New Construction Wiring Question

dcapone

Hi,

All of the work that I do is all low voltage and this question is more out of curiosity, so forgive my ignorance.

In the low voltage world, almost all new construction that is done is done with some type of structured wiring (in the sense of most/all cable runs being homeruns to each outlet) to allow future changes to be made relatively easy. In the older homes that I have done work in, it is readily obvious that the electrical runs from plug to plug are run in the wall of the room and only go up (from the basement) or down (from the attic) in one spot in the room. Is this how new construction electrical wiring is still done, or has it evolved in some manner to go up and down to each outlet/switch to make moving an outlet/switch in the future easier? It would seem that the cost of doing so would be significantly more in cable costs than would be cost of low voltage wire (Cat 5, RG6 etc), and I would think the need to move power and switches happens much less frequently than the need to change phone providers/cable tv/sat/etc, therefore making the cost increase not worth it. Nonetheless, curiousity has "forced" me to ask the question.

GregS

New construction I work in, electrical is drilled stud to stud, or up into boxing that would be handling plumbing/hvac runs.

Here with new construction speed is key. The average electrician I see pull 1 house in a day an a half. Cookie cutter houses.. so same thing over and over. They know what to expect and where the boxing is going to be.

JohnJ0906

I generally do not wire most things in a house with an allowance to move it.

There are certain spacing requirements for receptacles.

And by the time I come into a house, the plans and kitchen layout should be finalized.

I think phones, TV and internet ARE different in this regard, in that people do change furniture layouts, which would affect where the TV and phone would go, and computers move as well.

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John from Baltimore
"One Day at a Time"
All replies based on the 2008 NEC

CNC

I have always thought of why we wire low voltage stuff in home runs, was because of what it does. Its easy to change things around in the low voltage panels to different phone numbers, different service, without effecting any other jack. I never have thought it was for the convienence of actually moving the jack to another location. Maybe its just the way i have always looked at it.

And in residential wiring, if we were to home run every plug we would either have a huge junction at some point, or a panel full of breakers for single plugs that do nothing most of the time. So to answer your question, no, any new home I wire, is in the "daisy chain" fashion, plug to plug, light to light. With of course properly fallowing all required codes, and properly loading circuits.

M_Ant29

"Building Homes", when you say one electrician pulls one house in a day & a half do you mean prewire the home with structured wiring (Data/voice/video)? Forgive my ignorance, I am just curious. And you may or may not know, but generally how do these electricians get the contracts for these jobs? Marketing wise.

CNC

i think he meant track homes. Its not uncommon to be able to do that in a smaller track home, when its just the basics (electrical i assume, he said electrician)
To get track home projects you bid on them, not sure there is much marketing involved with being the low bidder on a track home project.

GregS

Unless there's centralized lighting control.. All lighting loads are run to a panel full of controlable dimmers.

GregS

You got it. Usually a team of two or three knock them out pretty quick.

dcapone

CNC,

You are correct in that homeruns allow everything to be reconfigured at the termination point much more easily. I guess this silly thought mostly popped into my head because i am doing some remodeling at my own place where i am knocking down a wall or 2 and moving the video/data/phone jacks which i had wired in were a piece of cake. At the same time adding an electrical outlet wasn't as easy as there wasn't a nearby junction box and I wasn't about to rip off another wall just to re-run a piece of wire to daisy chain to a previous outlet.

neolitic

You probably noticed that the
drywall didn't come with zippers
either.

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tool junkie

To do home runs to every outlet you would have a mess of cable to run through the studs and top plates. And so many breakers. It would be more apropriate to run a circuit per room for recepticles and a circuit per room for switches. That would make future work easier. Generally we put a circuit per zone and then individual circuits to special purpose outlets such as laundry, AC/furnace, computer servers, subfloor heating, etc.

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