How can I route an unknown amount of wires through an outside wall?

Question

I'd love to figure out the best way to make a reusable junction through an outside wall for routing cables through it. (Specifically, ham-radio coax cables). It would be fairly simple if I was going to only do one, but I'd like to implement something that would let me add or remove cables over time. All the junction boxes I've found seem to not be straight pass-throughs though and have a hard back. I'd like to find one with a semi-sealable rubber flap that would let me poke new cables through it. I'd mount it high up on the ceiling under an eve to prevent most of the water issues, along with drip loops on the wires, but I suspect the real reason most people (and code?) don't do this is for rodents?

Or is my best option to do it once and make connectors to and from the outside with a fixed panel and multiple junction boxes vertically aligned with each other (one above the other, and one facing outward and one inward)?

Answer 1

You ask for a box, as long as 120V does not go thru, then you can use a low voltage cut-in ring.

These rings come in 1,2,3 and 4 gang or even round. You can use a 1 gang weatherproof cover with either 1 1/2 hub or 3 hubs. Or you can buy a blank plate and drill your own 7/8.

Weatherproof plate with 3 1/2 hubs

To make where your cable goes thru the cover you can use a strain relief connector. You pick your connectors by the size of gland (grommet) you need to use and then there is a compression nut that tightens and the gland compresses to your cable.

You can probably get 2 holes drilled if you use a 1 gang blank plate or 4 holes if you use the 2 gang ring and plate. You can always do one size and change the ring to a larger size if you want, but you can't go backwards.

You can buy all this at a DIY box store or at your local electrical distributor.

Answer 2

You could cut your hole (1", 1.5", whatever you think is big enough) mount a piece of conduit inside and use hardware cloth over the exterior side of the hole, then pull your cables to a box mounted on the exterior near the hole. Rats/mice won't be able to get in through hardware cloth.

Your roof might already have soffit vents (between roof joists, where roof meets the wall) which you could manipulate to pull the wires through to your box as another means of screening out the rodents, instead of drilling a separate hole.

Take a look here at some electrical boxes. Most of these have plenty of punchouts. You'd just do each wire to a different punchout, with a box connector to hold them in place. I think it's your best bet to have the wire coming out of the house first, then secured into box using a clamp (box connector). You could run that conduit from a punchout (or right near one if you use a pipe diameter larger than will fit to a punchout) into the house so it looked cleaner going in.

You could also look at rubber wire grommets, the universal ones on this page look pretty cool.