking up some sticks they seem to work much better. http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=...0CA8Q8wIwATgA#p

 

[pete_c]

My second floor is wired via the attic. The wire run is via a middle located wall from the basement to the attic. I initially built a few catwalks and adding lighting. The middle of the attic height is around 8-9 feet. I added one camera in the corner of the house. I did most of the work via the outside. I cannot get to the soffit area too easily in the attic. I drilled a small hole into the soffit and just put a long fiberglass rod in it. I could get to the fiberglass rod in the attic; attached some cat5e and pulled it outside to the soffit. The catwalk is about 25 feet or so from where the wire was. I keep small sheet of plywood in the attic to lay down for temporary catwalks if I need to work in a certain area of the attic. I have 2 other attics kind of off the main attic and utilized fiber poles to run cat5 wires to the edges of these attics for some network cabling in one of the bedrooms. The neigbor across the street has electrical boxes at the edges of each soffit for Christmas lighting. It would not have been difficult to put in a couple of boxes with conduit back into the attic for LV wiring in the soffits during construction.