New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Home Theater Wiring Help

post #1 of 3
2/11/09 at 11:41am
Thread Starter 
Hello. I am in the process of studding out my basement. In one corner of the room will be my home theater. I went a little crazy on monoprice.com and have purchased hundreds of dollars of cable to be run throughout the basement - everything from CAT6 to speaker to hdmi & other audio & video. I'm planning on having a cut out in the wall adjacent to where my tv will sit and have shelves to house all my components so they are flush with the wall facing the tv. Behind this wall is the furnace and will be unfinished, and next to the components is where I'm having my "hub", or where all the wires will be. Here are my questions - what would be an ideal way to organize all these wires? My current thought is to place some particle board on a hinge and organize all my wires through gang boxes with specific wall plates that will be attached to the particle board, that way I can open up the particle board and get behind it if need be. I have lots of wall plates with 6-hole openings that I can put, say, 6 coaxial cable jack keystones in and organize all my satellite lines. Then I can do the same for video and speaker wire. Anyone have a better idea on how to do this, or does this sound ok? Secondly, when I'm running all these lines, how careful do I need to be about coming in close proximity to electrical lines? Sorry for the long-winded questions, but any help would be appreciated!
Reply
post #2 of 3
2/11/09 at 8:56pm

Re: Home Theater Wiring Help


Not sure what that particle board thing is all about, but the wall plate/keystone thing is a good option.

Personally I prefer to take the cables out of the wall straight to their respective components. Cheaper, way fewer connection/termination points to possibly fail. The cabling should be coming out of the wall behind the equipment rack anyway, so one will ever see the pretty keystone wall plates.

Regarding proximity to electrical cables, audio and video cabling is shielded, so running near electrical isn't a problem, as long as you use some common sense (not sure about HDMI, though). It's best to avoid a long parallel run - no reason to needlessly tempt fate. Short distances, say from the ceiling down to a wall outlet are fine, but it's best to drop in the adjacent cavity if possible. Depending on where you live, it might be against code to drop low voltage and high voltage in the same wall cavity.

Hopefully all that cable you bought is rated for in-wall use?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

525x525px-LL-vbattach1280.jpg
525x525px-LL-vbattach1281.jpg
Reply
post #3 of 3
2/12/09 at 9:02am
Thread Starter 

Re: Home Theater Wiring Help

Thank you Wayne! I appreciate the info. Thankfully all my cables are CL2 rated, so I'm hoping I'm ok.

In reference to the particle board, I was just trying to figure out a way to organize all my wiring that will be coming into one place behind the wall next to my components. By placing particle board between the studs next to my components it would allow me to attach wall plates where the wires would run into. That way I can easily plug AV wires from my receivers/blu-ray/etc. right into easily-labeled wall plate jacks. If there's a better way to do it I'm all ears!
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home