Creating and access panel in engineered wood flooring

scotster · 2 Oct 2008

Hello forum!

I need an access trap in the new engineered oak floor I will lay in a living room. Only small - say 100mm by 100mm.

It will go behind the TV cabinet and will be used to pull through VGA, network, coax and speaker cables that will run under the floor in 100mm X 75mm plastic trunking. Like-wise I will have similar access panels at the back of the room under the sofa to get the speaker cables to the back of the room etc. etc.

I haven't seen a product to form a nice neat trap that I can maybe even inlay a section of engineered wood floor into. Short of cutting a nice neat square chunk of floor out with a jig saw and forming a ledge for it to seat into has any one seen anything suitable please?

Any help welcome!

Rgds, Scott.

mattysupra · 2 Oct 2008

can you not take some floorboards up in another room and crawl under the floor instead of destroying your wood flooring?

scotster · 2 Oct 2008

Very shallow void under the floor! Also I have not yet put this new floor down so the oppportunity to make a neat access solution is where I am at.
I need an accessible trunking system as I trial different AV set ups quite frequently and hence cabling needs to change...

big-all · 2 Oct 2008

not a good idea nil flexability

misses says lets move the sofa over to that wall no chance we have the wires there
telly goes here sofa goes there

much better to have trunking behind the skitring or have your wires terminating up the wall at a workable height

you would also need around an 18mm hole in the floor/hatch fot the wires to pop through

scotster · 2 Oct 2008

Thanks Big-All.

I understand that its not that flexible but neither is the position of furniture in our tiny sitting room!

PVC skirting board trunking would be ideal but the wife hates the look of it (and Im not that keen either).

The big issue is that I need to be able to pull new cables through easily and reasonably frequently. I may create an access point in the wall rather then the floor but then how the hell do I bend it round the corners??

Have fun!

mattysupra · 2 Oct 2008

why dont you just run a mixture of cables. I have a set up with composite, componte, rca, rgb, hdmi, multi coaxial, hd sat, multi speaker cables....... the list goes on. They all run from one end of the room to the other so can have set up either end of room, Also have duplicate again coming out the ceiling for projector. Once you have run these cables once you wont have to change them.

scotster · 2 Oct 2008

You know what Matty. I might do just what you suggest. The 'two of each' approach will probably work but ... you know one day that you will need another hdmi or cat5....

Plus Im loathed to spend cash on cables that I may never use.

Any road ...in conclusion I may run them in trunking under the floor....do the two of each approach and bring them out up through trunking in the wall and out through either the corrrect socket plate or just out through grommeted blanking plates.

Then..when they invent the HDMI-2 cable.....Ill reach for the Jigsaw!

mattysupra · 2 Oct 2008

mine run loose under the floor. I also ran a few pull cords for any new crap that may come out in the future. This little lot will cost you a few bob for good gear tho. Well into 4 figures for my set up. BUT if you testing the stuff you should be using the correct cables for the set up!

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Creating and access panel in engineered wood flooring

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