Best method of installing coax cable from loft to upstairs room

Hi

As the topic of this post suggests (and after reading recents posts on antennas installed in a loft space) I’m looking for suggestions for the best and tidiest way of routing coax cable from a loft space to an upstairs room. The wall construction of the room is stud wall with plasterboard on either side of the timber framing. Is RG58 coax cable OK or should I be looking at using something else? The length of coax required for the install would be less than 10m.

73 Derek

I personally would use RG213 for a minimum standard. Whether used for HF or up to 70 cms.

Hiya Derek,

I live in an older house (1940's) with solid engineering bricks all round and some pretty serious plaster work. Luckily having a room upstairs for my 'shack' (the old box bedroom) means I didn't require much of a run of coax to get to my antennas up in the loft. (About 6m or 20 foot in old money.)

Mine are all simply run up a wall from my radios behind a homemade shelving rack and pops through a hole in the ceiling plaster to the attic space. I could tidy it all up with a bit of plastic conduit but then I'd have a tidy spot in my shack!
 
As for coax we can get into all the arguments about losses etc. and it really depends on your circumstances. I utilised RG213 for my new VHF/UHF antenna but have RG11 on a receiving loop as well as RG58 to various other antenna monstrosities. There' also good old fashioned homemade ladder-line running up there to boot for my loft mounted HF doublet.

A coax loss calculator will give you figures for what sort of losses you can expect but there isn't much in it for such small runs unless you want to utilise UHF where losses can be significant :-

https://www.qsl.net/co8tw/Coax_Calculator.htm

(Hence why I stuck up RG213 recently stopping at that price and ease of routing.)


There's always disagreement about antennas not working in loft/attic spaces due to electrics, piping, water tanks, etc. etc. but as you've witnessed many of us here successfully run antennas in such spaces. (I've even heard implausible doubts regarding wet roof tiles or snow covering! )

As much as I love my radio interests I really don't like having a house looking for all it's worth like some secret spy radio establishment nor expose such eyesores to my neighbours or dear wife. Yet I've managed to work everything from 1.8MHz to 446MHz with a certain happiness even knowing that I won't be a 'DX King' by a long way with my bits of wire hidden in the loft. (There's more to radio than simply DX work.)

The other added advantage is that none of my antennas require weatherproofing, won't blow down in gales, nor weighed down by ice and snow and are much easier to install & access. (OK, I can't access them due to disability so my dear wife 59 years young did most of the installations for me bless her - and she wouldn't have managed climbing ladders outside!!)

No doubt there'll be others chime in with suggestions of how to pull/draw coax through drywall etc. and maybe even notions of how antennas only work outside but I'd get on with it as best as you can, are able and can afford.


Never say never when it comes to installing antennas there Derek, especially anything that actually gets you on air.  

All the best,
Victor

Good evening Derek,

I am setup similar to Victor, but simpler. Mine has to be tidy as my shack is in our shared bedroom. I have just two runs of RG213 going up into the loft, one is permanently connected to a fan dipole for a number of HF bands. The other is my experimenting feed which a lot of the time over past months has been connected to a 10m delta loop, but also used from time to time for V/UHF constructions.

I drilled two holes in the bedroom ceiling plasterboard in the corner of the room and both coax runs are enclosed in white plastic conduit. My better half is happy with that, and if she's happy then I am.

Good evening

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to my post, your replies make for interesting reading.
There is a cold water tank and central heating header tank already in the loft (both plastic) and also a coax cable connected to an external TV antenna, hopefully these will no cause too many issues. Nearly forgot to say that there’s also some mains wiring in there too. I think I’ll listen to what Victor has said and just get on and give it a try, nothing to lose but maybe something to gain.
Once again many thanks for your replies, they are much appreciated.

73 Derek