Wiring (1 Viewer)

[kumar]

Planning to move my entertainment center to a stairway closet and wire for speakers and Monitor.

Now, should the speaker wire per channel be of same length?
I have to run couple of 20 footer and and three 35 footer wires? What gauge of wire should I go for? 12ga?

Will I loose picture quality if I run a long (close to 35 feet) component cable from my cable/AVR to Monitor?

Please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

Your speaker wire length does not need to be the same for each channel. Pick up a spool of 12ga SuperFlex from Home Depot, Lowe's, or PartsExpress.com and you'll be rady to go. I paid $.044/ft at HD.

35' S-video will work fine as well. I made a 50' cable and haven't had any problems at all.

 

[kumar]

Frank, Thanks for answering. Though I was very interested, I guess your HT4.0 link is protected.
Anyway, I have another question.

While I run my speaker wires and end them in the wall through its port, is there a good(translate it as neat finish) way to run my components cables and audio cables from my cable/AVR to my Monitor?

My idea was to run them through a PVC pipe from the closet through my crawl space and run into the family room wall. Cut open the wall to fish out the cables and connect the cables to Monitor. In this method I think the wall will have a hole and cables will come out of it, still exposing rest of the hole. Is there a better way? Would I be able to have a port like the speaker wires where I can run another short cable between my Monitor and wall port?

I don't know if I explained enough or confused you.

 

[Chris Hovanic]

check out what I did here.

Use electrical conduit. The 90 elbows are at a large radius to allow easier pulling. Hope that helps.

 

[KenA]

Hey Chris, aren't you concerned about air flow in that closet? Add a few more components and you may have some over heating.

 

[Chris Hovanic]

It warms up some in there but most of the times the temps are fine. At this point in time, day to day TV watching does not use the reciever so it is not even on. I do on occassion leave the door open while watching movies though.

I have thought about putting a vent on the back wall of the closet with or without fan(s) to aid in the cooling but prob will not mess with that untill I get a new reciever.

 

[kumar]

Chris,

Thanks for throwing some light. Nice pictures that speaks more than 1000 words

One question though, what was the reason for you to run the speaker wire also through the conduit instead of terminating it in the wall and run a separate short speaker wire between wall plate and speakers.

Secondly, if you have left the hole open in the floor like that is there much impact on your HVAC operation?

 

[Chris Hovanic]

kumar. I only had to run 1 speaker wire in the conduit for my center chanel... all the other speaker wires were ran during construction of the house (by the previous owner/builder) I also have a phone line and a cat5 cable for my IR distribution.

If you check out my speaker setup you can see some of the speaker runs.

You can get some nice binding posts at parts express, HD or the ratshack if you want to go that route. They even have connectors for RCA, S-Vid ect. But since I might unhook the speakers maybe once every other year and the wall plate would be hiding anyway I could not justify the expence of all thoes parts.

As for the hole in the floor. I calked arond the fitting(s) and notice no difference in my HVAC opperation.

FYI - I have a total of 7 RG6 cables, a cat 5 cable, a flat phone cable (4 conductor) and a pull line pulled through the 1-1/2" conduit. There is very little room left. I wish I would have gone with 2".

 

[Frank Zimkas]

I added my pics to the HTF Gallery, youshould be able to see them now.