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Romex and breaker switches

I did a search and have read previous posts, but I still have some questions. I had an electrician install dedicated lines in my listening room when we built our house 20 years ago. I bought simple hospital grade outlets from a big box store and did not specify the gauge of the romex or anything else. I need to clear out my dedicated listening room soon for new hardwood to be installed and figured now would be a good time to revisit and improve my dedicated lines. I have already bought a pair of Oyaide R1 duplexes and intend to have them installed side by side behind my equipment rack. My question is-is there a particular variation of 10 gauge romex that would be best? I have looked and there are quite a few variations including 10-2 and 10-3 and I have no idea what to buy or for that matter, if some other wire that would do the job and not be prohibitively expensive presents a better option. I will need a 20 foot run for each duplex. Also, can someone help me as to whether the breaker switch on my panel matters much and whether I should opt for 20A, 30A, or other? I now know that all runs from my duplexes to the panel should be to the same leg. I will make sure that happens. Any other recommendations or advice about romex/wire to use and breaker switches given my decision to go with Oyaide R1's would be most appreciated. 
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lak's avatar
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lak
4,626 posts
 
@fsonicsmith PM sent to you.
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mrvordo
151 posts
 
It will depend more on your amps, but I would install the 10ga so that if you end up with amp(s) that are really power hungry you WILL get better sound out of them. I have four dedicated lines to my room, one for each mono amp, one for analog (pre and phono) and one for digital/mechanical (CD and TT). I let the CD and TT share since they are never used, or on, at the same time. This might be over kill, but at least with my system, I do hear a difference versus 12ga. YMMV.
Good listening,
Mike
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whobob59
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I currently use 2 runs of 10-3 in one conduit for a distance of 38 feet. Of course you must use 20 amp breakers and receptacles.
Worting with the very stiff 10 ga, I went with surface mounted boxes. With the depth of the box in the wall cavity and the depth of the surface box, I had more than enough space to properly fold the 10 ga into the box with no damage to the receptacles.
colinmcc
1 posts
 
audioslain02. It is perfectly within code to use a larger wire size, code specifies a minimum size not max. Think about it, if for example you have a long cable run of 14-2 and, doing the math you find a higher voltage drop than acceptable you would leave the breaker as is and move up a cable size to reduce the voltage drop since larger cable means less resistance.

As far as folding the cable into a standard box, larger cable is stiffer, I wouldn't recommend pigtails, I'd install a larger box to allow more room to gently fold the cable tails in.
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mark_hubbard
52 posts
 
Another question. Our living room (including / TV / surround amps / stereo system / powered subwoofer) is at the back end of our house with a peaked ceiling that does not allow for attic access, making rewiring a pain for any electrician. Our house is about 25 years old and we probably need a new breaker box as well; in truth, the whole house should be re-wired with additional circuits upstairs and down. If I wanted to add seven dedicated lines to our living room, could an electrician run the lines on the *outside* of our house and then drill through the back wall to install the separate outlets? This would involve about 50-60 foot runs from the location of our current breaker box, but would be the shortest distance from box to outlets. Our cable TV, internet and phone lines come in this way, but I don't know what the rules are for A/C. Please forgive my ignorance and thank you for your help! -Mark
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