Preparing to insulate was like a dry-run for hanging the sheet rock. You have to make sure that everything within the wall is completely done. With this in mind, I had to figure out exactly how to finish up my low voltage wiring.
The first thing that needed to be done was to clean up my Structured Media Center. Using 2 inch gray electrical conduit, and 3/4 inch flexible low voltage conduit, I re-routed every line going into the Structured Media Center. This took some time as there are quite a few different lines between the cable, Ethernet, and phone. The picture to the left shows how it turned out.
Also notice the small orange low voltage box. This was in itself the solution to a unique problem. I wanted a box that was sturdy enough to mount a speaker to, and yet I couldn't fasten it on the top since I wanted to run the flexible blue hose to it. The solution was to mount the orange box on the 3 remaining sides. This would allow me to run the blue hose to the box, and yet have it sturdy enough to mount a speaker from it.
This procedure was done each for the left, right, and center speakers in what will be the home theater.
The next problem I had to solve was how to run all of the different cables to the area where the stereo cabinet will be located. The interesting problem here was that I knew that I would be running a DVI, VGA, and Component cable to this location, and I couldn't remove the large connectors on the ends. I decided to use more 2 inch gray electrical conduit. With this I could drop all three of these cables.
At this location I also needed a separate box for all of the speaker connections. For this I ran a blue hose to another double-gang low voltage box. I chose a double-gang box here because I found a nifty face plate that has all 5 speaker inputs on it. All show pictures of that when it's completely done. In the meantime the picture to the right shows where I'm at.
Finally I ran a third conduit, another blue hose. This one is for cable and Ethernet, as I would also like these connections available at the stereo cabinet.
I also placed low voltage boxes with blue hose in other location around the basement. This was done just in case some time down the road a new connection type may become popular and I would like to remain upgrade able.
The picture to the left shows an interesting connection in which the blue hose comes out through one of the joists. This is because the orange box is located under a soffet, which will eventually be dry walled over. With this blue hose here, I can still snake cable down to the otherwise inaccessible location.
