Extending The Services Cables

In the corner of the new lounge are two double socket outlets, a TV point, a telephone point and an RJ45 network outlet. Now that the stairs are in place they are halfway up the wall in the stairwell. To make them useful again, the cables have been extended so that the various outlet sockets can be put into a floor-box in front of the glass and timber screen to the stairs.

For the Ethernet and telephone cables two punch-down (IDC) inline couplers were used :

For the Co-axial TV aerial cable, a satellite connector was used. The two halves screw together rather than push fit so should make a more reliable connection and allow me to get the box plastered over rather than have to fit an ugly cover plate :

I was able to pull the ring-main cables out from the trunking from below, so connections to extend the ring main could be made in a junction box under the floor.

The Ethernet and telephone cables have been tested. This was assisted by the upgrade of our internal network to Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T) by the purchase of a new 16 port NetGear Switch. This allowed me to verify that the extended cable was still able to connect at gigabit speeds. I have now connected all of the network cables in the house into this one wall-mounted switch allowing me to get rid of the hotch-potch of smaller switches and unconnected cables.

I still need to test the TV point, but need to sort out the cables in the loft as I know this particular one is not connected to anything yet.