Hiding outside wires

[snownh2o2]

Routing wires from the basement A/V rack to the farthest most corners of a century old farm house has always been a challange, however until now I have always found a way to neatly accomplish it.

 

However, what I have ultimately ended up with is a lot if different routes that do not allow my A/V setup to quickly be changed.

 

It has been my idea for awhile to run a condituit from the basement to the attic allowing me to re/pre-run a bunch of cat5/6 (attic & basement punch panels) and always have the capability to easily fish something new.

 

After a lot of thought, I have found a straight run from basement to attic, on the outside of my house, that could very inconspicously have a 4" rain downspot which could potentially conseal all of my wires. NOTE: No 110VAC wires will ever be run through it. However I am hoping to re-run all cat5/6 in it along with speaker wires (30W max), a few signal wires (relays...), A/V (Hdmi/component/keypads).

 

About my house: For the most part all new wires in the 1st level need to be run from the basement and all new wires in the upstairs (2nd level) need to be fished down from the attic. What I am trying to creates a central 'backbone' that connects the 'primary' basement A/V rack, to the 'secondary' attic punchdown/rack. From the primary and secondary racks, wires can be ultimately run to there final desination.

 

The whole project will be waterproof and have downspout access panels to future wires. While I don't know if there is any safely code on this, there should not be anything that could be pontentially harmful, so I am not overly concerned about that aspect of the project.

 

Ok.... so here is that actually question. Am I setting myself up for an interference mess? I would like to use 4" aluminum downspot because it is the easiest to work with and make custom pieces/flashings. Is there a huge risk of interference problems. As far as interference, would plastic downspot be better? Are there wires that are should not be run together or wires that commonly interfer with each other? Will POE lines cause me problems? Any sugestions or ideas are appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Matt

[apostolakisl]

All of the wire types you are talking about can run in the same conduit without issue. There should be no code issue, but codes are not universal so you should ask locally. Using metal conduit would help a bit in shielding the wires inside from external noise, but unless you are running line level analog audio or you have high amp 120/240v wires running close by, you shouldn't have issues with that. I would suggest using plastic conduit becuase of the ease of waterproofing. Also, grey plastic electrical conduit can be gently warmed with a propane torch and made to bend around things.

[snownh2o2]

Thanks for your reply.

 

How much of an issue will line level audio be in the same space? I was hoping that I could either run a few in the spouting or mount some very small ( grey plastic conduit inside the spouting with the audio lines seperated from everything else. There are about 5 pairs (30W max) that connect down to my Russound system. Off the top of my head, I forget what guage the wire is, however it is all rated single pair twisted wire with a casing. The shared conduit is less than 30'.

 

The goal is for knowone to know that there are wires running down the side of the house. Which is why I what to make it appear to be connected (functional looking, but not really) downspout. I am affraid that two side by side spouts will immediately standout

 

Thanks again,

 

Matt

[apostolakisl]

Line level audio is very weak. The slightest amount of noise introduced into the wire gets the hell amplified out of it in your amplifier. The other LV stuff is not really the problem, it is random radio waves from just about anything out there. TV stations, Radio Stations, Cell Phone towers, and whatever else. If you plan on running line level audio more than 20 or 30 feet you need to consider this. Balanced lines will help elliminate this up to a couple hundred feet. These use three wires and are the norm in professional sound equipment.

[TJF1960]

How much of an issue will line level audio be in the same space? I was hoping that I could either run a few in the spouting or mount some very small ( grey plastic conduit inside the spouting with the audio lines seperated from everything else. There are about 5 pairs (30W max) that connect down to my Russound system.

 

Sorry to butt in but are you talking about running actual line level audio (pre-amp signals as in rca / shielded cable) or about speaker level audio using 16ga. or so speaker wire?

[snownh2o2]

Sorry to butt in but are you talking about running actual line level audio (pre-amp signals as in rca / shielded cable) or about speaker level audio using 16ga. or so speaker wire?

 

Sorry about my own confusion and inability to clarify. There will be 5 pairs of speaker-level cable. There will be 6 cat5 for kepads. There will be a few network cables (though I should do some research & run a single fibre as my network already setup). There will be 4 pair of cat6 for hdmi and component baluns. It would be nice to run my 2 directv lines. There will be a wire to connect IR to the downstairs system. And there will be a few 24v thermostat wires.

 

Again sorry for my inablility to explain it. From the above list what do I have to keep seperated from the other stuff?

 

I picked up 30' of 4" square aluminum downspout, brackets, and 30' of 3/4" grey plastic conduit. I can always go back for more. And even more fun than HomeDepot, I brought over my cousin's 48' bucket truck! I 'tested' it out last night hovering 20' above the trees with a Magic Hat and the old lady (sorry hun, cute little blonde girl). Weather and time permitting, by the end of this week or the begining of next, I should be starting on the project.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[TJF1960]

Thanks for clarifying Matt,

 

While I am no expert and don’t have any experience with hdmi, if it were me I think I would keep the speaker wires and 24v wires separated from the rest. While the speaker wires will be carrying only about 16 volts AC at about 2 amps (assuming 8 ohm loads) at full volume, the power will be constantly varying and the radiation from the wires will also be varying. The 24volt wires, I am assuming are for the relays mentioned above, will also have a certain amount of radiation as well. The rest of the wires sound like low, low voltage/current so probably would be fine together. Then again, they might all be fine bundled together, but if you were to have troubles I would expect the speaker and 24 volt wires to be the culprits.

 

By the way, kudos for your imaginative solution of using the downspouts, that is awesome!

 

Tim

[apostolakisl]

I would caution against using cat wire with balloons for the hdmi stuff. Except for the highest end balloons (the very price ones), you are likely to have problems. You would be much better off buying long runs of hdmi in my opinion. I have 75 ft hdmi runs in my house which work perfectly and don't cost very much at all on ebay.

 

If you run fiber for your internet, then noise is a complete non-issue on that.

 

You won't have any trouble with running all of those wires together. Very high wattage speaker would produce EM interference, but I think you are unlikely to even approach a level that would affect a data cable.

 

As I mentioned, line level audio is the only touchy wire. Line level audio is a very weak analog signal, so any weak noise that gets put on the wire gets amplified just like the real signal in your amp. But it appears you have none of it. Data cable just ignores the noise until it gets loud enough to start drowning out the real signal. You just aren't going to see that with a speaker wire carrying 40 or 50 watts.

[snownh2o2]

Thanks everyone for there suggestions and help. Its much appreciated. I started (barely) on the project this weekend I would like to finish up by next weekend.

 

I can't take credit for the downspout idea, I saw an HVAC guy do it to hide AC lines. Since then, I have spotted it done on a few local houses, which is why I want mine to look like it actually carries water and is not hiding something.

 

Quick question, for future reference: Does plastic conduit prevent interference to the extent that metal conduit does as power levels get higher? Ultimately metal can be grounded, but plastic?

 

Thanks again,

 

Matt

[apostolakisl]

Plastic does not block em interference to any measurable extent. However, the conduit may keep two wires far enough apart that it effectively is blocking it. Remember, em interference drops off exponentially with distance, so 2 cm apart is 4 times less em interference than 1cm apart.

 

Metal conduit is a sort of faraday cage. If you use metal conduit, you should only ground one end of it as it can become a conduit for lightening strike potentials moving through your house when grounded to different things at each end. (This actually holds true for all grounds, you want everything in your house connected to one and only one ground). Personally, I would not use metal conduit from outside to inside the house for fear of bringing in transients.

[snownh2o2]

Thanks for your input. Along with some extra reading, I have learned a lot. I think it will seperate all similar cables in plastic conduits and hide all conduits in the aluminum downspot.

 

Now as long as the storms hold out this weekend, I am set.

 

Thanks again to everyone.

 

Matt