I often get visitors at my site asking about electrical home wiring and different wiring methods and projects. Their main concern is to attempt to do the electrical project or hire it out to professionals.
Because of the housing crash and financial market meltdown, Im observing that many people cant get construction loans to hire contractors to do the home construction for them. I see many people doing the work for themselves out of necessity and not only to save money.
Most homeowners dont have a problem with things like outdoor siding and putting in doors and windows, but they are often doubtful about electrical home wiring.
First of all, the most important thing is being safe. If any home electrical work is done, make sure that youre not working on energized circuits. The next thing to understand is that all home wiring jobs need to be inspected whether its done by you or professionals. This helps to calm the fears that homeowners have wondering if their home wiring projects are going to be a fire hazard to them.
Theres no need to have a complete knowledge of electrical theory to do your own wiring. The most important thing is to know the electrical codes in your neighborhood because they will be the mandatory regulations the electrical inspectors will follow. Looking at electrical diagrams and formulas really helps to understand how to run the electrical circuits.
If you can look at an illustration or a photo, you can get a good understanding how the cable is wired and connected. There are several types of electrical cables that are used in home construction. Non-metallic sheathed cable or Romex cable is often used for most home electrical wiring systems.
Romex cable comes in different types, sizes and quantity of wires per cable according to the needs of the electrical circuit. Its common to use 12-2 and 12-3 cable for light switches and regular outlets. This simply states that the cable size is a 12-gauge thickness with either 2 or 3 wires in each sheathed cable. These types of Romex cables are used on 120-volt circuit runs which use only one of the wires as a hot conductor.
Certain appliances in the home need extra voltage and so these will have thicker wire and usually two hot conductors. These are 240-volt circuits. Water heaters, clothes dryers, air-conditioners and heating systems will typically use 10-2 or 10-3 cable. This always depends on local electrical codes though.
The heavy electrical usage circuits that use a special cable are ovens and ranges. These appliances require a lot of electricity and they use special range cable which is usually two 6-gauge cables as hot wires and one 8-gauge cable as a neutral wire.
Many of the low-voltage home wiring systems includes phone wiring, security systems, and computer networking systems. These are usually wired with Category 5 cable or more commonly called Cat5 cable which is an 8-wire cable made for communication and data systems.
Its easiest to map out circuit runs in your home using graph paper so you can keep everything to scale. Youll need a floor plan of your home for drawing each electrical circuit on. Youll want to make several copies of these floor plans because youll have many circuits.
When you have a good idea of where to install the electrical circuits, you can plan out the breaker box requirements. A minimum standard size of breaker panel is a 200-amp panel with at least 40 breaker slots. All the circuits will begin at the breaker box with a fuse or breaker.
There are several dedicated circuits in home wiring. This means that only one fixture or appliance can be wired on the circuit. This standard is always according to the local electrical regulations and codes.
All home wiring electrical circuits will be have to be inspected at different intervals during the home construction process. The electrical inspector has to make sure all codes have been followed. This is a good thing because it helps us feel safe knowing we did the wiring correctly and were not going to catch fire in our sleep at night.
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