How to make the obvious secret

A mod­ern house or apart­ment can­not be imag­ined with­out water sup­ply and sew­er­age, house­hold appli­ances and elec­tron­ics. The engi­neer­ing equip­ment of our homes is becom­ing more and more com­plex, and we are lit­er­al­ly entan­gled in a net­work of pipes, wires and cables. ATin their “orig­i­nal” form, they do not dec­o­rate the inte­ri­or at all …

The times have long passed when we were tol­er­ant of open­ly laid inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cared only that the wires were secure­ly fixed and did not inter­fere with walk­ing, and pipes- neat­ly paint­ed. ATIn this arti­cle we will talk about where and how to hide them with­out vio­lat­ing exist­ing norms and rules, and most impor­tant­ly- not to the detri­ment of the safe­ty of the home.

Big Trou­ble

EfapelIn a mod­ern inte­ri­or, a cable nailed to the plinth, a lead to the radi­a­tor run­ning along the wall will look strange and out of place. BUTmean­while, in most typ­i­cal hous­es, cen­tral heat­ing pipes are laid open, and, more­over, often at a con­sid­er­able dis­tance from the walls. Some mul­ti-storey build­ings began to be equipped with water sup­ply and heat­ing sys­tems with apart­ment-by-apart­ment hor­i­zon­tal wiring. ATin this case, the pipes are led into the apart­ment from the ris­er locat­ed in the stair­case and ele­va­tor hall, and how to hide them- care of the own­er. ATcoun­try hous­es and apart­ments with a free lay­out can­not do with­out hor­i­zon­tal exhaust ven­ti­la­tion ducts (sim­i­lar air ducts, but of a much short­er length, are also pro­vid­ed in some small apart­ments). When installing a split sys­tem, it often becomes nec­es­sary to hide the refrig­er­ant pipes and con­trol com­mu­ni­ca­tions between spaced units. But, of course, the wiring is the most trou­ble­some.

Pho­to by A. MedvedevIn pan­el and block hous­es of stan­dard series, wires and cables are laid inside tech­no­log­i­cal and spe­cial­ly pro­vid­ed voids in load-bear­ing struc­tures and par­ti­tions. It is con­ve­nient and safe, but the cross sec­tion of the cores of “reg­u­lar” wires is some­times insuf­fi­cient for the simul­ta­ne­ous oper­a­tion of pow­er­ful house­hold appli­ances, which are often installed by res­i­dents. The sit­u­a­tion with the num­ber of sock­ets is also very bad, and their loca­tion, as well as the loca­tion of the over­head light switch­es, sat­is­fies new set­tlers only in very rare cas­es. ATAs a result, elec­tri­cal wiring has to be installed almost “from scratch” even where it seems to be already there. (We draw read­ers’ atten­tion to the fact that mak­ing changes to the inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, includ­ing the wiring dia­gram, is a rede­vel­op­ment and requires coor­di­na­tion with the hous­ing and ener­gy author­i­ties.) But even if you are not going to change the wiring, with­out lay­ing new cables- for TV anten­na, tele­phone, Inter­net- there’s no way around it. BUTif your plans- make them hid­den, incon­spic­u­ous, some rules should be observed dur­ing work.

Tale of the Strab

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions laid in the thick­ness of walls, par­ti­tions and ceil­ings (in spe­cial­ly pro­vid­ed or tech­no­log­i­cal voids) are not vis­i­ble to the eye, do not “eat up” space and are reli­ably pro­tect­ed from mechan­i­cal dam­age. But even when build­ing pri­vate hous­es, this method is rarely resort­ed to.- due to the com­plex­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy and, accord­ing­ly, the high cost of design and con­struc­tion work. As for typ­i­cal build­ings, at the stage of repair, it is impos­si­ble to pass new wires, and even more so pipes, through exist­ing voids. There­fore, in most cas­es, new com­mu­ni­ca­tions are embed­ded in fines.- grooves cut or punched in the walls. How­ev­er, it must be borne in mind that this method, which is quite accept­able in some cas­es (incoun­try hous­es made of bricks and sol­id blocks, in apart­ments with a free lay­out, the walls of which have an increased thick­ness), in oth­ers it is a vio­la­tion of build­ing codes. After all, the load-bear­ing struc­tures of typ­i­cal high-rise build­ings expe­ri­ence a very large load, and the bars weak­en them and reduce the area of ​​sup­port at the joints. Scrap­ing of floor slabs is unac­cept­able either in high-rise build­ings or in coun­try hous­es.

Pho­to 1 Pho­to by P.Niko­lae­va A.Boyko

Pho­to 2 Pho­to by R.Shelo­ment­se­va

Pho­to 3 Pho­to by R.Shelo­ment­se­va

Pho­to 4 Pho­to by R.Shelo­ment­se­va

one.A thick-walled steel chan­nel is used to pro­tect the cable laid in the trench. Thus, the risk of dam­age to the cable dur­ing fin­ish­ing work and sub­se­quent oper­a­tion of the premis­es is min­i­mized.
2–4.Most often, strebs are made using a per­fo­ra­tor. To pro­tect the cable from dam­age dur­ing the instal­la­tion process, a flex­i­ble pipe made of non-com­bustible PVC, which is fixed in the groove, and then put­tied, allows.

Always at your ser­vice

An alter­na­tive to grooves in pan­els and floor slabs is the hid­den lay­ing of com­mu­ni­ca­tions under the plas­ter walls, in the floor screed, behind the wall sheath­ing, in the above-ceil­ing space, as well as open lay­ing inside the con­struct­ed and ready-made box­es. Plas­ter­ing walls with a thick lay­er takes a lot of time, the prices for such work are very high, so the first method has recent­ly found very lim­it­ed use. Let’s take a clos­er look at more com­mon tech­nolo­gies.

In floor screed you can arrange both pipes and any cables. The wiring to the sock­ets and switch­es is then sealed into shal­low ver­ti­cal grooves, which prac­ti­cal­ly do not weak­en the pan­el, and the wiring to heat­ing radi­a­tors and water fit­tings is led out along the walls and sub­se­quent­ly cov­ered with dec­o­ra­tive screens, hid­den in box­es andt.etc. But this method has some draw­backs. First­ly, dam­age to elec­tri­cal wiring and pipes dur­ing instal­la­tion of the floor cov­er­ing is not ruled out. To avoid this trou­ble, ask the con­struc­tion orga­ni­za­tion per­form­ing the work for a detailed dia­gram of the new wiring (by the way, with­out such a dia­gram it is impos­si­ble to agree on rede­vel­op­ment) and, using the plan, mark the loca­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with chalk on the screed before pro­ceed­ing with the instal­la­tion of the floor­ing. Sec­ond­ly, it will not be pos­si­ble to hide large-diam­e­ter pipes (sew­er pipes) in a con­crete screed, since the over­lap may sim­ply not with­stand the mass of such a thick screed (not to men­tion the unjus­ti­fied expen­di­ture of funds). If, nev­er­the­less, you have an urgent need to hide a sew­er pipe under the floor- for exam­ple, when cre­at­ing an “island” kitchen, trans­fer­ring plumb­ing equip­ment, the best option would be to install a frame or block podi­um (see IVD, 2007, No.5; 2008, no.11), floors on adjustable joists or dry screed. The podi­um can be made of almost any required height, and with the help of two oth­er tech­nolo­gies, with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty and a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the mass of the struc­ture, you will get a “work­ing” space up to 200 meters high under the floor.mm- as long as the height of the ceil­ings allows it. We remind you that infill floors can­not be installed in “wet” areas, and in this case, water­proof ply­wood must be used in the floors along the logs.

And the last thing: it is per­mis­si­ble to lay dou­ble-insu­lat­ed cables in stubs and under the screed with­out addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion, but it is still more rea­son­able to place them in cor­ru­gat­ed PVC pipes- in this way, you will min­i­mize the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mechan­i­cal dam­age to the wiring dur­ing instal­la­tion and pos­si­ble move­ment of build­ing struc­tures. If you want to ensure the change­abil­i­ty of wiring, only smooth pipes will do.- steel or PVC.

Lay­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the ceil­ing space con­sid­ered the safest- there is prac­ti­cal­ly no risk of dam­ag­ing them dur­ing the fin­ish­ing and oper­a­tion of the premis­es. How­ev­er, it should be borne in mind that pulling pow­er cables behind com­bustible ceil­ings- wood­en slats, poly­styrene pan­els, poly­ester filmis a rather com­pli­cat­ed and cost­ly busi­ness. To ensure fire safe­ty, elec­tri­cal wiring should be laid here only in a met­al pipe. (This rule applies to elec­tri­cal wiring inside any struc­tures made of com­bustible mate­ri­als.) In this case, the thick­ness of the pipe walls is select­ed depend­ing on the com­bustibil­i­ty group of the mate­r­i­al and the cross-sec­tion­al area of ​​the cable cores. For elec­tri­cal wiring behind sus­pend­ed ceil­ings (as well as behind wall sheath­ing) made of gyp­sum plas­ter­board, gyp­sum board and oth­er non-com­bustible mate­ri­als, experts rec­om­mend cables made of NG (“non-com­bustible”) or LS (from the Eng­lish. Low smoke- “with low smoke and gas emis­sion”).

It is easy to hide elec­tri­cal wiring behind a false ceil­ing, the guides of which are attached direct­ly to the ceil­ing. BUThere, in order to mask the air ducts, sus­pen­sion and ten­sion sys­tems are best suit­ed. Any com­mu­ni­ca­tions hid­den behind false ceil­ings (except for elec­tri­cal wiring above sus­pend­ed and false ceil­ings made of non-com­bustible mate­ri­als) must be fas­tened with clamps to walls or ceil­ings. (We rec­om­mend attach­ing to the walls, since the clamps will have to be placed quite often- in incre­ments of about 400mm, and a large num­ber of holes for dow­els some­how weak­ens the floor slab.)

If the height of the room is ini­tial­ly small, it makes sense to arrange lev­el dif­fer­ences on the ceil­ing- such a solu­tion visu­al­ly increas­es the vol­ume of the room and pro­vides ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for inte­ri­or design (for exam­ple, zon­ing).

Pho­to 5 A pho­toR.Shelo­ment­se­va

Pho­to 6 A pho­toR.Shelo­ment­se­va

Pho­to 7 Pho­to by V.Bal­asho­va

5–6.Not only heat­ing pipes were placed in the floor screed, but also a con­vec­tor for heat­ing the bal­cony door.
7.Dur­ing the recon­struc­tion of the build­ing and new con­struc­tion, it is pos­si­ble to lay water sup­ply and heat­ing pipes, as well as large-diam­e­ter air-water pipes in the thick­ness of the wood­en floor.

Dry­wall false walls allow not only fin­ish­ing much faster com­pared to tra­di­tion­al plas­ter­ing, but also lay­ing hid­den many inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Of course, in small apart­ments it is dif­fi­cult to rec­om­mend this method as the main one.- the loss of liv­ing space is too great. How­ev­er, local appli­ca­tion of plas­ter­board sheath­ing can be found here. For exam­ple, with its help it will be pos­si­ble to hide the cen­tral heat­ing pipes run­ning along the out­er walls (and at the same time make addi­tion­al ther­mal insu­la­tion and increase the width of the win­dow sill; in this case, you will have to donate only about 0.2m² room area).

If you plan to stretch com­mu­ni­ca­tions under dry­wall sheath­ing, only rack pro­files should be used for the frame.- PS (often, to save space, a thin­ner ceil­ing pro­file is used for this pur­pose), the mid­dle shelves of which have H‑shaped or round holes. You should not cut holes for com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the pro­files your­self, since, first­ly, the pro­file is weak­ened, and sec­ond­ly, the result­ing sharp edges can dam­age the cable insu­la­tion. Andin no case should junc­tion box­es be hid­den under the skin- branch­ing points of wires must always be acces­si­ble for inspec­tion.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions can also be car­ried out inside a plas­ter­board par­ti­tion. There are spe­cial tech­ni­cal solu­tions for this.- for exam­ple, the C116 sys­tem (Knauf Gips, Rus­sia) with a spe­cial frame design: it pro­vides space for pipes and elec­tri­cal wiring, which can be arbi­trar­i­ly increased or decreased. Min­i­mum baf­fle thick­ness- 220mm, air­borne sound insu­la­tion index- 49dB (such a high val­ue is achieved due to the plas­ter­board sheath­ing on both sides in two lay­ers and fill­ing with basalt wool slabs).

Pho­to 8 Pho­to by D.Minkin

Pho­to 9 “Knauf Gyp­sum”

Pho­to 10 A pho­toR.Shelo­ment­se­va

Pho­to 11 Pho­to by D.Minkin

eight.If a lay­er of insu­la­tion is placed between the wall and the plas­ter­board sheath­ing, the hid­den elec­tri­cal wiring is pro­tect­ed by a gal­va­nized steel box.
9.Inside the GKL par­ti­tion, the cable is laid in a steel pipe.
ten.It is easy to hide water pipes in gyp­sum board box­es- for exam­ple, an eye­lin­er to the mix­er.
eleven.Inspec­tion hatch­es are avail­able in stan­dard sizes. They are made of gal­va­nized steel (for paint­ing or plas­ter­ing) or from PVC dyed in mass (inmost­ly white).

In a box of plas­ter­board, as a rule, they hide the pipes of ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems, water and air heat­ing (the lat­ter, how­ev­er, is still a rar­i­ty in our coun­try). Such struc­tures can be fin­ished in the same way as the sur­faces to which they adjoin, or they can be giv­en the appear­ance of a bench, ceil­ing beam or col­umn. ATTak­ing full advan­tage of the archi­tec­tur­al pos­si­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by this mate­r­i­al, a pure­ly func­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel can often be turned into a real dec­o­ra­tion of the inte­ri­or.

Box with a secret

Some­times the best option is to lay com­mu­ni­ca­tions in an open way.- for exam­ple, in log hous­es, where it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult and expen­sive to make hid­den elec­tri­cal wiring. Or, let’s say, gas was sup­plied to your hab­it­able coun­try house, pre­vi­ous­ly heat­ed by a stove or elec­tric con­vec­tors, and now you have to equip the build­ing with a water heat­ing sys­tem. ATin urban apart­ments, this method is most often resort­ed to when it is nec­es­sary to lay a new cable at the end of the repair.

The main advan­tages of open lay­ing- sim­ple instal­la­tion and easy access to com­mu­ni­ca­tions. You can always revise them, replace them if dam­aged, install a new out­let or radi­a­tor.

Per­haps the sim­plest and, more­over, uni­ver­sal means of design­ing open­ly laid com­mu­ni­ca­tions- fin­ished box­es and hol­low plinths made of PVC. This plas­tic, unlike many oth­ers (polyamides, poly­esters, poly­olefins), does not sup­port com­bus­tion. If you doubt the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct, just bring the flame of the lighter to a small frag­ment of the pro­file: with­out expo­sure to open fire, PVC will imme­di­ate­ly go out. Plas­tic box­es are pro­duced by com­pa­nies that pro­duce a wide range of elec­tri­cal prod­ucts: Efapel (Por­tu­gal), Legrand (France), Mal­pro (Czech Repub­lic), OBO Bet­ter­mann (Ger­many), Eko­plast (Rus­sia) andetc., as well as large man­u­fac­tur­ers of PVC pro­files- e.g. Mar­ley, Rehau (both- Ger­many). Sim­i­lar prod­ucts are made not only from PVC, but also from alu­minum.- Nordic Alu­minum (Fin­land), Schnei­der Elec­tric (Ger­many), Mir Pro­file (Rus­sia) andoth­ers

Dyed PVC pro­files are avail­able in white, cream, gray and dark brown. ATRecent­ly, box­es and elec­tri­cal skirt­ing boards have appeared, cov­ered with a film that imi­tates the tex­ture of wood: Salag (Poland), T.plast (Rus­sia), while the num­ber of lam­i­nate col­ors can reach up to 15.

Box­es are pro­duced in a vari­ety of sec­tions (for exam­ple, Efapel prod­ucts have an inter­nal sec­tion of 107 to 18585mm), which allows them to be used not only for elec­tri­cal wiring, but also for water pipes and even for air ducts. The choice of sec­tions of plinths is more mod­est- their height usu­al­ly ranges from 60–80mm, and the stan­dard thick­ness- 30–40mm (the plinth is designed for lay­ing an aver­age of six cables with a cross-sec­tion­al area in insu­la­tion of not more than 14mm² each). We draw your atten­tion to the fact that man­u­fac­tur­ers rec­om­mend fill­ing the inte­ri­or of the box­es by no more than 70%,- this facil­i­tates instal­la­tion and pro­vides heat dis­si­pa­tion from pow­er cables. In addi­tion, when plac­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion and pow­er cables in the same box, they must be sep­a­rat­ed (to avoid sig­nal degra­da­tion)- this pur­pose is served by spe­cial box­es with two or more chan­nels.

Pho­to 12 Pho­to by V.Nefe­dov

Pho­to 13 Efapel

Pho­to 14 Legrand

Pho­to 15 rehau

12.In places where par­ti­tions pass, heat­ing pipes should be pro­tect­ed with a poly­eth­yl­ene foam cas­ing so as not to dam­age them dur­ing sub­se­quent wall fin­ish­ing and instal­la­tion of radi­a­tors.
13–15.PVC wall ducts and elec­tri­cal skirt­ing boards make it pos­si­ble to lay a large num­ber of new cables after the repair is com­plet­ed.

The main pro­file (the box itself) con­sists of two parts- a pen­cil case and a lid that snaps onto it, the stan­dard length of the box- 2 and 3m, it is easy to cut it with a hack­saw, and the pro­file is attached to the wall or ceil­ing in incre­ments of 200–400mm with screws. (Not so long ago, self-adhe­sive box­es appeared, which are mount­ed in a mat­ter of min­utes. How­ev­er, the adhe­sive applied to them is not frost-resis­tant, so we do not rec­om­mend using them in a sea­son­al res­i­dence.) Plas­tic elec­tri­cal skirt­ing boards are arranged in approx­i­mate­ly the same way. BUTalu­minum skirt­ing boards are some­what dif­fer­ent: they don’t have a pen­cil case- its role is played by spe­cial “clips” attached to the wall.

“Advanced” box­es and skirt­ing boards are equipped with rub­ber seals that pro­vide a per­fect fit to the wall (the gap between the skirt­ing board and the wall is not only ugly, but is also a “dust col­lec­tor”). ATsys­tems of elec­tri­cal skirt­ing boards and box­es usu­al­ly include spe­cial sock­ets that are mount­ed close to the base­board and matched with it in col­or and design. Andof course, any sys­tem includes shaped ele­ments- inter­nal and exter­nal cor­ners, tees, bends, butt plates, thanks to which the assem­bled struc­ture acquires a fin­ished, neat look.

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works, as well as elec­tric wires designed for a small cur­rent load, in dou­ble self-extin­guish­ing insu­la­tion can also be laid in a wood­en plinth, in the back wall of which cable chan­nels are milled. Such prod­ucts are in the assort­ment of many com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing par­quet, par­quet board and lam­i­nate.

Sum­ma­riz­ing

To hide home com­mu­ni­ca­tions, you always have to make cer­tain sac­ri­fices: loss of space, height of the room, addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al costs. AndOf course, we want to min­i­mize these loss­es. A ran­dom team will agree to ful­fill any of your wish­es and will not be stingy with advice. But, believe me, fol­low­ing the lead of such “mas­ters”, you are unlike­ly to win. If only because lat­er your peace of mind will be vio­lat­ed more than once by thoughts about the con­struc­tion “crime” hid­den in the floor, walls and ceil­ing, con­stant­ly threat­en­ing with fire, flood or oth­er trou­bles. Con­clu­sion: you should con­tact only trust­ed com­pa­nies that have a license for the required type of work (which you can ask to present). The solu­tion sug­gest­ed by the experts is tech­ni­cal­ly com­pe­tent, and at the same time, some­times its imple­men­ta­tion is not much more com­pli­cat­ed and more expen­sive than the options “like a neigh­bor” or “like they did 100 times” from an unfor­tu­nate mas­ter from out­side.

Approx­i­mate cost of hid­den lay­ing and mask­ing of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in a typ­i­cal two-room apart­ment

The edi­tors thank the com­pa­nies “Ardis”, “Auf­Bau”, “Pro­file World”, “Eko­plast”, Legrand for help in prepar­ing the mate­r­i­al.

• Source: Ideas for Your Home Magazine#126

Mate­r­i­al pre­pared

Vladimir Grig­oriev