My home is suppose to be prewired for surround sound but I cannot locate the wires, where are they?

Question

There is only one outlet on the wall that contains coaxial cable.

Answer 1

I do home theater intallations and prewiring on new homes. I am willing to bet that the wires are buried under the drywall. You need to find out how many wires and where they are located. If the room has only one cable outlet, then face the cable output, sit in the middle of the room, then look over your left and right shoulders in the corner of the ceiling, you will have a genereal location for the rear speakers. If there is more than one cable output, then it gets tougher to guesstimate. Also, if it is wired for a subwoofer, that could be just about anywhere. But I'm sure you don't want to start invasivly ripping apart dry wall to find the wires...so. You need to find out how much wiring was done. Prewired is also kind of vague because they could have prewired just two rear speakers, or could have prewired the 2 rear, 2 fronts, center, and the subwoofer. But since people are unpredicatable, the wires could be anywhere. Pintpointing the location of the wires is extremely difficult without anything to go on. These are a few thing I would recommend before going with any invasive method.

First, I would attempt to contact the builder. Chances are its a newer house and the builder is still around. He may have actually done the installation He may have put a small depression in the drywall to demarkate the center of the wire box. If he didn'e do the installtion, maybe he will know or he can point you in the direction of the installer and you can contact them.

Next, I would contact the previous owner of the house. I'm sure that's who told you the house was prewired. Maybe he can guide you further.

The last thing I would to is try to get my hands on a thermal imaging camera. They are extremely expensive so don't go buy one. I'm also a volunteer firefighter and have access to one at my fire company. Maybe you can ask a friend in the FD or go ask if you can rent it for a few hours. With it you can surely find any boxes/wires hidden under the drywall. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I have done some hometheater installations in a home just like yours with the prewiring for surround sound. The plate you found with a Coaxil wire is used for hooking up your subwoofer. You will need to add a FType Connector then connect an FType to RCA adapter in order to interface with your subwoofer and receiver.

Unfortunately, the company that does the prewire usually does not tell you were the other wires are located. I am almost positive that the other 6 wires are in the attic (or subfloor if you have a multi story home). Sometimes they use wall plates on the ceiling to locate the wires. If they did not use plates, the way locate the wires is to crawl in the attic and find them. This will not be fun since there is probabl tons of insulation in there you will have to sift througth. If you have a subfloor it will even be harder. There is usually three wires located in front of the room where the TV will sit. They will probably be about 5 feet apart each. Then the rear wires will be about 15 feet from them towards the back of the room on the sides about 10 feet from eachother.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Too many variables but you should check with a CEDIA certified installer in your area. If you don't see any speaker wires then there probably is no surround sound prewire. Ussually "Pre-wired for surround sound" means they ran 2 speaker wires from the front of the room to the back hidden in the ceiling. Lots of installers will do a consultation for cheap or free and even if it costs it could be well worth it because most prewires are done by electricians that don't know anything about how proper speaker placement affects sound.

Answer 4

wow>
you bought a home and didn't find out all the particulars?

Answer 5

Ask the person you purchased it from