I am in the middle of having my new home built and I was thinking of running some speaker wire for a couple of locations in my family room. How close to electrical lines can I run the speaker wire without getting interference? The walls are pretty full of electrical and so I am considering running it under the floor.

You would have to check with your local building code.

In our area, low voltage lighting is to be kept a minimum of 18" away from high voltage. (when running parallel to HV)

If it to cross over HV, it is best to cross over at a 90 degree angle.

JJP

I don't think there is any code for running ac next to speaker lines....although you must keep them atleast 4 inches apart to help with noise induction, crossing at 90 degrees is recommended...

Be sure to run atleast 14 gauge wire because of loop resistance of lighter gauge cables..

You might want to think about putting a few outlet boxes in key spots where you think you may put speakers, computer desks etc. For each of these boxes attach a piece of PVC pipe (or other conduit) running all the way from the top of the box through the header at the top of the frame (passing through any fire breaks etc).

With that done you can run whatever wire you want later, be it Speaker Wire, Cat-5 for computers, Coax for CATV and cable modems etc. All you need to do is go into the attic, find the right pipe and fish the wire down to the box (having the PVC pipe makes this easy). This way, you can put off the wiring decision until later. It also lets you change the wire later when you want to upgrade from the original Home-Depot wire to the $300.00 per inch kryptonite-oxide insolated solid uranium MegaCable (after you take out the second mortgage of course). Just pull out the old stuff and run in the new stuff.

I have seen this done and it works out quite nicely. You just need to give some forethought to how you might use the rooms in the future.

Dave