Drilling through bargebord

Hi all,

I'm looking to have some downlights installed under the bargeboard (on the soffit boards).

I assume there is a void, similar to a soffit where the downlight will be going on the underside, more like a 90 degree angle from where you look in the loft. I've attached images for clarity, with arrows where the presumed void is.

The bargeboard soffit must be held on the wooden supports going through the cavity (circled) so I assume I can't vertically go up up or down.

After some more close investigation. I can now see there’s a gap near the noggins where the gable ladder sits on the wall, on both sides.

I’m hoping I can fish a cable straight through and it will end up just above the soffit outside.

Any thoughts on this or advice on best cable fishing technique / products?

Any advice appreciated.

Fishing Techniques -

Cheapest - a wire coat hanger is often very useful with some string firmly connected to it to.
More expensive - Set of Rods start from £10 ish depending on how many / length. some come with hooks and flexible ends
Even more expensive - Fish tapes but they can be a right pain to use.
I also have a Nylon rodder about 35m long that I bought to do ducting for £35 which is pretty useful.

patience!!!

Why downlights? I’d use some decent LED tape in aluminium profile, you could surface fix it just behind the drop of the fascia board and you’d only need to fish a cable in at the centre point of the two runs (bottom right of the apex/gable). Much nicer even distribution of the light and if you bought RGBW tape it could double up as some seasonal lighting too

I would expect the soffits over the righthand window to be easily accessible from inside the roof space.

I wonder if gravity could help with the soffits on the gable end? If you do use downlights could you start at the top and feed in a flexible lightweight cable that might be hooked from the next one down. I am thinking of a technique I used for pulling alarm cables with just one access point: I fed a good few metres of cable through to the first floor void from below and then used a glassfibre rod to hook the cable and pull it back. It seemed to work quite well

are the downlight going to be at 45 degrees?

have you been up to see if there's a gap big enough to slide a hacksaw blade in? That way you could plot the layout of noggins.
or look for badly filled nail/screwholes. The pattern should indicate regular spacing.

Hi all,

So I took another closer look next to the noggins I could see on the block wall. I used some cable fishing rods to see if I could get through to the other side of the gable ladder and I could on both above and below the noggins, I could also see the other wooden end of the gable ladder just about in some places. The lights will be above the noggins on both sides so two on each side.

So the plan is to feed the wires from this side, then go to the other side and drill the holes and the cable should be waiting there already above each of the noggins.

I prefer this way instead of being on the ladders high up trying to fish a cable through!