12 Gage Home Depot Speaker Wire (1 Viewer)

[Mike H Wizard]

Hi Everyone,

I have been reading a lot of posts about the Home Depot Speaker Wire and I would like some clarification on which one they are referring to.

Home Depot 12 Gage Speaker Wire, are they talking about the

Heavy Duty Copper for both Strands at($.47/Foot) or is the

Single Copper Strand and Single Silver Strand at($.35/Foot) sufficient enough?

Does it matter which one you use in the Walls and Ceilings?

Thank you again in advance,

Mike

 

[SteveA]

You really need to get CL3 rated cable for in-wall use. Supposedly, if your house ever catches fire and the insurance inspector discovers wiring that is not up to code, they can deny your claim! I don't know if this is true or not, but I certainly wouldn't want to take that chance.

I just checked HD's web site and it looks like the best in-wall cable that they have is 14 gauge. I used that in my new house for surround speakers and it worked fine. Unless you're wiring very long runs, 14-gauge should be plenty good enough. I'm not sure where you'd find CL3-rated 12-gauge wire.

 

[Mike H Wizard]

What did you look under for that in wall speaker wire on the Home Depot website?

Out of curiosity how big is the room you ran that wire and did you run it through any type of tube?

Thank you in advance,

Mike

 

[SteveA]

Just go to www.homedepot.com and do a search for "speaker wire". You'll see about 3 pages of results. The in-wall speaker wire is on page 3.
The room that I wired is about 13' x 20'. I ran the wires under the house in the crawl space and into the walls through holes I drilled in the bottom plates of the walls. Each wire is probably about 20' long. I didn't use any tubing or conduit. I just fastened the bire wire directly to the bottom of the floor joists in the crawl space.
The most important thing to be careful of when running speaker wire (or any other kind of in-wall cable for that matter) is staying as far away as possible from AC power lines. Try to avoid parallel runs with AC lines, run the wire at least 18" away from power lines, and if you must cross an AC wire, ALWAYS cross at a 90 degree angle. If you follow these rules you should avoid noise interference from AC lines.

 

[Mike H Wizard]

Thank you very much for the Info, It is appreciated, I will use these tips when I start installing my surround in my home...

Thank you again!

Mike

 

[Jeff O.]

Mike,
You could also check www.partsexpress.com. They are very good and have 12G, CL3 rated in-wall speaker wire for about 0.22/ft (in 100 foot lengths).

 

[Mike H Wizard]

Thank you for the Info...

Have you tried this product?

Out of Curiosity, what do you use?

 

[Jeff O.]

Mike,

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I haven't used that wire myself. I am not running anything in wall. However, I use their 12G sound king wire and find it to be very good and inexpensive. Hopefully, someone else who has used this wire will chime in.

 

[ThomasL]

Mike, also, if you'll be running two runs to the same location for two speakers (L/R on one wall in some room for example) then look into getting the 4 conductor CL3 rated wire. I just wired my first floor (4 rooms - one home theater surround and the rest stereo) with Acoustic Research CL3 rated 4 conductor 14 gauge wire I got from http://www.audioadvisor.com. It's 50 cents a foot but you only have to do 1/2 of the runs you'd need with 2 conductor wire. I needed about 150-200 feet of it and they sell it by the foot which was convenient for me.
hope this helps,
--tom