Well there's been talk of doing it since about Christmas last year. We'd have probably done it too if it wasn't for those pesky kids... well she's not fully relocated yet either... we've just done the hard bits... that being putting the blasted network/phone cables into the loft. Luckily for us we live in an Edwardian Terrace, where the builders thought of a utility duct (otherwise know as the chimney) giving a direct connection of the upstairs with the rooms below...
Originally the plan was to use the vent in my bedroom as an access point to the chimney, unfortunatly this vent covers up where there was a fire in my room... (ie there's no direct connection to downstairs - only the sky).
Looks like we need to gain access into the chimney breast somewhere in the loft... but how?
Drills of manly proportions of course!
Then comes the discussions of where about the chimney should be penetrated...
<hammer drill noise action>
And then we put in the fish tape... and lots of it...
"John can you see it yet?" (John has his head up the fireplace)
"No"... and more fish tape goes in the hole....
"Yet?"
"No"
"Ah blast we're in the wrong flue, must be in the one for your room".
We retract the fish tape and make another hole further to the left...
John: There's loads of shit (he might not have said shit Sarah, might have been something like big lumps of sooty messy stuff... [oooh I'm such a tease]) Me: Yey! In the right one this time.
In goes the fish tape again, all 30 metres of it (our house isn't 30m tall!)... it doesn't appear at the bottom, but a shed load of shit does... John can see it, but it's stuck on a ledge halfway up and is all coiling about...
Out goes fishtape - we don't reel it up and end up with 30m of spring steel (said in the accent of Panjid, the forklift driver in Bertha, only makes sense if you've seen that episode! Funniest one ever I reckon) bouncing around the room... and we drill slightly to the right again. Arse cakes... we're now drilling into the dividing wall thing that separates the flues... so we drill between. Bingo, the shit is falling again. In goes fish tape, we feel a tug... it's arrived in the living room.
John: Whoah, pull some back we don't need this much it's everywhere!
Ed: Erm, yeah, we'd love to but we can't move up here, 'cause the lofts full of it too!
I then fought my way out of the loft passed all the wobbly steel (which has also managed to feel it's way into my room!) and tied on the first run of cable and a draw sting for the next lot.
We now have two pieces of CAT5e in our loft :-) And a chimney that looks like swiss cheese :-/ Hope if they ever install a gas fire the run a flue liner up the chimney... otherwise someone in my rooms gonna get gassed.
It's quite well hidden too, don't you think? :-)
What a ramble load of blah blah blah, only the dedicated or the involved will ever read the whole thing I'm sure...
Big thanks for Joe for helping and letting us using his networking tools of torture (torture for the building that is!)