Wiring/Fire Code Around Chimneys?

It might be the "easiest" place, but very unlikely to be the "best".

Does the "vent stack" for your plumbing go thru the attack? If it does, then you might consider running it thru that pipe instead.

Since this is a data cable in a residence I doubt that you'd run afoul of any code issues unless there's some local codes that apply. And if the chimney surround is wood framed (and hasn't yet caught fire) the temps in that space shouldn't present a problem for your cable. It would be best to route it within the wall or at least against the framing to keep the cable temperature as low as possible, but it really shouldn't get to be a problem. Worst case would be that the insulation would soften and short out the cable.

You might want to look for "plenum" cable, which is designed to be run in enclosed spaces alongside HVAC plumbing. I believe its main benefit is lower toxic emissions in case of fire, but it typically tolerates heat better as well. Quite commonly used in commercial buildings, and readily available from electronics suppliers.

Loren

The ethernet cable is plenum rated, but I've run into a new wrinkle. The room I need to get wires into is an addition, and was built on the end of the house, enclosing the chimney. I tried running the TV cable down another wall that separates the old part of the house from the new. In addition to other problems, it appears to have diagonal blocking criscrossing the inside of the walls. This will make it virtually impossible to snake any wires down from the attic. It's hard to be sure, but the wall around the chimney may be of similar construction, in which case, I need to come up with another route.

I tried running an electronic stud finder over the wall. It finds the vertical studs OK (which I can verify from nails in the paneling). However, it gets pretty confused in the middle of the stud bays. I have no idea how many extra chunks of wood might be between the ceiling & the desired box location.

It looks like my best bet may be to go down rather than up, but that means tearing open the ceiling in the basement & garage.

Doug White

This might help...

Ned Simmons

I sure wish Dad and I had had one of those when we wired his chum's house in the early '50s, of course all we had to power it would have been human power. The house was of balloon construction and had been insulated with planer shavings with lime mixed in to discourage pests. By the time we got there, two stories of insulation had settled to about four feet. The only way to get a wire up through the wall was to cut away a section of plate, drive in a barbed rod and pull it out. By the time we had pulled out a couple bushels of shavings, we could get a wire through to the cavity above. Needless to say, we didn't try too many of these. The house itself was about eighty years old at the time, the kitchen was surfaced with textured galvanized steel, and since we had receive one spool of romex with a ground wire, Dad decided that this might be a good place to use it. The electrical inspector complimented my dad for the wise decision, but did require a ground lead to be soldered to the paneling at each box and connected to romex ground wire. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

If you punch through the wall it might violate the second wall of defense that prevents a house fire or from gassing the people sleeping at night.

How about out a window and ..... or a hole in the floor in the closet or ...

Martin

You know, the instant I hit send on my previous reply, I remembered all the contortions I've gone through to sneak wiring into seemingly inaccessible spaces, and thought about how little of that wiring is being used since I bought a new computer and a wireless access point. Unless you do wiring for fun, or just can't resist a challenge, go buy a G54 link and never have to worry about moving your workstation again.

Loren

Sounds like the perfect time to buy a wireless setup! That's getting to be the standard solution to nasty cabling jobs, even in commercial environments. I wouldn't bother running cable in my house anymore.

Regards,

Bob

Another approach: Locate room for cable to begin. Locate room for cable destination.

Drill hole in each room to exterior of house, run cable on outside of siding, staple in place. This works for the telco.

Jim

[snip]

It's certainly the easy option, but it has its disadvantages. Gigabit ethernet over CAT-5 has been around for a while (Macs have has it as standard for years) and the costs are comparable with wireless. Gigabit ethernet makes centralised storage (with current drives) almost as fast as local disk access. Wireless, at 1/20th the speed, just doesn't. This may or may not be a concern depending on whether you want to edit video in ever room of your house or just get your email.

Securing a wireless network isn't trivial either.

Anyway, if you do decide to run cable do yourself a favour and run an over-size conduit instead. It's relatively little additional cost and effort and will pay for itself the first time you need to run another cable.

Tim

Amen on running conduit! I started doing that several years back using

1/2" flex plastic c> snipped-for-privacy@chromisdesigns.com (Bob Edwards) wrote:

Home Despot carries these drills, and I plan to go shopping. I think the odds of my being able to safely steer one through several bits of diagonal blocking trying to come down from the attic is close to zero, so I'm investigating knocking about 6 holes in the garage ceilings to bore through various obstacles & run it downstairs.

This house is built like a battleship, and sometimes I think it really has it in for me. NOTHING is simple. Just putting up a towel bar can be an adventure. Between lots of wiring running around, and the fact that the walls are 3/8" rock-lathe covered with 1/4" of sand filled cement, with a 1/16th inch skim coat of hard plaster, just drilling a hole is difficult. Besides eating drill bits, the sand makes the bit bounce around the the holes tend to wander.

Doug White

I tried that. The ceiling of the basement shop is plaster over expanded metal lathe, which means I'm working in a Faraday cage. One of the Ethernet runs is to get through the shield so I can put an access point down there. My laptop is fine upstairs, but as soon as I head for the shop, I lose my link.

Doug White

Have a string hanging in it at all times - then when pulling a new wire, pull wire and a new string with the old string. Make them Nylon property line type.

Mart> Amen on running conduit! I started doing that several years back using

Then there's the 'long hole drill' that I use occasionally when things look real bad. I usually use 38 special or 22lr, but have been known to handload special bullets for drilling holes thru all kinds of shit. CAUTION; make SURE you have an adequate bullet stop, and test it outside first. It's not hard to stop a bullet, a solid concrete block sandwhiched between 2 sheets of plywood is usually more than adequate.