What are these and can I remove them?

[glaux]

Probably a daft question, but what are these plastic fixings, are they to do with the roughcasting process and can they now be removed?

I want to tack those three cables just below the edge of the roughcast and then cover them with plastic capping but the fixings are in the way, can I either remove them altogether or at least cut a section for the wires to go through?
Thanks!

 

[Alastairreid]

They are weep vents and should not be removed...dont understand why they are beneath the bellcast bead they should be above on the roughcast in line with the dpc.
wont make any difference cutting a check out the top to fit your wire in.

The red brick vents are to create thru ventilation for your sub floor cavity the plastic vents are wall cavity weep vents.

 

[glaux]

Brilliant thanks Alastair. I have no idea why they are in the wrong place, would have to ask the builder who did my extention. Hopefully not too big a deal? I won't remove them altogether but I'll cut out just enough to run the cables through.

 

[pilsbury]

Are they in the wrong place? I would have guessed that the DPC is at the roughcast line and there is a weak mix infill in the cavity below this and the weep vents are in line with the top of the weak mix infill....

 

[Alastairreid]

Cavity infill to 225mm below dpc!
Im assuming a suspended floor here. weep vents being where they are in line with the brick vents make no sense.

 

[glaux]

Ah well, I can't contribute to the technical conversation but I'll try not to worry about it, my builder seems to have done a good job generally.
This is how it's ended up looking anyway:

Both the edges and top of the trunking have been fully sealed to prevent moisture getting in - this is Scotland after all. I realise I'm covering half of the brick vents, is that a major problem? I also had to drill into the wall which I wasn't too happy about, but the No More Nails was having none of it, even though I bought the expensive instant grip one for external use. Waste of money it seems...

 

[pilsbury]

You may be restricting the ventilation a bit - not sure what impact that will have...... personally I'd have buried a bit of pipe/conduit in the gravel and just had the wire appear by where the enter the wall.

 

[glaux]

You may be restricting the ventilation a bit - not sure what impact that will have...... personally I'd have buried a bit of pipe/conduit in the gravel and just had the wire appear by where the enter the wall.

Yes absolutely, that's what I had intended, unfortunately the guy I hired (off Gumtree) to do the phone / TV / network cabling did the shoddy job you see at the top, even though I left him a load of conduit and elbows leftover from a previous project, which would have been perfect for burying. By the time I realised, he'd connected it all up and to be honest I just wanted him gone as fast as possible as he'd already damaged my new roughcast by drilling outwards from the inside.
So it was either 1. disconnecting / reconnecting all three cables myself in order to bury with the conduit, or 2. calling a proper engineer (or two, since really you'd need a TV one and a phone one) or 3. the solution I made up. Not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it's ok for me as long as the cavity doesn't suffocate and I've sealed the trunking properly. If I haven't, I guess I'll find out soon enough as it's been raining non-stop for the last two days...