Drill hole from attic to outside wall

Lk1980 · 17 Aug 2019

Hi,
I was wondering if I can please get some advice and help.

I am looking to install tv amplifier in the attic and like to run some tv cables from the attic to the outside wall into the bedrooms.

When I looked closely in the attic, I could not see any outside wall except the chimney. Also I looked at several places and lifted the insulation up a bit but still could not see the outside wall.

I will be most grateful if I can please get some help.

I just dont want to climb up the ladder by the wall and just drill a hole and try to locate it from inside the attic for a fear of damaging something

Thanks
B

acurachris · 17 Aug 2019

Typically, you are not going to have walls in your attic unless you have a gable end (apex at the end of your house). The walls stop at the eaves.

Also, when drilling a hole all the way through you are always best drilling from the exterior - inwards. If you drill from the inside the drill tends to punch through the last bit and break the brick.

I guess you already have an aerial installed and it is already going to a room somewhere. Can you not plug the amplifier where it currently comes in then direct the cables from there to the bedrooms?

Lk1980 · 18 Aug 2019

Hi Acurachris
Thank you for your reply. I have the ariel on the chimney. The wire directly comes into the lounge from the ariel. Connects to the amplifier and distributes to the other rooms.

My lounge has a clutter of 5 to 6 wires and looks very messy despite tied with cable ties. To tidy up I am planning to re route the wires.

Also I thought to drill from external wall but not sure where in the loft or any other place it would come inside as I could not see the wall.

As you mentioned above "the walls stop at eaves"

I have a semi detached house. I think on one side it's a gable roof (inverted V) triangle shape roof

acurachris · 18 Aug 2019

It sounds like you have a hipped roof.

If you want to take the aerial into the loft you would probably need to take it through the facia/soffit boards. When you are in the loft, can you see daylight at the edges of the attic? If you can see light it’ll be just a case of feeding the cable through the gap (no drilling).

You could drill a hole into one of the bedrooms and pull the cable through to there instead and distribute from the bedroom. Depending on how neat you want to make the job, channel the wall and send the incoming cable to the loft, or lift floor boards and route to the other bedrooms.

Harry Bloomfield · 18 Aug 2019

My cables, camera, LAN, amateur radio antennas and TV antenna are all run inside, I hate to see cables draped down and flapping in the wind.

TV and chimney mounted amateur radio antennas loop down the roof, then routed back up by easing up a roof tile. Once in the loft, I have a route down through the airing cupboard, across the landing under the floor, to a front bedroom, where living room heating pipes come down in a corner, next to the chimney breast and boxed in floor to ceiling. I have built in units along that living room wall, which is where the TV is and a distribution amp is. The distribution amp then feeds multiple other TV outlets around the house, back up alongside the heating pipes, plus LAN cabling.

My distribution amp, could have alternatively been mount in the loft.

So my suggestion would be, to see if you can find a route from loft, to first floor's floor, then under floor boards bringing cables up where TV's are located.

Lk1980 · 2 Nov 2019

acurachris said:
It sounds like you have a hipped roof.

If you want to take the aerial into the loft you would probably need to take it through the facia/soffit boards. When you are in the loft, can you see daylight at the edges of the attic? If you can see light it’ll be just a case of feeding the cable through the gap (no drilling).

You could drill a hole into one of the bedrooms and pull the cable through to there instead and distribute from the bedroom. Depending on how neat you want to make the job, channel the wall and send the incoming cable to the loft, or lift floor boards and route to the other bedrooms.

bineet said:
Hi Acurachris
Thank you for your reply. I have the ariel on the chimney. The wire directly comes into the lounge from the ariel. Connects to the amplifier and distributes to the other rooms.

My lounge has a clutter of 5 to 6 wires and looks very messy despite tied with cable ties. To tidy up I am planning to re route the wires.

Also I thought to drill from external wall but not sure where in the loft or any other place it would come inside as I could not see the wall.

As you mentioned above "the walls stop at eaves"

I have a semi detached house. I think on one side it's a gable roof (inverted V) triangle shape roof

Hi Acurachris,
Finally the electrician managed to drill the hole and got the wires in the roof . Works perfectly.

I now noticed that even though using an labgear amplifier, i am not getting hd tv channels (before there was an ampliefier connected via redundant sky tv box. I have now removed the sky box because the tv aerial wire goes direct into amplifier and feeds into all other rooms.

aerial is quite old perhaps about 2010. Do you think that might be the case? I am missing on all hd channels.

pilsbury · 3 Nov 2019

Were you getting all channels previously?

Lk1980 · 3 Nov 2019

pilsbury said:
Were you getting all channels previously?

Yes I was getting them. Perhaps maybe because it was connected via sky box and fed through its rf port using tvlink fd40 amplifier? The setup was

Aerial wire into skybox --fd40 amplifier to rf port -- and 4 outputs to distribute the signal to different rooms.

Now the new setup is aerial wire into labgear fd80 amplifier and 5 outputs into tvs in the house.

Thanks,
B

pilsbury · 3 Nov 2019

From my logic (which could be questioned) your aerial and cable is fine as you were getting a decent signal before. If you want to double check this, just plug the aerial cable direct into a tv. Then retune and see if you get all your programs. You can then put this down to the amp. Does the amp have a power supply? Is that on? Also does the amp have a little gain knob? Sometimes fiddling with that can make a difference. Turned up too high is often a problem. Somewhere in the middle is nice.

If you do make changes, retune all your TVs or they still won’t pick the channels up.

Lk1980 · 6 Nov 2019

pilsbury said:
From my logic (which could be questioned) your aerial and cable is fine as you were getting a decent signal before. If you want to double check this, just plug the aerial cable direct into a tv. Then retune and see if you get all your programs. You can then put this down to the amp. Does the amp have a power supply? Is that on? Also does the amp have a little gain knob? Sometimes fiddling with that can make a difference. Turned up too high is often a problem. Somewhere in the middle is nice.

If you do make changes, retune all your TVs or they still won’t pick the channels up.

Hi Pilsbury,
Thank you for your advice. The amp is powered on. I disconnected the Amp and connected the Aerial to the TV and retuned. I was able to get all the HD Channels. When re-connected the Amp, I do not get any channels. What do you think.

pilsbury · 6 Nov 2019

Right. You have proved your signal/Ariel is fine.

all a distribution amp does is take the good signal and then amplify it down each output as you loose strength if you were just to split it.

Things to check:
Do you have that gain dial on your amp as I suggested previously?
Have you connected the amp up correctly? Some have UHF and VHF inputs- you want UHF
Are all you connected TVs missing channels?
Could be a knackered amp - try a different one if the other things I suggest are ok

Lk1980 · 6 Nov 2019

pilsbury said:
Right. You have proved your signal/Ariel is fine.

all a distribution amp does is take the good signal and then amplify it down each output as you loose strength if you were just to split it.

Things to check:
Do you have that gain dial on your amp as I suggested previously?
Have you connected the amp up correctly? Some have UHF and VHF inputs- you want UHF
Are all you connected TVs missing channels?
Could be a knackered amp - try a different one if the other things I suggest are ok

Hi Pilsbury,
It does not have dial for changing the strength of a signal. I spoke to lab gear ablut their ldl 201 amplifier today and they siad that the aerial does not have enough signal strength and suggested to get a new aerial????

Yes! all the connected TVs missing the channels.

I retuned each tv with aerial connected. I got HD channels. I later connected the amplifier and do get some pre-tuned HD channels like bbc1 HD, ITV HD etc.. but not BBC News HD or any +1 HDs

Thanks once again for your help
B

IT Minion · 6 Nov 2019

They're full of ****. If the system works without their amplifier but stops working when the amplifier is added then either the connection is wrong (the extra cable could be a dud), the setup of the amp is wrong (wrong port or not switched on) or the amp is crap as the TV does a better job of processing it.

What is the model number or the amp? Some Ariel's and some amps are designed for analogue signals and digital confuses them.

Harry Bloomfield · 6 Nov 2019

IT Minion said:
Some Ariel's and some amps are designed for analogue signals and digital confuses them.

Sorry, I cannot agree with that, signals are just RF signals - the amp will not care what it is amplifying, providing it is in its passband.

IT Minion · 6 Nov 2019

Harry Bloomfield said:
Sorry, I cannot agree with that, signals are just RF signals - the amp will not care what it is amplifying, providing it is in its passband.

It's been a while since I did amplifier design and it's entirely possible I'm wrong, but in addition to the pass band you can and should be looking at the nature of the signal you're boosting. A digital signal is made up of an infinite number of sine waves of different frequencies. If you boost a digital signal as if it were analog means that you're deliberately filtering out the higher and lower components and effectively distorting the signal.

Edit: but it's also possible that (as you suggest might be the case) the filter is designed for analog signal rather than digital and is simply filtering out the DVB signal which is on a different frequency to the analog signal it's designed to amplify.

Edit2: also an amplifier designed for a digital signal should only be pushing out lows and highs. Anything else is just preserving noise.

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Drill hole from attic to outside wall

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