Wall cavity capacity

17 years ago

I bought an expanded ranch home that had some work done on the second floor. I noticed the electrican (or someone else) installed a bunch of romex wires in one wall stud cavity from the basement to the attic. They used the wall space near the electrical panel. There must be 4 # 12 wires, 3 3-wire #14's, and several #14's. Is this OK? How many wires can one install inside a standard 16" wall stud opening. Only several of the wires are connected, the rest are coiled up for future use. Is this OK? In addition, there is 3 inch hole in the top plate in this same cavity with tons of telephone and Coax cables (again, coiled up in the attic which was being redone. It is obvious he ran a bunch of stuff, none of it is stapled to the studs because it moves up and down, so I am suspecting all this was snaked so I can only imagine the insulation must be shot and torn to threads. And there are also several of those 3/4" blue corrugated pipes you see at home depot in this same cavity. Is this all OK?

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Comments (2)

brickeyee
17 years ago
Sounds fine.
DavidR
17 years ago
I've had old houses over the years, I can't think of a one in which it wasn't a royal pain to fish from cellar to 2nd and 3rd stories. So, I've done exactly what you describe. As long as you provide firestopping, it's not hazardous. The only thing is that if you run computer network cable (and possibly phone cable) through your chase, you probably want to keep it to one side while keeping the electrical cables to the other.

It may take more copper going round Robin Hood's barn to get to and from your wire chase at each storey, but it's usually cheaper unless you value your time at about a quarter an hour.

I'd prefer to use an inside wall for this, but if you have to use an outside wall, I don't think that trashing one studbay's worth of insulation really means that much heat loss.