As you probably know, THHN is a good general purpose building wire - stranded bare copper with PVC insulation and Nylon jacket designed for applications utilizing less than 600 volts. Ten-gauge is pretty hefty, but it will certainly work fine as a dedicated line for your system. Make darn sure you run it all the way back to the fuse box though, as the rest of your house is likely wired with 14 or 12. A dedicated 12G line would suffice just fine, and 12G is easier to work with than 10G. I used 10G for a dedicated line in a previous home and today I utilize a dedicated line with 12G - darned if I can tell any differences.
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12awg cable is the min for a 20amp 120VAC outlet. 10awg cable is the min for a 30amp outlet but you can use it on a 20amp rated outlet-just ensure that the breaker is also only 20amps. Higher guage may or may not provide any audible benefits, but will play a factor depending on how long the ruin is between the outlet and the Main panel. The longer the run, the more resistance, and thus the more voltage drop on the line. Of course the VDrop is dependent on the amount of current being pulled at the moment. If you have a short run, 12 will suffice just fine. However if your run is like 100', while 12awg may suffice 10awg may be better. In my case, my outlet was about 100' away and I had a huge VDrop-of like 11 volts when pulling about 11 amps. Since you're going through the effort/expense, and since you ordered 2 outlets, if they are being installed in the same location, get 10/3 or 12/3 wire. It has a shared neutral and ground and separate hot wires for 2 circuits. If they are being installed in the same gang box, be sure to use a double breaker (usually used for 220V applications). This will ensure that all power is off to the entire box in the event that you or somebody else ever want to work on that outlet in the future. Oh yeah, by the way, I'm NOT a licensed electrician, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night ;) |
Greetings & Happy New Year to all!I'd like to throw my 2 cents in here.First off I AM a licensed,01 (Commercial/Residential) JOURNEYMAN Electrician in the states of Washington & Nevada with 10 years experience & have done custom installations of home theater systems valued to $50,000.00.With the established notion that I know a little about this subject I would like to make the folowing observations.1:THHN is NOT recommended for your appication.THHN is a single conductor stranded wire & is almost exclusively used when pullng wires through emt or pvc pipe,NOT for running dedicated circuits into residential walls.2:For your application you want to use ROMEX wire,size 12 guage for a single 20amp circuit,size 10 guage for a 30 amp cuircut & if you are going to run a dedicated curcuit for each recep.then I do NOT recommend a 12/3 or 10/3 wire which shares the nuetral between the 2 cuircuts as the nuetral wire is were you are most likely to pick up line noise & this defeats the purpose of a dedicated curcuit for each recep.Either run 1ea. 12/2 ROMEX for each recep.or jumper the receps together on 1ea.30amp 10/2 circuit.One last thing.UNLESS you are very mechanically inclined & are sure that you can do this project correctly & SAFELY, HIRE A CERTIFIED JOURNEYMAN ELECTRICIAN to perform the labor.Retrofitting circuits into existing structures is NOT a slam bang deal & requires experience & the knowlege of how not only to avoid existing circuits in the wall but also to deal with any unexpected obstacles that may be incured in the walls such as fire breaks.I hope this helps. |
THHN is NOT recommended for your appication.THHN is a single conductor stranded wire & is almost exclusively used when pullng wires through emt or pvc pipe Maybe you have forgotten but since around 1984 NM sheathed cable was replaced with type NM-B cable. The insulation used on the conductors is THHN. . |
Since you're going through the effort/expense, and since you ordered 2 outlets, if they are being installed in the same location, get 10/3 or 12/3 wire. It has a shared neutral and ground and separate hot wires for 2 circuits. If they are being installed in the same gang box, be sure to use a double breaker (usually used for 220V applications). This will ensure that all power is off to the entire box in the event that you or somebody else ever want to work on that outlet in the future.Shared neutral? Not good for audio equipment. One of the main reasons for dedicated circuits is to decouple the power supplies of the audio equipment from one another. Especially digital from analog. Another problem with multi wire separate circuits, shared neutral circuits, is each hot conductor must be installed on opposite Lines, legs, of the electrical panel. Audio equipment that is connected together by ics should be fed from the same Line. |
