Home electrical wiring for beginners
April 11, 2009 by Larry Angell
Filed under Bathroom
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 safety. If any electrical work is done, you need to make sure that youre not working on energized circuits. The next point is that all home wiring jobs need to be inspected whether its done by you or a professional. This helps assuage 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 a drawing, photo, or other illustration, you can get a good understanding how the cable is run. There are a few types of cable that are used in home construction. Non-metallic sheathed cable or more commonly called, Romex cable is often used for home electrical wiring.
Romex has different types, sizes and quantity of wires per cable according to the needs of the wiring circuit. Its standard to use 12-2 and 12-3 cable for light switches and outlets. This means that the cable size is a 12-gauge thickness with either 2 or 3 wires in each cable. These types of indoor cables are used on 120-volt circuits which means only one of the wires is 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 big, high-wattage, circuits that use a special cable are ovens and ranges or most common, the oven/range together. These appliances require a lot of electricity and they use a heavy cable called, range cable which is usually two 6-gauge cables as hot wires and one 8-gauge cable as a neutral wire.
The low-voltage systems in home wiring include phone wiring, computer network wiring, and home security systems. These are usually wired with Cat5 cable which is an 8-wire cable designed for communications systems.
Its wise to plan out circuit runs in your home using graph paper or grid paper so you can keep everything to scale. Youll need a good floor plan of your house for drawing each electrical circuit. Youll probably want to make several copies of these plans because youll have many different circuits in your home.
When you have an idea of where to put the electrical circuits, you can plan out the breaker panel box needs. A standard size of breaker panel is a 200-amp panel with a minimum of 40 breaker slots. All the circuits will start at the breaker box with a breaker or fuse.
There will be some dedicated circuits which means only one fixture or appliance can be wired on the circuit. This is always according to the local electrical codes and regulations.
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.
Comments