RZehr wrote:If you were wiring a house to live in, what would you wire?
Any special locations you’d put lights or outlets?
If you were wanting to wire for some convenient generator backup, what essentials would you wire for generator backup?
Looking for any tips and ideas.
You can never have too many outlets, especially in a kitchen. And each plug-in of a double outlet should be on a separate circuit, again, especially in a kitchen, also in any other high usage rooms.
If you wire the 220V generator plug into the 220V side of the house panel then you can run as many 110V circuits as your generator will handle. (Or is it 230V and 115V in the States?) Use heavy duty welding cable, not an extension cord.
Excellent discussion, RZehr. I'm glad you brought this up. Most certainly I am not an electrician but the advice here is helpful for us as well as we ponder our new residence for our post-road life.
I do want an outlet at least every 8 feet, every 3 feet in the kitchen. More expensive but not by much. Extension cords are a hazard for old folks like me. I wouldn't want an outlet in the floor either. Spills happen. We'll put ground fault outlets (GFCI) in the kitchen, the bathrooms, the laundry room and basement: any place that may have flooding or wet spills.
Generators are very handy. If there's money left over we will get one to run the fridge, the HVAC and the water well pump.
silentreader wrote:You can never have too many outlets, especially in a kitchen.
I would show you a picture, if I could. In my kitchen, there are 3 outlets that you could hide with an 18" circle, plus a box that is just hidden with a cover plate. I have no clue what possessed anyone to put them so close together.
RZehr wrote:If you were wiring a house to live in, what would you wire?
Any special locations you’d put lights or outlets?
If you were wanting to wire for some convenient generator backup, what essentials would you wire for generator backup?
Looking for any tips and ideas.
You can never have too many outlets, especially in a kitchen. And each plug-in of a double outlet should be on a separate circuit, again, especially in a kitchen, also in any other high usage rooms.
If you wire the 220V generator plug into the 220V side of the house panel then you can run as many 110V circuits as your generator will handle. (Or is it 230V and 115V in the States?) Use heavy duty welding cable, not an extension cord.
Excellent discussion, RZehr. I'm glad you brought this up. Most certainly I am not an electrician but the advice here is helpful for us as well as we ponder our new residence for our post-road life.
I do want an outlet at least every 8 feet, every 3 feet in the kitchen. More expensive but not by much. Extension cords are a hazard for old folks like me. I wouldn't want an outlet in the floor either. Spills happen. We'll put ground fault outlets (GFCI) in the kitchen, the bathrooms, the laundry room and basement: any place that may have flooding or wet spills.
Generators are very handy. If there's money left over we will get one to run the fridge, the HVAC and the water well pump.
RZehr wrote:I think I saw one place had a floor outlet to plug the furniture into. Any thoughts on having an outlet in the floor? That seems sort of odd to me.
I'm gonna guess that's a no-no in most locations. A water spill could turn that into a hazard pretty quick.
Well, it wouldn't be a good idea to put a floor outlet in the shower, but in a place like a living room that is normally dry, no problem. If spills are a concern there are cover plates with gasketed flaps to reduce that risk. For furniture that's not against the wall but includes a need for power (like those electric chairs previously mentioned), a floor outlet is much safer than an extension cord across the traffic path.
In non-residential construction there are some spaces such as meeting rooms that are required by code to have floor outlets, and it's common to see them at stages, classroom labs, and a few other locations.
Shows how little I know about wiring! I think it would be a bad idea in my house. There are boys residing under my roof who turned the livingroom into a slip and slide when no one was looking. They thought it was , mom not so much.
Judas Maccabeus wrote:
Just don’t put a GFCI on your fridge
J.M.
Do you mean a person should not connect a refrigerator to a GFCI? If so, why not? (I thought they were pushing those for almost everything now.)
(If this is a joke, you'll have to help me out.... )
GFCI's have trouble with inductive loads as compared to resistive loads. - (Although they are making more new options with different ratings trying to negate this.) Inductive loads in a house will typically be found with motors. Inductive loads have an extra current draw on start up and have phase angles of voltage and amperage off with induced magnetism on a rotor, whereas resistive loads (a baseboard heater, regular lightbulb) don't have this problem. Fridges and freezers have motors. The Canadian Electrical Code makes provision for this in allowing regular receptacles for fridges and freezers - on dedicated circuits.
Hope this quick explanation didn't confuse more...
Judas Maccabeus wrote:
Just don’t put a GFCI on your fridge
J.M.
Do you mean a person should not connect a refrigerator to a GFCI? If so, why not? (I thought they were pushing those for almost everything now.)
(If this is a joke, you'll have to help me out.... )
GFCI's have trouble with inductive loads as compared to resistive loads. - (Although they are making more new options with different ratings trying to negate this.) Inductive loads in a house will typically be found with motors. Inductive loads have an extra current draw on start up and have phase angles of voltage and amperage off with induced magnetism on a rotor, whereas resistive loads (a baseboard heater, regular lightbulb) don't have this problem. Fridges and freezers have motors. The Canadian Electrical Code makes provision for this in allowing regular receptacles for fridges and freezers - on dedicated circuits.
Hope this quick explanation didn't confuse more...
Thanks. I had also done an internet search, which seemed to indicate that newer appliances could (or even should) be reliably connected through a GFCI, but I didn't understand why older ones couldn't be. (I was also confused by the reverse reference in the statement above - 'putting a GCFI on a fridge' instead of saying 'putting a fridge on a GCFI'. That's why I thought it might be some sort of joke that I wasn't getting.) Our house was built in the 70's, and while I have installed GFCIs in remodel work I have done in the two bathrooms and in the kitchen, it never occurred to me to install one in the laundry (where the freezer is) when I redid that a couple of years ago, or for the icebox when we redid the kitchen longer ago. (We live in an area with almost no regulations, so there is no problem with me doing my own electrical work, even though I have no actual training in the field.)
, mom not so much.
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