I have a 2700 sq ft home, not including the basement of course, in the Toronto area. I am finishing my basement (say 1500sq ft) and using metal studs. I'm looking at at least $1200 CDN just for the "to code" electrical wiring (and that's not including speaker wiring). That's about 1000 ft of various 14 gauge wire (some armour casing, BX etc.). DOES THIS 1000 ft SOUND RIGHT? This 1000 foot number is according to my electrician (who happens to be my brother in-law and a reliable source). It just seems high.

I have about 22 pot lights and then the home theatre, nothing else out of ordinary.

It will all depend on how many breakers you will be adding to your basement.

The more you add, the more runs you will have from your breaker box to the rest of the basement...I have 4 just for my 14 x 16 room! 1 for the lights, 1 for the front wall outlets (sub), 1 for the side wall outlets (reciever) and 1 for the back wall outlets including the ceiling outlet for the projector...

It took quite a bit of wire just for my little basement thats about 750 sqft.

Yes, more home runs means more wire. 1000' sounds reasonable to me for 1500 sq. feet.

Maybe consider using 20amp breakers and running 12 AWG Romex instead of 14. This way you may use less breakers, and a little less wire. Although I would still expect you to need 750 ft for that large of a space.

Romex comes in 250 ft. rolls so buy 3 and if you run out buy another- or buy the 1000 ft. upfront and just return the one if you don't need it.

I would also recommend you put your AV equipment on a seperate 20amp circuit, from the other outlets/switches in the basement.

yup, its gonna be a separate 20 amp circuit. Also, yes, I am replacing breakers and putting new ones in, so I guess that helps in the footage.

I was there briefly today and it looks very high tech and monochrome in the basement, what with the combination of :

- light grey concrete floor
- metal studs
- darker grey Tyvek behind the studs
- BX armoured cable
- black and grey outlet boxes

I'm glad he lives in the suburbs. Downtown I think they would have called it "finished" at that point, except for adding a bunch of those annoyingly bright little point-source halogen lamps to make the room look sparkly and make the occupants look squinty