In response to an e-mail (hello Linda) that asked for some more detail for our utilities, we're going to look at our electrical layout this week. With the roof nearing completion and work continuing on door and window headers, we need to start thinking about finishing up our utilities anyway. Here is our circuit breaker box mounted in the tool room. The wire at the top will eventually be bundled together and concealed by the wooden conduit at left.
From the circuit breaker box we have drilled a series of holes in the rafters and skinned most of our inventory of body parts pulling wire through. It's important to not overload your circuits (for those of you doing this without benefit of licensed electrician - *do your homework* before testing your luck) by having too many outlets drawing power. It's easier to pull a few extra wires now than to have to do them later, so leave yourself some room to expand.
We're also running baseboards with outlets set in and wired in series throughout the house. Our local electrical code calls for an outlet for every 10 feet of wall space and the baseboard approach was easier than running that much wire through the blocks. The baseboards will be covered with stucco when we do the inside walls.
Another approach is to run wiring down the wall inside conduit. Here, we've run the 220 volt line for the clothes dryer and a 110 line for the washing machine. The exposed metal conduit fits in with the rough-hewn, Spanish mission look of the house although it could also be hidden behind stucco if necessary. Other spots where we are using conduit, it will be hidden by cabinetry.
Here is an example of a spot where we elected to run wiring down the inside of the blocks where the cores line up to an exterior fixture. A concrete bit, a hand drill and two masonry screws are all that's required to mount this light switch on the stove closet, which will control the range hood light/fan (seen here with a test bulb hooked up). At this point, we've got about 75% of the house wiring done.
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