Niles CM8SW Installation & Operation Manual page 12

bottom of the ceiling joists. Then work
backward so that you can always see the
holes you have already drilled. Paying care-
ful attention to this will save you a lot of
time later on!
Pulling the Cable
Pull the cable in sections (from the stereo to
the volume control, from the volume con-
trol to the speaker). Start with the longest
sections and use left over wire to complete
the short sections. If you plan to pull many
rooms at the same time through a central
route, walk off the distance to each destina-
tion, add a generous fudge factor for turns
and other obstacles, then cut off each sec-
tion so that you have a bundle of wires you
can pull at once.
Whenever you run the wire further than
four and one half feet from a hole in a stud
or joist (open attic space, going up walls,
etc.), fasten the wire to the joists or studs
using cable clamps or appropriately sized
wire staples. The wire should not have
large sags in it, nor should it be too tight.
Try to protect the wire from being stepped
on in attics or other unfinished crawl
spaces. There are guard strips, raceways
and conduits which can be used to protect
the cable. Consult the local building code
for special requirements in your area.
Concealing Speaker Wire in
Existing Walls
This is actually a fairly simple task if you
restrict your choice of speaker locations
and wire routes to the ceilings or interior
walls of your home. Interior walls in almost
all North American residences are hollow,
so it is easy to flush mount speakers into
them and route new speaker cable around
the house. What you see when you look at
the painted wall board, plaster, or paneling
is only the skin of the wall. Behind the skin
is the skeleton; two-by-four wood or metal
"studs" running vertically from the floor to
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the ceiling in walls and two-by-six or larger
"joists" running horizontally in the ceilings
and floors. In between the studs and the
joists is the space for the wiring and plumb-
ing of your home.
Exterior walls are different. They must insu-
late the house from the heat and cold out-
side, so they are stuffed with insulation. The
national building code requires that the hol-
low wall space in exterior walls be broken
by a horizontal stud placed between the
vertical studs. This "fire blocking" makes it
very difficult to retrofit long lengths of wire.
In some areas of the country the exterior
walls are constructed of solid masonry, and
have no hollow space for speaker wires.
Start by examining all the possible routes
you might take to run the speaker wire
from the speaker to the volume control
and back to the stereo. Use a stud sensor
or other device to locate the internal struc-
ture of the ceiling/wall. You want to avoid
as many studs or joists as possible. A typi-
cal speaker wire route would be: from the
speaker location in the ceiling, across the
attic, then down through a top plate (the
horizontal 2x4 or 2x6 laid across the verti-
cal studs) to the volume control location,
back up to the attic, across the attic, and
finally down another wall plate to a j-box
in the wall behind the stereo system itself
(See Figure 11).
Identify where all of your electrical, phone,
and TV wiring is likely to be and plan to
route around it all. You can accidentally
induce 60Hz hum on your speakers if you
run your speaker wire right beside electri-
cal wire for more than a few feet. Try to
run speaker wire parallel to power cables
at least 3 feet away. To find exactly where
an electrical cable is routed, try inspecting
the inside of the wall by turning off the
breaker for a particular power outlet or
switch, removing the cover plate and