bglad
Well-known member
I was wondering if any of you electricians can answer this: Can I run speaker wire through the same hole in the joists with low voltage thermostat wire? Is it legal?
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Speaker wire
- Thread starter bglad
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2ManyProjects
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2013
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I was wondering if any of you electricians can answer this: Can I run speaker wire through the same hole in the joists with low voltage thermostat wire? Is it legal?
I'm not an electrician; but since no one else has answered...
AFAIK, that's fine. Low Voltage is Low Voltage; and beyond that, they don't really care. It's when you start mixing LV with power-carrying lines that things get "iffy".
One other tip: If you're running the speaker wires through the walls, that implies a relatively long run. That in turn means you should use the heaviest wire you're willing to pony up for; audio amplifiers do not like lots of series resistance between their outputs and the load. You do NOT need anything exotic, such as Monster Cable or similar marketing-BS nonsense; but do use a good heavy-AWG stranded wire, preferably one with clearly obvious color-coding on each conductor, so it will be easy to discern polarity and thus maintain phase.
Last edited:
70chevellegsp
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- Jan 10, 2011
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If you're complying with code you should use CL2 rated (in-wall) speaker wire.
ddawg16
Well-known member
Yes....low voltage is low voltage....
For speaker wire....don't run anything smaller than 14g.....you can sometimes get landscape lighting wire cheaper than speaker wire.
And don't fall for the "Monster Cable" BS you hear.....12g is 12g....I don't care what the jacket has printed on it to make it 'look' better.
For speaker wire....don't run anything smaller than 14g.....you can sometimes get landscape lighting wire cheaper than speaker wire.
And don't fall for the "Monster Cable" BS you hear.....12g is 12g....I don't care what the jacket has printed on it to make it 'look' better.
nehog
Well-known member
No problem. Use twisted pair if you can to minimize hum pickup when doing signal wires, but for speakers any wire with the appropriate gauge will work just fine. You can run phone, thermostat, bell, network, speaker, and security wires all together.