Purelythemusic wrote:Thankfully just remembered that if I’m getting the floor poured I need to pop in some cable and or conduit!
Ummm.... Yup! For sure! And more than just "some" as well.... you need
lots of things going in there: Electrical power, Cat6 (several), analog snake to your stage box at the rear of the room for your instruments inputs, also headphone mixes, returns, maybe effects inserts, Internet, CCTV (if applicable), maybe KVM if you need to control your DAW from a different location in the room, perhaps lighting circuits if you want to control your lights while seated at the DAW (very cool), maybe USB, HDMI, or even (gasp!) Firewire (can't believe I said that...), Thunderbolt, etc, etc. Plus future expansion. There's LOTS of stuff you should allow for to be connected around your room. And since you don't know what half of that will be yet (especially the "future expansion" stuff....), conduit is the way to go.
So, I would run a couple of conduits runs from the mix position to the electrical distribution panel, a couple more to to the spot where your internet connection comes in (and telephone connection, and cable connection, and alarm connection, and intercom connection...), several to the front of the room (between or in the soffits), and several to the rear of the room. That's just runs from the mix position. In addition to that, you will also need conduit running from your electrical panel to the soffits (to power the speakers), and to the rear of the room (to power the gear you'll have back there while tracking, etc.), and also for outlets for "utility" electrical loads, such as extra floor-standing or table-top lights, cell phone chargers, laptops, the vacuum cleaner, coffee pots, pizza warmers, etc.
I actually want this cable to come up to where the desk is...don’t I?
Yup! Which means we need to decide on the desk design first...
The esk design dictates where the desk legs will be, and that dictates where the conduit has to come up through the floor.
Should I use some round conduit (as would normally) which could take the same route but would have to rely on sealant?
Right. Do ALL of the above with conduit, not with cable. Conduit gives you flexibility, in that you can add new cables later, take out old ones that you no longer use, replace damaged cables, etc. You can't do that with wires embedded in concrete. And yes, the ends have to sealed very well, but in such a way that you can remove the seal if you need to add/remove/replace cables, then re-seal. I'll walk you through that when the time comes.
A word of warning: Use only GENTLE curves on your conduit! No tight corner. Only large radius bends. It's hard enough to pull cable through conduit as it is, without complicating your life around tight bends. And do also remember to put "fish tape" in each conduit
as you are installing it, so you can pull the wiring through later! Fish tape is often just bare galvanized wire these days, or fiberglass strand, or whatever. Anything strong and flexible that you can attach a cable to at one end and use to pull it through the conduit. IT has to be STRONG: you might need to pull hard.... very hard....
Also, Stuart, could you give me a drawing of the best likely area that the listening position might be? I’m happy to do two sets of flat conduit one to each soffit side or just ome in the middle.
With a typical desk, you'll bring the cables in under the legs, not under the middle of the desk. Your own legs and feet go under the middle!
So ideally you'd have two runs of conduit going to the desk: one to each desk leg location. Each of those then splits out with conduit to each of the locations mentioned above (electrical panel, soffits, room rear, etc.). If your desk is well designed and has a large built-in cable tray for running plenty of cables side-to-side, then you can probably get away with doing just one leg of the desk, and crossing over from there within the desk.
I am thinking of 225x25 trunking. Don’t think any of the cables have connector diameter bigger than 23mm or so...
If you plan on running cables that are 23mm in diameter, then you need
at least 32mm conduit, and probably 50mm! The conduit and cable have to bend around the curves: it's not just a straight run. You'd never be able to get 23mm diameter cable into a 25mm diameter duct. Oversize everything, and run extra conduit, even if you are certain that you won't need it. If you don't use it now, you will later...
At some point in the future, you'll buy a new-fangled "super hyper thing box" that does magic tricks, and needs wiring in.... Also, if you plan to pull an analog audio snake through conduit, it needs to be very large as you have to get all the XLR connectors through too... or cut them off, then re-solder them on after you pull the cable through.
Pulling cables through conduit is not fun. Frustratingly, maddeningly, head-bangingly, "not fun"!
Another alternative, which doesn't look very neat at all, is to build cable "tunnels" on top of the floor, after you finish the room, like this:
It is also possible to cut a "trough" or "chase" in the floor concrete after it has cured, as long as it is thick enough to do that, then cover it with a metal panel before putting in your final flooring. Like this:
The wooden box in the second-last image is the desk leg, where the cables go up.
But the neatest way is to embed plenty of conduit in the floor slab itself.
Getting back to this: "Also, Stuart, could you give me a drawing of the best likely area that the listening position might be?" Sure! It will take a few hours to do that, but I'll need a bit of input from you on some things, so I'll e-mail you on that.
One other point about embedding conduit in concrete: it wants to float! Conduit is just an air-filled plastic bubble, so it does not want to stay in the wet concrete: it wants to rise to the surface. You MUST tie it down to whatever is under the concrete, to prevent it from rising and floating, or even just moving. Anchor it down firmly.
- Stuart -