Aspire - General Wiring Guidance

[Just4Fun20]

I've read several posts on wiring. This question is a high level overview of guidance. I've lived in a house for many years and run many wires. Inside walls are hollow, outside walls have insulation. The attic and basement are typically good. Those are the general rules if I had to run something in a house.

An RV (2018 Entegra Aspire) is new to me and different. I know they have multiple cable runs to the roof. These are, perhaps, 3" pipes with a cap glued in place. Apparently the cap can be removed by cutting away the Dicor at the three legs, unscrewing the mounting screw on each leg and then removing the cap. There seems to be little, or no, guidance on where each of these goes. I'll get a wire tracer and I should be able to learn more.

The basement also looks like there is ample room for running wires.

There was a comment about a cable chase going into the slides (well several of them). It also appears there may be some space between the ceiling and the roof. Is there? Are the inside walls hollow? I'm guessing the outside walls are foam or something similar with high insulation capabilities.

I'm guessing the general rules are.
1) avoid new holes in the roof, use existing conduit where possible. If absolutely necessary use the proper hardware (such as the cable plate) and use Dicor generously.

2) avoid outer walls - on the assumption they're insulated

3) Use the basement where possible

4) Use the roof space?

5) Use inside walls.

In particular I have two things I need to run.
1) An Ethernet cable... Shielded Cat 6e - from the electrical compartment to the kitchen area.
2) An antenna line for a cell phone booster (from roof to someplace inside on the far end of the coach)

Thank you for any guidance. I'd like to do things "right" but the RV is a new environment.

[dave&ginny]

In the walls the Entegra has stuffed fiberglass insulation glued into place. As far as running any wires in the basement this is pretty easy:

go into your basement and lay on your back. Those carpeted panels you'll see are Velcro into place and easily pulled down. You'll notice a lot of wires ran along the channel of the frame. Make sure anything you run in the basement is clear of the moving parts of the slides.

There is space between the ceiling and the roof. Although I haven't ran wires myself up there, several people have and I'm sure they'll chime in on the procedure.

[Cruzer]

The basement is easy. Quite a bit of wiring is run up into the roof area via vertical wall in the middle of the coach, which you can see in the attached photo. The wiring then is distributed across the roof before the fiberglass insulation is added and the plywood and fiberglass are added. The wiring runs between the many roof trusses. The problem with adding wires later is that you would have to fish the wires through the insulation but they would get hooked on all of the trusses, which would make it quite difficult.

Entegra does have numerous roof vent caps on the roof. Two of these are your holding tank vents but others contain wires for various pre-wire items, such as solar panels, various satellite dish configurations, etc. These will have coax wires right beneath those caps or some 12 volt wires that run to the basement solar panel charge controller. To try to add some new wiring would not be something that can be easily done using those caps.

Wires do run all over the roof. In fact many of the 120 VAC Romex runs go over the top to get to the breaker panels. I would be extremely careful when drilling into the roof if you want to make a new hole to access a cabinet or whatever.

You can fish wires from the basement up into a wall. I've done that in the mid-bath and followed the existing wires that run up into the electrical cabinet in that room. The fiberglass insulation is easy to get through, unlike foam boards.

If I was to mount a cell phone antenna near the rear I would mount it and run the cable to the rear cap, drill my hole there, cover it with a cable cover plate and sealant, then drop the cable down through the rear cap. The top half is partitioned off but you can access if by removing the access panel in the rear wardrobe. Then punch a hole through the partition and drop the cable down to the engine rear. From there you can go forward through the basement.

Getting cables up to the dash is easy and getting to the overhead is also easy by removing the windshield trim panel. Running that cat6 up to the kitchen is more problematic. Slideout wiring runs through a chase. You won't be able to add anything without removing the entire bundle by disconnecting in the basement. However, if your galley are has an Aqua-Hot heat exchange they will have run 5/8" Pex lines lines through a side cabinet from a fixed partition wall. At least that's how my "A" floorplan is. You could run your cat6 up from the basement and follow the Pex lines to get into the galley lower cabinets.