Surface Raceways for Neat Home Theater System Installation
What are surface raceways and how can they help you have a neat home theater system installation? A raceway is, quite simply, a cover for wiring that is routed around your room. It not only hides the wires but protects them from damage. Most types of raceways can be purchased in a wide range of colors including white, brown, tan, or you can paint the raceway to match your custom wall color.
A popular type of raceway is the corner molding raceway. This raceway design is used along the baseboards of the room or in corners because of its triangular shape. This raceway also works well as a crown molding raceway at the top of the ceiling or along the edge of a ceiling trim molding. The plastic is flexible and insertion of the wiring is simple and easy. The raceway is cut into the lengths you desire, making the installation of your wiring all but invisible.
One piece latching raceways are great for installations along the baseboard of homes with carpeted floors. The wiring is slipped inside and the raceway's self-adhesive backing allows it to adhere to the bottom of the baseboard so that is it inconspicuous. Your wires are safe from pets and vacuums and the wires will not be inadvertently disconnected.
Low voltage raceways are designed for routing speaker cables. These flexible raceways conceal speaker cables and can be used to route along baseboards, walls, ceilings, moldings or anywhere you wish.
To create raceways that turn corners, you can purchase a corner connector which prevents the need to attempt to make an attractive joint in the raceway. The corner joint attaches two straight raceways and are available to turn corners in either direction.
For more complex wiring situations, you can even locate raceways that have t-connections allowing you to design any shape of raceway needed to fit the needs of your cables.
Points to look for when purchasing raceways are flexibility and durability of material. Commercial raceways are usually made of metal while the majority of home raceways use flexible plastic materials. However, you may choose a metal raceway for some situations. Be sure that the correct type of raceway is used: choose high voltage raceways for running electrical cords and low voltage raceways for speaker cables and other low voltage applications such as telephone wiring.
To keep cables neat before they reach the raceway, a cable tray system or cable carrier system could be the right answer for you. Cable tray designs allow you to lay the cables neatly and make labels easy to read. Cable carriers are flexible metal tracks which route the wires from the back of component racks to the point at which the wires enter the raceways.
The cost of installing the wiring and cabling for your home theater system using raceways and other wire management devices is quite affordable and the neat, attractive installation will look as if it were done by an expensive professional. Your friends will only know you did it yourself if you choose to tell them!