How to run fiber and speaker wire in a 2 story house

Question

I'm about to move into a new construction house and i need to get a fiber cable run from my pantry/mud room area to my living room. Server rack will be in the pantry and control box will be in living room (using a Icron Raven 3124 to connect them) I already have the dock and have been using it very successfully and want to keep using it to keep sound and heat out of the living room. Also i will be installing 7.2 surround sound and will need to get wires from the receiver out to the ceiling mount front and rear surround units.

I've done this exact work before but it has always been in a single story house so i can easily go in the attic string it across and poke a couple small holes and the speaker is right there in the corner covering the tiny hole, or run it down inside the wall and put a brushed wall plate and run everything through it.

Problem is i now have a 2 story house for the first time and there are bedrooms above my living room so i cant just go in the attic to do things like before. I have a crawlspace so i was thinking i could run the fiber cable down through that. Like punch a hole in the wall and put a wall plate and then drill a hole in the wood from the bottom and fish the wire through and do the same in the living room wall but the living room wall in question is an outside facing wall so it will have insulation which I've conveniently never had to deal with when running wires in the past.. But i dono how to smoothly get the speaker wires out and about or if there is a better way to do the fiber cable either. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Generally, for either power or low-voltage wiring, the easiest way to reach the second floor is to go up to the attic and come down into individual rooms from there.

You may be able to run low-voltage wires up alongside plumbing.

For the ground floor, yes, if you aren't on a slab going under is easier.

If necessary, drill bits on long flex shafts exist, and are now available at some home centers; those can be used to create a vertical path through walls from basement to attic, and then act as a snake to pull the wire through that path. Haven't used them but they look like a good alternative to the traditional approach of opening the plaster while you're running the wire and patching/painting it later.

I should say, however, that for speaker wire and fiber optics you can do some ... creative things. I have my living room set up for surround sound, using a very flat display screen whose power and interfaces live in a separate box connected by a combined optical (signal) and copper (power) cable. The traditional solution would have been to have cables go into the walls and be routed underneath, coming back up to the equipment shelves. But that TV cable isn't rated for in-wall use. So I chose to run surface-mounted cable guides just below the ceiling and down into the corners of the room (to clear doors and windows), with the cables for display and center speaker running down the corner, along the baseboard, and back up. The results are surprisingly good; I don't notice the guided cables unless I'm looking for them. I could do a bit of painting and trim to hide them further -- I have dreams about a mock coffered ceiling in that room which would provide hidden spaces to run cable through -- but I'm content to leave it as it is for now.