Serviceable cabling and plumbing (no chasing) in home enviro

[sparkwright]

Assuming the floorboards CAN be lifted, there isn't really any reason why the wiring can't be done properly.

I would expect a 60s house to have conduits buried in the wall (they did things properly then) so new cables can be drawn in - assuming the bulk of the accessories will remain in the existing places.

Best do the wiring in the traditional manner - otherwise in the future you may have problems when you eventually realise that alternative wiring method looks horrible.

 

[lee50]

This picture is a bit unfair out of context.

Surface wiring doesn't mean the end result has to look like a dogs dinner.

That Salag skirting board is exactly the sort of ideas I'm looking for.
http://www.salag.com/site/en/listwy/2,Offer/

It looks you can only put wiring in there. I wonder if there's a double decker version where you can put water pipes at the bottom (ideally with enough room for lagging). Do you have any idea where I can sources these or similar skirting kits from?

The picture just below also looks useful for things like access points and other things that need to be out of the way.

Assuming the floorboards CAN be lifted, there isn't really any reason why the wiring can't be done properly.

I would expect a 60s house to have conduits buried in the wall (they did things properly then) so new cables can be drawn in - assuming the bulk of the accessories will remain in the existing places.

Best do the wiring in the traditional manner - otherwise in the future you may have problems when you eventually realise that alternative wiring method looks horrible.

I wasn't suggesting that the traditional wiring is not done properly. Yes, my floorboards can be unscrewed and lifted away but the time and effort required is equivalent to the actual work that actually needs doing. Seems inefficient to me. And if you forgot to ask for an outlet somewhere, well you'll just have to live with it until the next refurb (not always the case but you see what I mean).

No conduits in my house so will need to look into including that. I think I was wrong about the age, should have said 50s.

Iggifer, thanks for those but I think a more hidden design is safer... at least for a home environment. In some of those examples, it looks like there is plenty of headroom for a suspended ceiling or a raised floor which would make things easier to hide.

 

[sparkwright]

Just to clarify, before it's too late, I expected concealed conduits mainly at the light switches.

(Assuming the doors haven't been rehung on the other side - 50s house would have door opening into the room, modern way is for doors to open into corner.)

 

[flyingsparks]

I wasn't suggesting that the traditional wiring is not done properly. Yes, my floorboards can be unscrewed and lifted away but the time and effort required is equivalent to the actual work that actually needs doing. Seems inefficient to me. And if you forgot to ask for an outlet somewhere, well you'll just have to live with it until the next refurb (not always the case but you see what I mean).

I think you will find messing around trying to get pipes, lagging, and cables into a skirting trunking, and fitting skirting trunking, will be a lot more time consuming and counter productive.