miamicanes
Active Member
Now that my living room is half-denuded of drywall, and I'm seriously contemplating ripping off the other half and rebuilding the wall 3/4" further from the concrete, it occurred to me that one wire-routing possibility I'd previously written off as un-doable would actually become viable if I rebuilt the wall -- running a half-inch smurf-tube conduit all the way from a wall box behind the TV to the upstairs hallway landing (whose baseboard is clipped on with WireTrack). For anyone wondering, 3/4" conduit would be pushing my luck way too much and run into other roadblocks along the way.
I'm not sure, though, whether I'd actually be able to pull a wire through the conduit when the time came. Here's a rough approximation of the path it would take. Pretend that you're standing in front of the origin box behind the TV, facing north, and humor me as you follow the metaphorical treasure map to the other end:
1. Down 1 foot through wall
2. west 7 feet behind baseboard
3. up 8 feet between gap where drywall from the west wall meets drywall from the north wall
4. south 20 feet behind crown moulding (possibly taking a 2-4 inch detour for roughly 8 feet starting 4 feet south of the north wall)
5. east 8 feet, still behind crown moulding, possibly via 90-degree conduit connector if smurf tube can't make the turn with only about 2-3 inches of "radius room" where the crown moulding turns the corner.
6. down 8 feet (will almost certainly require 90-degree molded bend at this point) through pilaster running from crown moulding to baseboard at base of stairs.
7. east 6-10 inches
8. Continue ~20 feet east along 35-degree upward slope behind baseboard above stair runner
9. level out, continue another 4 feet east behind baseboard at landing
10. Turn north, and emerge into second-floor landing's WireTrack conduit. HOME!
If it meant the difference between viability and non-viability, I *might* be able to work in an access box somewhere along step 4. I'd have to take down the vertical blinds to get at it, but at least it would be there.
Running step 9 through WireTracks would be do-able, but to be honest the WireTracks don't do all that great a job of creating the appearance of a seamless, permanent baseboard. At best, it looks like you didn't bother to caulk. At worst, it looks like you were kind of stoned while cutting the miters and fastening them in place. So I'm trying to avoid putting WireTrack sections next to each other if I can help it. The current section is where it is because it backs up against an interior wall that's extra deep because the exhaust fan and sewer vent pipes run through it, leaving plenty of room for the cat5 I ran there with no specific purpose in mind besides future availability should the need arise. Three of the cat5 cables are just long enough to reach the landing. One is long enough to reach the site of the A/C controller and smoke detector, so I can wire it into the alarm. The last two are long enough to run unbroken all the way to either the master bedroom's TV, the computer room's future wall-mounted LCD TV, and/or my computer, so I'd have a fighting chance of being able to do HDCP-compatible HDMI via cat5 UTP to at least one of those 3 locations someday, or maybe component + SPDIF over cat5 UTP to 2 or 3 locations now.
If push came to shove, I could possibly figure out some way of concealing an access hatch in the faux pilaster whose main purpose is to hide the cat5 and possible conduit as it runs from the crown moulding down to the stairs... but at that point, I'd probably just abandon the conduit idea, because it would probably require woodworking tools that I just don't have access to, like a router or table saw.
Note that if I DO run the 1/2" smurf tube conduit, it will initially be unused, and run alongside the 6 cat5 cables already in place. Initially, it would have a pair of AWG22 stranded wires inside for future pulling purposes... one to use, and one to fall back on if the first breaks. I'm fairly sure the fish tape I have would NOT be able to make 90-degree turns through PVC angle connectors. Still, with over 540 degrees of 90-degree turns and a good 125-150 feet of end to end length, I'm not feeling all that confident that I'd be able to pull something like one or two RapidRun cables through it without breaking the pull wire, or having to use a pull wire SO THICK that the combination of pull wire, RapidRun (or something comparable), and whatever means I used to connect them together wouldn't be too thick and have too much friction to pull anyway.
Thoughts?
I'm not sure, though, whether I'd actually be able to pull a wire through the conduit when the time came. Here's a rough approximation of the path it would take. Pretend that you're standing in front of the origin box behind the TV, facing north, and humor me as you follow the metaphorical treasure map to the other end:
1. Down 1 foot through wall
2. west 7 feet behind baseboard
3. up 8 feet between gap where drywall from the west wall meets drywall from the north wall
4. south 20 feet behind crown moulding (possibly taking a 2-4 inch detour for roughly 8 feet starting 4 feet south of the north wall)
5. east 8 feet, still behind crown moulding, possibly via 90-degree conduit connector if smurf tube can't make the turn with only about 2-3 inches of "radius room" where the crown moulding turns the corner.
6. down 8 feet (will almost certainly require 90-degree molded bend at this point) through pilaster running from crown moulding to baseboard at base of stairs.
7. east 6-10 inches
8. Continue ~20 feet east along 35-degree upward slope behind baseboard above stair runner
9. level out, continue another 4 feet east behind baseboard at landing
10. Turn north, and emerge into second-floor landing's WireTrack conduit. HOME!
If it meant the difference between viability and non-viability, I *might* be able to work in an access box somewhere along step 4. I'd have to take down the vertical blinds to get at it, but at least it would be there.
Running step 9 through WireTracks would be do-able, but to be honest the WireTracks don't do all that great a job of creating the appearance of a seamless, permanent baseboard. At best, it looks like you didn't bother to caulk. At worst, it looks like you were kind of stoned while cutting the miters and fastening them in place. So I'm trying to avoid putting WireTrack sections next to each other if I can help it. The current section is where it is because it backs up against an interior wall that's extra deep because the exhaust fan and sewer vent pipes run through it, leaving plenty of room for the cat5 I ran there with no specific purpose in mind besides future availability should the need arise. Three of the cat5 cables are just long enough to reach the landing. One is long enough to reach the site of the A/C controller and smoke detector, so I can wire it into the alarm. The last two are long enough to run unbroken all the way to either the master bedroom's TV, the computer room's future wall-mounted LCD TV, and/or my computer, so I'd have a fighting chance of being able to do HDCP-compatible HDMI via cat5 UTP to at least one of those 3 locations someday, or maybe component + SPDIF over cat5 UTP to 2 or 3 locations now.
If push came to shove, I could possibly figure out some way of concealing an access hatch in the faux pilaster whose main purpose is to hide the cat5 and possible conduit as it runs from the crown moulding down to the stairs... but at that point, I'd probably just abandon the conduit idea, because it would probably require woodworking tools that I just don't have access to, like a router or table saw.
Note that if I DO run the 1/2" smurf tube conduit, it will initially be unused, and run alongside the 6 cat5 cables already in place. Initially, it would have a pair of AWG22 stranded wires inside for future pulling purposes... one to use, and one to fall back on if the first breaks. I'm fairly sure the fish tape I have would NOT be able to make 90-degree turns through PVC angle connectors. Still, with over 540 degrees of 90-degree turns and a good 125-150 feet of end to end length, I'm not feeling all that confident that I'd be able to pull something like one or two RapidRun cables through it without breaking the pull wire, or having to use a pull wire SO THICK that the combination of pull wire, RapidRun (or something comparable), and whatever means I used to connect them together wouldn't be too thick and have too much friction to pull anyway.
Thoughts?
