Installation of Dry Lining installation boxes

[Tony_Park]

Hi,

we're having some dryling installed in our house (old farm house in desperate need of insulation), the existing sockets need to be installed in the new drylined plasterboard, but what is recommended, cutting the holes for the boxes and installation prior to the plasterboard being skimmed, or waiting until the plasterer has finished?

The boxes are the appleby boxes supplied by Screwfix.

Thanks
Tony

 

[oharaf]

generally after plastering but those ones from screwfix need to be done whilstr plaster is still soft as they need to combine with the plaster

 

[ban-all-sheds]

(old farm house in desperate need of insulation),

Put it on the outside, not the inside.

the existing sockets need to be installed in the new drylined plasterboard,

Is it just drylining you are doing?

No insulation, either as a separate layer or via composite board?

If you have no insulation then a bit of plasterboard isn't going to do much for the u-values of the walls.

If you have got insulation then have you allowed for its effect on the current carrying capacity of all of your cables, and have you made sure that the backboxes and cables running to them don't create cold bridges and don't allow water vapour to get into the cold side?

 

[sparkwright]

If you fit the boxes after the skim you will get a slightly annoying gap of about 1 mm around the socket where it meets the wall. Nothing to really worry about though.

If you fit the boxes before the skim, removing the boxes later on for maintenance etc will be difficult - as you will risk damaging the skim because it's plastered in.

Who is going to fit the boxes?
If an amateur is to do it I would recommend fitting BEFORE the skim, in case mistakes are made.
Typical problems include;
Cutting hole too big
Section between two boxes breaking away (leave 50 mm gap or so)
Wrong height
Not level
Box positioned where wooden upright is
Totally wrong place

Fold cables neatly in boxes to aid plasterer.
They have a nasty habit of cutting long cables.

 

[shaky1105]

I did mine by cutting the holes in the plasterboard before the skim. However, I was lucky enough the be able to be there when the plasterer was doing the job so once he had done the final polish, I cut the width of the back-box through his skim coat to the boards and removed it.

Might seem a little ott for some but I was using very low profile flat-plate sockets and it was worth the extra effort for the final result is great.

 

[Tony_Park]

Thanks, it looks like I'm doing them - usually the person installing the plasterboard does it, but thats my wife's uncle, and he's asked me to do it...

I'll go for the safe option of doing it prior to skimming...

Thanks
Tony

 

[Tony_Park]

(old farm house in desperate need of insulation),

Put it on the outside, not the inside.

Putting the insulation on the outside is prohibitively expensive currently, and we've taken down plasterboard drylining, so this insulatad plasterboard is the next best thing, from the advice of our surveyor.

the existing sockets need to be installed in the new drylined plasterboard,

Is it just drylining you are doing?

No insulation, either as a separate layer or via composite board?

Composite board - 55mm pink insulation one side, plasterboard the other.

If you have no insulation then a bit of plasterboard isn't going to do much for the u-values of the walls.

If you have got insulation then have you allowed for its effect on the current carrying capacity of all of your cables, and have you made sure that the backboxes and cables running to them don't create cold bridges and don't allow water vapour to get into the cold side?

Cables are running under the floorboards, coming up at the edges where the floorboards naturally don't meet the walls. If there is anything else to do, please let me know

Thanks
Tony