[noel-pilot]

Hi all,

Just bought my first house and starting to look at things I'd like to do. I'm pretty alright with most stuff, electrics are ok, but structural stuff and walls and floors not had a lot of experience with!

I want to run some cables from one side of my lounge to the other, basically want to have all my av equipment in a cupboard and not on view. Also want to run network cables around the house.

Basically need to run them either under the floor or above the ceiling. at this stage I'd like to minimise the chasing into walls I need to do.

Ground floor is apparently a floating floor, I've had a look under the carpet and it appears to be some kind of t+g chipboard about 18 inches wide but seemingly the full length of the room, longer than the 7feet of carpet i've had up anyway!

Upstairs looks a little better, much smaller squares which are screwed/nailed down. Still appears slotted together somehow but that may just be me.

The house is 6yrs old so I'm assuming modern construction methods.

So....can anyone advise on my options? Have seen mention of cutting into floors, that seems preferable to ripping out skirting boards to get to edges of the boards etc,

Thanks all, sorry for the long post

Noel

[pablo99]

You don't want to be lifting chipboard flooring. If only because it is a nightmare to put back down. You'll break all the T&G edges.

You don't mention if an access hatch is anywhere (cupboard, beside back door) to allow you under the floor to crawl about.

If you can get under, this is the best way. If you are a "big lad" small children can usually be bribed to go under with the promise of sweets or electronic games depending on the space/dirtyness.

Under my floor existed only about 5 inches of a gap so what I had to do was:

Cut a 10x10 cm hole at the rear of my hifi with another hole at the other side of the lounge under a speaker stand.

Drop in a small radio controlled toy car with a string attached. (The one I used even had headlights to help me see where I was going)

Drive it over to the other hole and lift it out by hand

Use the string to draw cables across your lounge.

It's just one idea which was successful for me. It also had to be the least disruptive.

[lunker]

Originally Posted by pablo99

Drop in a small radio controlled toy car with a string attached. (The one I used even had headlights to help me see where I was going)

Drive it over to the other hole and lift it out by hand

That is fantastic!

I want a go

[clockworks]

Do they still build houses with cavities under the floor? AFAIK, the current way of building a floating floor is to use a concrete subfloor, lay polystyrene "bats" on top, then lay weyroc T&G boards on top of that.

It might be easier to rip out all the skirting, and run your cables behind it.

[Bacus]

Noel-Pilot, I am in the building trade and have fitted many 'floating floors'. The chip board you talk about is a t&g flooring that is normally an 8foot by 2 foot sheet with normally about 40mm of high dence foam already fixed to the underside. These boards are normally glued along the T&G edge and slotted together. You normally leave about a 6 to 8 mm gap all the way around a room edge to allow the 'floating floor' to move,expand and contract and so on. If it was layed up tight against walls then as it expanded (hot weather-heat of room and so on) it would raise up in the middle,not good !!
So if you removed the skirting boards (very carefully) you should see a gap between the floor and the wall. You can lay down slim cables into this void but dont over do it !!

Hope that helps, any other advice needed about building then please ask