March 21, 2006
Basement: The Rough-in
It's called rough-in... as opposed to finishing.
And before our first inspection we've got to finish:
Framing.
And roughing in. Roughing in the HVAC ducts, the electrical, and the plumbing to be exact.
Should be done Thursday, in time for a Friday inspection.
The plumber is almost finished and just needs to connect to the hot and cold water pipes. I marked where he should attach to the cold water by conveniently slamming a nail through the pipe for him. Very difficult to miss that.
Hurts my brain just looking at it. This shows a smidgeon of the complexity of the wiring... and why I'm not doing it myself. Electrical fires are baaad.
Hanging out with the electrician tells me that there are a LOT of picky little codes and some really important things that aren't code but should be. Very interesting lessons, but mostly I learned it's amazingly complicated to figure out.
Tony (my electrician) told me that he will have run about 1450 feet of 14- and 12-gauge wiring in the basement, and will have put in, if I remember correctly, 58 openings (switches, lights, outlets).
Two rooms are run in a 3-wire configuration so they have a switch managing the same lights on both sides of a room, which allows us to convert the utility room to a bedroom if we want later on with relative ease.
Rules cover: how far away outlets must be from doorways, types of wire, how many wires can be stapled together, how far staples must be, the type of crimping tool that must be used, wire gauge for bathrooms, number of outlets on a circuit, etc, etc. etc!!!!
All in all, now that I see all the electrical run, I'm *realllly* glad I didn't do it!
Posted by BilFish at March 21, 2006 08:48 AM