Home Cinema

[Kanoe]

Hi Guys,

Having an extension built at the moment and to avoid the need for running trunking round the room at a later date trying to plan ahead.

There is an area in the extension that may become the home cinema room in the future so I would like to get some cabling in whilst the walls and ceiling are not on yet running from one side of the room to the other for speaker cabling.

Trouble is I have very little time to plan this or get the stuff in before it will be too late so need some expert guidance.

I'm looking to end up with a face plate of connections on each wall with cable running between that will be for speakers connected to an A/V unit and don't know anything about what would be required for that. (Ideally enough connections to accommodate 2 rear speakers, a sub and 2 rear atmos speakers)

Any advice would be most welcome as I have about a week to get things together for it.

[Rob_B]

My plan for when we get some work done is to maybe route some pvc piping through the walls and a couple of bits of string, then when I decide what I'm doing I can use them to pull the cables through and add faceplate etc later, this should give you a bit more time to think about what you want.

[Jonj1611]

Have to agree with above and what I was going to suggest myself.

[Kanoe]

I was thinking about trunking for later but I'm not sure i have the depth on one wall to run it and the run has to go round a skylight in the ceiling and i didnt fancy my chances of getting cables round 6 or so 90 degree corners in the future without it getting stuck.

[ik9000]

I was thinking about trunking for later but I'm not sure i have the depth on one wall to run it and the run has to go round a skylight in the ceiling and i didnt fancy my chances of getting cables round 6 or so 90 degree corners in the future without it getting stuck.

Radius bend guides will let you pull it through well enough. Office installs use big wide ducts, but for home install you can use these:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/tower-bla...nds-20mm/98408
https://www.screwfix.com/p/tower-bla...nds-25mm/89265

the 20mm will take 2 cat6a or 4 cat 6/5E or a whole bundle of fibre optic.(though I would limit it to 2 cables max for ease of pull-through around the bends)
the 25mm will take 4 cat6a or 6/7 cat 6/5E or even more fibre optic (though I use them with 4 cables max tbh for ease of pull-through around the bends)

the internal bend radii are ok for up to cat6a (haven't checked beyond that).

There is a small protusion around the thing that makes the first pull-through annoying, so use a stiff feeder cable (like some old mains wiring) to shove through, then attach your new cable to that and pull away. For rewiring pull the new stuff through as you extract the old by tying the two together.

Leave gaps in conduit below floor/ceiling periodically after each bend that you can use to pull through cable and create a pool of slack ready for you to go to the next gap and pull again. Think like how you gather up slack in a shoelace.

[Kanoe]

Thanks and sorry for the late response.

I eventually got some trunking installed in the floor as they hadnt poured it yet.

Have got some amazon basics oxygen free speaker cable that I just need to cut to length and try and get through the trunking now.

In typical fashion i was trying to do that before the floor was poured in case there was an issues feeding it but amazon lost the original cable i ordered and didnt get a replacement in time.

Thankfully the other cable run of 2x Cat 6a, 2x HDMI and cable for satellite dish i did have in time and got that in as well.