Running ducting for Virgin Media phone / TV line

[askman]

I'm going to be getting virgin media installed in the near future and am currently undergoing a fair bit of building work in my house so want to take the opportunity to have the new internal sockets fitted in the best possible location for myself, rather than wherever is easiest for the engineer.

What I would like to do is run a duct through my floor (which will probably be some 40mm PVC pipe) and under my stairs where I will be able to run rear entry through the wall into my living room. The point of having it in a duct is to make it easier to swap out if i decide i want to use a different provider like sky in the future.

I'm happy enough to fit the duct and fit some recessed back boxes myself, and leave a couple of cables in the duct to assist with pulling it through.

Has anyone had experience with this and know whether it's a feasible plan?

I've tried to get an answer out of Virgin but chocolate teapot springs to mind...

 

[cwhaley]

Yes, the previous owner of my house did the very same thing for Virgin media cables. There was a brown box on the front of the house - wires went from this and into the house. We have concrete floors downstairs, so where the cable entered through the wall and met the floor, they had chiseled a (rough!) channel through the top slab and filled it with a run of ducting to the TV/power point in the corner of the room and cemented over. It's a good idea to have the ducting as a lot of people have it all put in without a potential future removal in mind.

Doubt Virgin would do anything other than link you up to their network and provide you with a connection point at the nearest/easiest possible area, but putting junction boxes in and extending their cabling is very easy I have done it before.

Personally I couldn't wait to rip it all out!

 

[askman]

Yes, the previous owner of my house did the very same thing for Virgin media cables. There was a brown box on the front of the house - wires went from this and into the house. We have concrete floors downstairs, so where the cable entered through the wall and met the floor, they had chiseled a (rough!) channel through the top slab and filled it with a run of ducting to the TV/power point in the corner of the room and cemented over. It's a good idea to have the ducting as a lot of people have it all put in without a potential future removal in mind.

Doubt Virgin would do anything other than link you up to their network and provide you with a connection point at the nearest/easiest possible area, but putting junction boxes in and extending their cabling is very easy I have done it before.

Personally I couldn't wait to rip it all out!

Do you remember if the virgin phone line came from the same external box as the TV / internet?

 

[cwhaley]

Do you remember if the virgin phone line came from the same external box as the TV / internet?

Yes the BT phone line came in straight from the street pole to the master socket. Wiring was then taken from the master socket (externally) and fed into the external brown box which was next to it. From that brown box there were two cables - one went to a Virgin box which was in the front room (as mentioned above), the other wrapped around the entire house and into the kitchen at the back for another box there. A better solution would have been to put it in a conduit like the first one was!

If you're wondering about the wiring from the 'phone line, I think Virgin put their box as close to the BT wiring as possible before linking them together. Like I say though, I took it all off and just use Freeview now - once I'd re-connected the aerial which the previous owners disconnected because of Virgin! (next owners will probably want it back again).

 

[askman]

Yes the BT phone line came in straight from the street pole to the master socket. Wiring was then taken from the master socket (externally) and fed into the external brown box which was next to it. From that brown box there were two cables - one went to a Virgin box which was in the front room (as mentioned above), the other wrapped around the entire house and into the kitchen at the back for another box there. A better solution would have been to put it in a conduit like the first one was!

If you're wondering about the wiring from the 'phone line, I think Virgin put their box as close to the BT wiring as possible before linking them together. Like I say though, I took it all off and just use Freeview now - once I'd re-connected the aerial which the previous owners disconnected because of Virgin! (next owners will probably want it back again).

I thought that Virgin used their own phone line and made no connection into the BT master socket.

What I'm hoping to do is recess the existing BT mastersocket and run a hard wired cable recessed in conduit from my hallway where the BT master socket is, under the stairs and back entry to the lounge. This will then sit behind the new entertainment unit so that there's an available phone line if i leave virgin, and the master socket can be pretty much forgotten about.

On top of that, my virgin phone line will be run from the external brown box, through my conduit, under the stairs and into a new recessed back box for the new virgin mastersocket. The virgin TV socket will also be mounted here and run through the same duct.

I suppose that if it does need to link into the BT network it could be done via the secondary socket, instead of the master socket...

 

[cwhaley]

Oh okay I didn't know that. I know Virgin transfer data through their fibre network (separate from the BT copper cabling), but didn't know they had their own voice line too. I can only guess the socket was being 'hijacked' for the Virgin service? There was a lot of cabling in there and I don't recall the breakdown of it - all I know is I took the BT line and connected it to a single BT master socket, rid of all the Virgin media cables.

What you're planning on doing sounds totally feasible though, so long as it's done carefully and with the right tools (jelly connectors, etc.) There's not a lot to go wrong in those sockets to require regular maintenance and you're allowing for future changes with the conduit anyway. I've moved my master socket and Openreach said the job had been done fine (although they didn't know it was me). Extending the wiring to a new Virgin socket doesn't sound a bad idea at all.

 

[sparkymarka]

Virgin comes from the underground duct as a shotgun phone and coax cable , then to a external brown box , then they can go separate ways ! The house that I live in ,I ran the coax ( supplied by my mate at virgin ) from the external brown box to under the stairs ( router and splitter ran feeds to lounge and bedrooms if required) and standard phone cable to master socket