by Larry Angell

I get several visitors at my web site asking questions about electrical home wiring and different home wiring methods and projects. Their greatest concern is if they should attempt the electrical project or hire it out to professionals.

Because of the housing and financial crisis, Im observing that many people cant get home loans to hire contractors to do the construction for them. Im seeing many people doing the work for themselves out of necessity and not simply to save money.

Most homeowners dont have a problem with things like building walls and putting in floors, but they are often doubtful about 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.

You dont need to have a complete knowledge of electricity to do your own wiring. The most important thing is to know the local residential electrical codes because they will be the mandatory requirements the electrical inspectors will follow. Being able to look at electrical diagrams and formulas really help in understanding how to run the 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 sizes and quantity of wires per cable according to the needs of the wiring circuit. It is pretty much standard to use 12-2 and 12-3 cable for lights and outlets. This just means that the cable size is a 12-gauge thickness with either 2 or 3 wires in each cable. These 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 gnarly circuits that use a special cable are ranges and ovens. These take a lot of electricity and they need special range cable which is usually two 6-gauge cables as hot conductors and one 8-gauge cable as a neutral conductor.

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 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 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.

About the Author:
Please feel free to cruise my web site for free information on making your own house,including electrical diagrams, electrical formulas, and codes at house electrical

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Filed under: Home & Family

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!