[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Retro-Wiring for your Home Theater

Part 3: Dealing with Inaccessible Places in the Attic


Getting the wiring from point A to B – that’s the challenge

In many homes there may be an inaccessible section of the attic that you need to run a wire through. For instance, let’s say your family room has a cathedral ceiling, and your equipment location is on one side of the room and the rear speakers on the other. It may be that the only place in the attic to route the wires between those locations is a tiny chase that’s too small for man nor beast. And, it’s 20 ft. long!

That’s a challenge, for sure. Professional installers use a special tool for situations like this - long, extendable rods to span the inaccessible distance. Typically extension poles – or “push poles” as we called them when I was in the biz - come in one of two varieties: Short 2’ sections of fiberglass or aluminum rods that screw together end to end, or telescoping poles.

I recommend the kind with the screw-together sections, rather than the telescoping pole. If you’ve read our installments above you already know why. That’s right – the screw-together type will be more streamlined than the telescoping pole. Those bulbous clutches between the sections are going to hang up on every joist and perpendicular beam you come across!

The installer will tape the wire to the front end of the push pole and add additional sections one at a time, pushing through until the inaccessible area has been fully spanned. On the other side, the wire is retrieved and pulled on to its destination. If multiple wires are being pulled, a pull string is pushed through instead, and the bundle of wires tied off to it, as we described in Part 1. It’s not a good idea to tape a lot of wires to the push pole directly, as – you guessed it - they will snag on joists and other obstacles.

Here’s a picture of a push pole of the not-recommended telescoping variety being used above a hung ceiling, such as you typically find in an office building. Working in houses, the push pole will be laying directly on joists, unlike in this picture.

Push poles are dandy gizmos for situations like this, but you’ll find they aren’t cheap – typically approaching $100 for anything that’ll get you a decent distance (20-25 ft.). Most home theater DIYers aren’t going to want to lay out that kind of money for something they’ll probably use only a few times. However, with a modicum of effort we can make a push pole using 1/2” PVC pipe, typically available at your local hardware store for a couple dollars per section, and 1/2” copper pipe couplers. Yes, copper couplers; as we shall see, they are preferable to PVC couplers. Hey, this a DIY project, so why not DIY your push poles too?

Here’s a list of the tools and supplies we’ll be needing.

Tools

• Cordless drill. If you can beg or borrow a second one, it will really be helpful.
• Assorted drill bits.
• Work light with built-in clamp. See picture in Part 1.
• Extension cord.
• Pull string w/ weighting chain. See Part 1 for details – length as needed for your application.
• Electrical tape.
• A bag of some kind, for all the small parts you’ll be toting up to the attic.
• A few 1” x 12” boards about 3 ft. long. Optional, but highly recommended.
• #2 Phillips screw driver tip..
• Magnetic screw driver tip holder for the cordless drill.
  

Supplies

• 1/2” PVC-DWW pipe. Quantity as needed.
• 1/2” copper-pipe couplers. Quantity as needed.
• One (1) 1/2” copper pipe 45° coupler.
• #6 x 3/8” Phillips pan head sheet metal screws. Quantity as needed.

Getting started: A few particulars

The first thing to do, naturally, is determine the distance you need to span, and buy enough PVC pipe and couplers for the job. Get a few feet more than you need, to allow a foot or so at each end to work with. Be sure and pick up a 45° coupler as well – it’s an important piece.

The beauty of using 1/2”copper pipe couplers is that they fit snuggly inside the 1/2” PVC-DWW pipe we’re using. That’s right – with internal couplers, the PVC pieces will **** perfectly end to end, so there will be nothing that can hang us up in the attic. Cool, huh? (NOTE: Copper pipe couplers will not fit inside Schedule 40 PVC, so stick with the recommended PVC-DWW. It’s cheaper, too.)

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words; in lieu of that I put together a crude drawing of how our homemade extension poles are going to be assembled:

Home-made extension poles 1.JPG

When you buy the PVC pipe you’ll find it comes in 5’ or 10’ sections, the latter being more economical. If you can’t accommodate those lengths, you’ll have to cut the pipe down to shorter sections. You’ll want to scope out what you can deal with in your attic before you go shopping; you’ll obviously need additional couplers and screws for every section.

The fun begins

You can start by assembling your first section with the 45° coupler and short piece in front before going to the attic, to determine ahead of time the best drill bit size for the pilot hole. Once you get in the attic with your kneeling boards, work light and assorted tools and supplies, you will assemble the sections, securing them to the couplers with the #6 sheet metal screws. Each added section will be pushed through the inaccessible area towards the other side, as described previously. You’ll probably want to have two battery-powered drills – one for the pilot holes, one for the screws. This will certainly speed things up, which is a good thing as attic work typically isn’t terribly comfortable. I highly recommend the magnetic tip holder for the #2 Phillips screwdriver tip – it’ll make things much easier.

The couplers fit into the pipe pretty snuggly, so you may opt to forgo the screws. The assembly certainly isn’t going to fall apart as long as you’re pushing it. But if you hang up on something and have to pull back to re-push, there’s a chance it’ll separate, especially if you have a lot of sections. It won’t be the end of the world; you will be able to pull both sections back out (the stranded section can be retrieved using the attached pull string or speaker wire). But it will delay the project.

The 45° coupler and short piece in front of the assembly serve an important purpose. The longer the push pole gets, the more it will tend to sag (as the picture above shows). As you add each new section and push the pole forward, make sure the 45 remains turned upward. This way it will glide up and over any beams and joists. Assemble with the #6 screws towards the top as well, to prevent them from being a cause of hang-ups.

If you’re only trying to get a single speaker wire from one side to the other, you can tape the wire near the front end of the assembly, behind the 45° coupler. Tape it so that the wire is on top – I think by now you know why! (Don’t forget to flag the tape!)

However, if you have multiple wires to pull through the inaccessible area, it’s best to use a pull string instead. Naturally it will need to be long enough to span the entire length, with a few feet of slack at each end. Once the pull string is in place, you can secure all the wires to it and pull them in. It will be especially important to use the staggered-attachment method as described in Part 1, to insure the bundle is as streamlined as possible, since you’ll probably be pulling across numerous joists.

A little installer’s tip: When you pull in the wires, tie another pull string into the bundle with them. This way, should you ever need to pull additional cables through this space, you’ll already have a pull string in place.

Any volunteers for this project?

I’ll be perfectly honest here: I’ve never tried this before. The homemade push poles, that is (the real ones I have, and they’re dandy). This is something I dreamed up while preparing this article, so, I’m not entirely sure how well it will work - although I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t. The only possible caveat that comes to mind is that with really long distances the PVC might start to buckle, since it’s not nearly as rigid as real push poles are. It should be good for a distance of 20-25 ft, though. Maybe someone will try it and give us some feedback. [EDIT: We have a taker! Smitty tried the DIY push poles and said it worked fine. See here.]

As a side note, so-called CPVC pipe, rated for hot/cold water applications, can also be used for this project, but it costs a bit more and gives us no advantage. It’s a functional equivalent of copper pipe, to the extent that copper couplers can be used instead of CPVC items. Unlike with our proposed assembly, CPVC couplers fit over the pipe, making a potential hang-up problem. The advantage of the copper couplers is that they are low-profile – i.e., less hanging-up potential compared to the CPVC couplers.

Other tips for inaccessible areas

In some situations there will be no other option except to drop the wire out of the attic and run outside the house - under an eave, preferably - and re-enter the attic on the other side of your inaccessible location. If there is no eave, it’s best to run the wire in some kind of conduit. PVC is fine for low voltage applications like this.

In situations where the roof has a shallow incline sloping down to the eave, it can be a tight squeeze accessing the place where you want to drop the wire out of the attic. A good trick there is to use a long, thick wire and stick it up from the eave into the attic, far enough so that you can grab it. Angle-cut and tape your cable on and pull it back out. An ideal wire for this is the heavy-duty stuff they use for suspended ceilings, as you typically see in office buildings. Alternately, you might be able to pick up a thin piece of aluminum bar stock at the hardware store. If all else fails use your imagination to come up with something. After all, being able to come up with a new game plan on the fly is part and parcel to retro-installations.

Another common installer’s technique for difficult places such as cathedral ceilings with no attic above them, and outside walls that are full of insulation and possibly have one of those low-sloping roofs, is the old “use what’s already there” trick. Down in the room, where there is an existing cable TV or phone jack, tape a pull string to the existing wire. In the attic, pull it up all the way up the wall to you. Voila, you now have a pull string in place! Attach your wiring to the pull string as we’ve described previously, including the old cable, if you need it back in place, and pull everything back down the wall.

There are a few of “gotchas” to watch out for. For one, how much cabling you can pull back in will depend on the size of the hole that was originally drilled in the top plate. We were pretty lucky at a friend’s house where we tried this trick. The hole for the builder-installed cable TV coaxial was big enough to get in a few more coaxials for the satellite receiver and TV antenna.

Second, if you’re pulling in multiple new wires, there’s a good chance they won’t all fit in the single hole in the electrical box your string is going through. I suggest removing the existing box altogether and installing an old work box afterwards. You can pry off the existing box nailed to the stud after first pushing it from flush to behind the sheetrock, but this is a real pain and almost always ends up damaging the sheetrock. My recommendation is to cut the mounting nails with a sawz-all outfitted with a metal cutting blade. The blade will slide in right between the box and the stud and cut through the nails like butter. In lieu of a sawz-all, a saber saw will work, but you’ll have to protect the sheetrock with a piece of cardboard or something taped to the wall. After cutting, use a hammer to drive the nail tips flush into the stud.

Third, you really you want to pay special attention when preparing your bundle and pull string for this one, because you’ll be going through that top plate at a hard angle. You’ll most assuredly have to yank on the pull string pretty hard when the wiring gets to the top plate. So I suggest tying the off the pull string to the main cable in two places, not just one as we described in Part 1. And, making sure all those added cables are attached as streamlined as possible. If your pull string separates from the bundle, you are hosed. So take care to do it right! It’ll be most helpful in this case to have someone in the attic feeding in the bundle as you pull downstairs.


Please address any questions or discussion to this thread. Experienced installers are encouraged to add their own tips!