Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Cabling in new construction

My house is being built right now so I sneaked in and ran speaker cable before the drywall come up. I got the in-wall speaker cable from Home Deport. At some point I have to run the speaker cable through the same hole as electrical wiring. At other points they are parallel. Is this against the building code? Will this affect the quality of sound? Thanks.

Yikes. Parallel?

You want to run cabling for audio, video, network, etc, perpendicular (90 degree angles) to power runs, and has as FEW of cross over (where one crosses over the other) points as possible.

Don't scare the guy!

But Nick is right, you may want to make another night visit and make re-do your cabling.

What do you mean, “same hole”? If it’s the same J-box, that’s a code violation.

Parallel is OK, as long as it’s at least 16” away. Most folks recommend 24” but I’ve ran comm. cables as close as 12” for short distances where there was no other option without issue.

Sorry to be the barer of bad news, but you should probably re-route your cables.

Its pretty hard to not go parallel with electrical wiring in a house, IF you have time I would also suggest running the wires through central vacuum tubing to enable easy replacement of cabling, especially video, as it has a tendency to change these days or as you upgrade to the latest and greatest. Just try to keep the wires as far from electrical as possible. I ran mine about 14" from the electrical and there has been no issues.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I probably have to remove the wire because i don't want anymore delay in the construction. I'll probably purchase Best Buy installation service. They charge about $200 including the cable. The cable I bought at Home Depot alone is almost $70.

V, as Mike pointed out, there may be a possible code violation. However, as a practical matter speaker wire(as distinguished from line-level interconnects)is immune from interference caused by nearby power lines since it's carrying a relatively high current into a low impedance speaker load.

I've been seeing different posts on buying cables (Home Depot and other places. Axiom offers cables of course, I don't hear about buying them here....are they too expensive, not up to specs???

I will be doing my basement in January and will be putting in cables etc., I was gonna do one stop shoping here at Axiom, anything wrong with that......any comment on those cables?

Chips,

from what I hear, the cables here are very nice cables. High quality stuff, but you can find cheaper cables that are just as high quality (but not as fancy) from elsewhere.

I personally am getting some cables from bluejeancables.com at 0.38 cents per foot.

There is quite a lengthy thread around here somewhere regarding cables, I tried a quick search & couldn't find it....

Ahhhh, here it is...