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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: British (european?) kitchen counter electric outlets
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:54:41 -0700
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On 6/17/2024 7:16 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>>>>> Yes. Our 'old'houses have internal walls made of either brick (4" thick) 
>>>>> and plastered. it's hard to recess the brick to take
>>>>> power sockets, but quite common. The cabling runs down the cavity (4") 
>>>>> between the internal brickwork and external brickwork.

------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> The house design he describes is relatively modern transition probably around 
> the 1930's. Pre 1910 and solid wall is much more likely. Anything habitable 
> built post WWII is likely to be cavity wall with two walls of 4" brick and some 
> rigid metal ties between them. Modern build the cavity is typically filled with 
> rockwool or PU foam and the inner skin is of much cheaper big breezeblock 
> whilst the outer skin is proper brick.
> 
> There is an industry of cavity wall insulation retrofitted to these older 
> originally air gap based insulation buildings.
> 
> There have been a few scandals where bad builders forgot the gap ties! Or worse 
> deliberately left them out because of bad practice!
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-37093904
> 
> Pretty serious to have brick walls falling down like that!
> 
> My own house is much older (early Victorian and of handmade imperial size 
> bricks). Its outer walls are three courses of solid high fired Victorian 
> engineering brick. It is difficult to drill through since there are enough nice 
> round flints in the brick clay matrix to make drills snatch.
> 
> Last tradesman to try in my house ruined a core drill in the process and had to 
> go off and buy another to finish the job.

So, wire/cable just "hangs" (gravity) in that space?  Resting on <something>
as it enters the void and then supported by the connection at the distant end?

When *initially* wired, how would cable move across (left-to-right) the
room?  Would each "destination" be serviced by routing a cable DOWN from
the ceiling directly above the point on the wall?  Or, would the wire
drape from one "destination" to the next, sideways, IN that void?

If you opted to *add* some device (outlet, etc.), how would you tie into the
existing wiring?  Or, would you have to start back at the load center?

Here, cable has to be secured to the building members, regularly -- and within
a few inches of its termination.

>> Directly onto the brick surface?  Or, was lath/chickenwire installed to support
>> the plaster?
> 
> Sometimes they did use chicken wire to make thick plaster stay. Most houses 
> they don't bother and the plaster is in two grades a coarse grey one with 
> horsehair or other binder in it ~2cm and a final thin skim 3-5mm of pink 
> plaster on top. Good plasterers are in great demand. Polishing it to a fine 
> flat finish requires real skill (as does making it stick to a ceiling!)

Yes, most folks have decided this level of detail isn't important in their
homes.   Here, it is (now) done with powered rotary sanders to "level off" the
"excess" plaster in the skim coat (as most homes are plaster over drywall).

> Chickenwire plays hell with Wifi (as does the density of the brickwork). The 
> thickest walls right in the core of my house are about 4' thick where the 
> kitchen range used to be.

Metal ductwork creates a similar problem, here.

>> How do you hang pictures?
> 
> Houses this old tend to have curtain rails and sometimes as is the case in my 
> house a dado rail at furniture height in addition. eg.
> 
> https://www.thevictorianemporium.com/store/category/dado_rails
> 
> It is coming back into fashion.

Yes, we've installed them here (because I don't want to be perpetually bothered
with hanging yet another painting in someplace that's not quite EXACTLY where a
previous one had hung  :< )