Wiring in a private house: planning and installation

Ener­gy sup­ply is one of the most impor­tant issues that a devel­op­er has to solve. The safe­ty and com­fort of all res­i­dents depend on its design and sub­se­quent arrange­ment. Not every­one can cor­rect­ly select the ele­ments and com­bine them into a com­mon sys­tem. The eas­i­est way is to entrust this to pro­fes­sion­als, but you can do it your­self. We will ana­lyze the main points of design­ing and installing the wiring dia­gram in a pri­vate house.

All about the design and installation of electrical wiring

How to design an elec­tri­cal net­work
Design High­lights
— Way of lay­ing the elec­tri­cal cable
— Input volt­age type
– Pow­er cal­cu­la­tion
— Selec­tion of elec­tri­cal wires
— Divi­sion into groups
— Choice of input method
— Lay­ing trails
Mount­ing Fea­tures
— markup
— Shtrob­le­nie
— Mount­ing
— Fin­ish­ing work

How to design a home electrical network

Com­plete the ener­gy sup­ply project for the house includes sev­er­al points. Let’s list them all.

• Cal­cu­la­tion of pow­er con­sump­tion.
• Cal­cu­la­tion of the cross sec­tion of elec­tri­cal wires.
• Cal­cu­la­tion of light­ning pro­tec­tion and ground­ing sys­tem.
• Scheme-draw­ing of elec­tri­cal wiring.
• Lay­out plan for pow­er equip­ment and elec­tri­cal cables.
• Esti­mate for the pur­chase of nec­es­sary mate­ri­als.

Only spe­cial­ists from a com­pa­ny licensed to car­ry out project activ­i­ties can cor­rect­ly pre­pare doc­u­men­ta­tion. On your own, you can only pre­pare a pow­er sup­ply scheme. That is, a draw­ing that shows all the ele­ments of the pow­er grid, cabling and elec­tri­cal wires, pro­tec­tion devices, junc­tion box­es, switch­es, sock­ets. This is quite enough, giv­en that a pri­vate per­son has the right to a sim­pli­fied pro­ce­dure for con­nect­ing to the pow­er grid. But at the same time the con­di­tion must be met that the pow­er con­sump­tion will not exceed 15 kW.

The main points of drawing up a diagram

Let’s ana­lyze the main points of design.

Cable laying method

There may be two options. Closed way devices involves lay­ing wires in strobes. These are small cav­i­ties that gouge into the walls. After instal­la­tion they close up. It turns out that the cables are inside the wall, they are reli­ably pro­tect­ed from dam­age.

If it is impos­si­ble to use the closed method, apply open. In this case, the wiring is laid on the wall sur­face in spe­cial cable chan­nels. The closed method is used in build­ings made of gas blocks, bricks, con­crete, etc. Elec­tri­cal wiring in a wood­en house is laid in an open way.

Determining the type of input voltage

A sin­gle or three-phase line for 220 or 380 V can be brought into the house. The choice is made based on their needs and on what the pow­er engi­neers can sup­ply. So, for a small build­ing with­out a pow­er­ful elec­tric boil­er, one phase of 220 V is enough. If you plan to install pow­er­ful three-phase equip­ment or sin­gle-phase con­sumers, but their total pow­er is high, choose three phas­es of 380 V. The sec­ond solu­tion is more expen­sive, the require­ments for such a line above. How­ev­er, it pro­vides great oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Power calculation

To prop­er­ly design elec­tri­cal wiring, it is nec­es­sary to deter­mine the total pow­er con­sump­tion. This is done by adding the pow­er of all elec­tri­cal equip­ment. You can take data from the tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion of devices or cal­cu­late approx­i­mate­ly. On aver­age, a TV con­sumes 200 W, a wash­ing machine — 700 W, a refrig­er­a­tor — 400 W, a vac­u­um clean­er — 1,000 W, an elec­tric heater — 1,400 W, an oven — 1,200 W, etc. These fig­ures are summed up. Start­ing loads and a min­i­mum of 20% pow­er reserve are added to them. The stock may be larg­er, this will make it pos­si­ble in the future to con­nect addi­tion­al elec­tri­cal appli­ances with­out fear.

Wire selection

Based on the cal­cu­lat­ed pow­er, the cross sec­tion of the elec­tri­cal wiring is select­ed. It is best to do this on the basis of spe­cial tables. How­ev­er, there is anoth­er solu­tion. Expe­ri­enced elec­tri­cians con­sid­er three-core cop­per elec­tri­cal wires ShVVP­ng and VVGng to be the best option.the sec­tion is select­ed based on the type of con­sumer.

• Sock­et groups — 3 * 2.5 mm².
• Light­ing con­tours — 3 * 2 mm² or 3 * 1.5 mm².
• Air con­di­tion­er 5 kW and below — 3 * 2.5 mm².
• Air con­di­tion­ing above 5 kW — 3 * 4 mm².
• Elec­tric oven or stove — 3 * 4 mm².
• Elec­tric boil­er — 3 * 4 mm² or more (guid­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er’s rec­om­men­da­tions).

Division into lines-consumption groups

The load with­in the com­mon house net­work should be dis­trib­uted even­ly. There­fore, it is divid­ed into sev­er­al parts or groups.. Usu­al­ly, light­ing of out­build­ings, street lamps, indoor light­ing fix­tures, sock­ets, etc. are dis­tin­guished as a sep­a­rate group. If the build­ing is large, it may be divid­ed by floors or even by rooms. To ensure max­i­mum safe­ty, cir­cuit break­ers and RCDs are installed on each ded­i­cat­ed line. This makes it eas­i­er to trou­bleshoot if the pro­tec­tion trips. Group RCDs are select­ed accord­ing to the max­i­mum con­sump­tion of the select­ed group. To con­nect pow­er­ful elec­tri­cal equip­ment, it is rec­om­mend­ed to equip sep­a­rate lines.

How to get electricity into a building

At the site of the input of elec­tric­i­ty into the build­ing, an input dis­tri­b­u­tion pan­el is equipped. It is placed inside a heat­ed room. On the one hand, a street input cable is con­nect­ed to the shield, on the oth­er hand, wiring from all groups of inter­nal con­sumers. You can equip two elec­tri­cal pan­els. A com­mon RCD, a counter and a knife switch are built into the first. All of them must have an increased degree of mois­ture pro­tec­tion, since the equip­ment is installed out­side. The sec­ond elec­tri­cal pan­el is mount­ed indoors, it is “respon­si­ble” for the inter­nal wiring.

In any case, the con­nec­tion of the input cable is car­ried out by the net­work com­pa­ny. You can bring the line over the air or under­ground. The first option is the sim­plest and cheap­est: from pow­er lines they stretch an iso­lat­ed self-sup­port­ing the wire. This is not always pos­si­ble, as there are a num­ber of restric­tions. For exam­ple, if the dis­tance from the house to the sup­port is more than 20 meters, instal­la­tion is pro­hib­it­ed or anoth­er sup­port is installed. Oth­er­wise, there is a risk of break­ing the pow­er cable.

You can bring elec­tric­i­ty under­ground. For this, an elec­tric cable is laid at a depth of 80–100 cm. It is insert­ed into a steel or plas­tic pipe. This pro­tects it from dam­age. To enter the house, a hole is hol­lowed out in the wall or in the foun­da­tion. Under­ground instal­la­tion is more labo­ri­ous and expen­sive, but it reduces the risk of break­age of the input line. It will last much longer than air.

How to build electrical wiring routes

The wiring dia­gram for each house is indi­vid­ual. But there are gen­er­al prin­ci­ples for all cas­es. Let’s list them.

• The first ele­ment after the input sec­tion is a knife switch. It makes it pos­si­ble to de-ener­gize the house if nec­es­sary.
• After it, an elec­tric meter is mount­ed.
• The third set gen­er­al auto­mat­ic pro­tec­tion.
• After it, branch­es are arranged for all con­sumer groups. Be sure to install a cir­cuit break­er or RCD on each of them.

In addi­tion, accord­ing to the instruc­tions, two sep­a­rate tires must be present in the shield: N (or “zero”) and PE (or “ground”). The elec­tri­cal wires extend­ing from them form two sep­a­rate cir­cuits that nev­er con­nect or inter­sect.

It is impor­tant to draw up a wiring dia­gram draw­ing tak­ing into account the basic rules that you need exe­cute. Let’s list them all.

• The net­work is divid­ed into sev­er­al groups that pro­tect cir­cuit break­ers or RCDs. A sin­gle cir­cuit is pos­si­ble if only a few switch­es or sock­ets are includ­ed in it.
• For ener­gy-inten­sive pow­er­ful devices, ded­i­cat­ed lines with pro­tec­tive automa­tion are equipped.
• Elec­tric wires are laid only ver­ti­cal­ly and hor­i­zon­tal­ly: per­pen­dic­u­lar or par­al­lel to the ceil­ing and floor.
• The angle of rota­tion of the wire is made only straight. Diag­o­nal place­ment is pro­hib­it­ed.
• Pow­er lines are laid at a dis­tance of at least 150–200 mm from door and win­dow open­ings.
• The dis­tance from gas com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the pow­er grid can­not be less than 200 mm.
• The min­i­mum dis­tance from the sock­et block to the lev­el of the fin­ished floor is 35–40 cm.
• Switch­boards are installed at a height of 150–170 cm. This is con­ve­nient for main­te­nance, and is also child­proof.
• The use of ground­ing is manda­to­ry.

It is impor­tant to build a plan so that the laid cable routes do not inter­fere with oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions and do not inter­sect with them.

Do-it-yourself wiring installation features in a private house

After the plan-scheme is drawn up, pro­ceed to the instal­la­tion. You can do every­thing with your own hands. An impor­tant point. All work is car­ried out only when the elec­tric­i­ty is turned off, and it is nec­es­sary to exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its acci­den­tal sup­ply.. The work­ing tool is used only with insu­lat­ed han­dles. We offer step-by-step instruc­tions on how to con­duct elec­tri­cal wiring in a pri­vate house.

1. Markup

Beat off the lev­els of the fin­ish­ing ceil­ing and floor with a paint cord, if the mark­ing is car­ried out before the start of fin­ish­ing work. Beat off the lev­els of place­ment of switch­es and sock­ets, the main line of the sock­et cir­cuit and the light­ing cir­cuit. Out­line the posi­tion of the elec­tri­cal pan­el and the paths for the pas­sage of high­ways from it to con­sumers. Mark all routes with the width and depth of future strobes. Mark the posi­tion of all elec­tri­cal appli­ances. Check the markup with the plan.

2. Preparing the strobe

Cut out a niche for the elec­tri­cal pan­el. With a crown of the required diam­e­ter, drill holes for mount­ing box­es for switch­es and sock­ets, for junc­tion box­es. Punch chan­nels for elec­tri­cal cables. If nec­es­sary, punch holes into oth­er rooms for wiring to pass through. Clean dust from strobes, nich­es and holes. Prime them with a deep pen­e­tra­tion primer.

3. System installation

Install the elec­tri­cal pan­el in the pre­pared niche. Lay the cable in the grooves. If the project requires, first place it in the cor­ru­gat­ed pipe. Lay the elec­tri­cal cable in the direc­tion from the junc­tion box to the shield. Be sure to secure the wiring inside the strobe with spe­cial clamps or clips. At the end of the lay­ing, check the plan and pho­to­graph the posi­tion of the strobe. Install mount­ing and junc­tion box­es. Con­nect the wiring sec­tions, con­nect con­sumer groups to the elec­tri­cal pan­el. Check the cor­rect oper­a­tion of the sys­tem.

4. Finishing work

Seal the strobes with a plas­ter mix­ture. Let it dry and sand it down. Insu­late bare wiring in junc­tion box­es, lay inside the cav­i­ty. In this form, they should be until the end of the fin­ish­ing work. Cov­er the junc­tion box­es with lids, if there are none, seal them with mask­ing tape. After the fin­ish is com­plet­ed, install the mech­a­nisms of switch­es and sock­ets, install dim­mers, hang lamps.