Safe zone for cable

[JohnW2]

This wasn’t going to be intentional. I just think that without clipping it at the turn, the slack cable won’t be in straight lines. Won’t be completely diagonal either but I’m sure you get my point.

Sure, but I've agreed with you about the problem

Good question! When I started out with this question, I thought I had to have “something” (may be a blanking plate) at the turning point and hence this will facilitate the straight runs.

I think you've probably almost answered your own question. Unless you make a hole, or holes, in the pasteboard (and regardless of whether or not you end up putting an accessory there), there is surely no way you could get a 90 degree bend of any sort (whether within the zones or not) in a cable you were poking behind a dot 'n dab wall, is there?

By the way, re you mention of blanking plates, I think the consensus view is that (even if the cable goes through the backbox) a blanking plate alone is not enough to create a 'safe zone', since someone could remove the plate and plaster over the backbox in the future. The cables therefore probably need to be 'connected to something' (even if only a bit of connector strip, Wagos or whatever) behind the blanking plate in order for it to create a 'safe zone'.

However, in your case, if you somehow managed to get the 90 degree bend in your cable within zones created by the existing (visible) accessories, you wouldn't need anything visible at the point of the bend.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ebee]

Best laid plans of mice and men John.
I once rewired a house and at last minute they changed intended kitchen plan - so a socket ended up behind the fridge freezer so putting a plugtop in was not the answer because it would foul but the socket itself didn`t.
Anyway, 12 months later they wanted some extra sockets in various places including kitchen. I pulled fridge freezer out, no socket.
Hmm, they had removed socket. Put connectors in back of box, shoved plasterboard in box and plastered over to create a flat wall.
Oh Dear! Of course it beggared up the "Safe Zones" too

 

[JohnW2]

Hmm, they had removed socket. Put connectors in back of box, shoved plasterboard in box and plastered over to create a flat wall.
Oh Dear! Of course it beggared up the "Safe Zones" too

As you say, "Best laid plans ...."!

However, I think what I said still stands, because I imagine that people would be appreciably less likely to do that if conductors in the cable are in saome way 'terminated' at the backbox, rather than having the intact cable 'passing through' a backbox behind a blank plate. After all,other than for the 'safe zones' issue, there's nothing electrically wrong with 'plastering in' an intact cable, even if it is going through a back box.

What I find difficult to understand is why anyone would have bothered to do what you describe, given that the socket was hidden behind a fridge-freezer!

Kind Regards, John