Chasing cables up stairs.

[lasors]

I wouldnt have expected a wall chaser to give such perfect results. I would have expected significant chipping of the surface plaster. Did you use anything to guide it? Or just freehand against a pencil line?

No, no guide, just a pencil line. Just be slow and steady. It's trickiest when you get close the floor level as it's harder to hold the machine against the wall, and against its own weight, as if it falls too quickly it will snag on the brick and jump out of the chase. You've got to be quick to pull it off the wall to stop it making a mess. Cracking tool, though.

By the way, it's a safety specs, respirator and ear defenders job!

 

[Steve]

Heh, it'd have a job in this house. The place was built with engineering brick supporting walls, and thermalite partitions. The engineering brick can blunt a drill bit without them even touching, and I once chased in a socket in the thermalite, using a screwdriver. Had to fix the metal back using gripfill, a screw would have gone through the other side.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What's the advantage of not having the lights on an RCD? Purely the cost of the unit? I take it I don't need steel conduit for the runs under the floorboards upstairs, just in the walls?

You only need the conduit in the walls.

No RCD means you don't lose the lights when something else trips it - the other way to avoid that is to have them on their own RCBO.

There's a 2-way switch for the lights in the entrance hall and landing, would they go on the upstairs or downstairs ring?

Either. Probably better to have them on downstairs, then if upstairs are lost you still have lighting over the stairs, or if downstairs are lost you still have bathroom & bedrooms to provide a bit of light.

Better still to make them emergency lights.