How Many Outlets On One Breaker & Room By Room Circuit Layout

hey my name is Ben thanks for stopping by today I want to talk about circuit breakers and particularly how many outlets you can have on a single circuit breaker now the question is kind of difficult to answer in the sense that there aren't specific codes on the maximum number of outlets you can have on a circuit breaker now an outlet uh is not only just a receptacle like a plug uh it also counts something like a light fixture is also called an outlet um but for the purposes of what we want to talk about today I want to talk more about the receptical side of what we are working on obviously you can have both receptacles and lights on the same circuit but pertaining to receptacles I want to show you a couple things uh that hopefully will help you figure out how to plan out your electrical circuits now a couple things to get started um the way I wired my house is I kept the lighting circuits and the receptacles separate so I've got a 14 gauge wire with 15 amp circuit breakers for all of my lighting throughout the house and the receptacles are all 12 gauge wire on 20 amp circuit breakers throughout the house it's really common sense and really Simple and Clean to keep it that way because it's easier for doing your your light fixture wiring and it gives you more flexibility for your receptacles to have 20 amp circuits so uh to start off in this room here I've got a lot of boxes as you probably already noticed uh this room actually has even more boxes than what you see right here because this is the office so the way you think about how many outlets you can have per circuit breaker uh is not so much based on how many receptacles you actually have how many boxes you actually have it has a lot more to do with your anticipated use of those receptacles and what you think is going to be uh ultimately plugged into them and how much load that's going to generate so in this case this is an office a home office and so we've got lots and lots of options for places to plug stuff in but everything that's going to be plugged in is going to be extremely low amperage and it will draw or wattage and so it's not going to draw much power at all so I've seen a general guidelines or rules of thumb for a number of outlets on a breaker and uh what I've found or what I've noticed is that they say you could take each receptacle and just say that it's 1.5 amps off of that circuit well if you do that then it's going to really limit the number of recepticles that you can put on a circuit I would have probably had to have had two 20 amp circuits in my office in order to have each receptacle have 1 and 1/2 amps of power but there's never going to be that much draw in there it's just going to be small accessories that are connected to that circuit so uh the other place that I saw just as a as general rule of thumb don't exceed 10 and I also don't think that that really makes a lot of sense the way you have to break up the number of outlets that you have on a circuit is based on just common sense for what's going to be in that room and uh how much wattage is that going to draw you can never exceed 80% of the capacity of whatever circuit breaker that you're using so you need to if you have continuous load of greater than 80% that is not what you want to plan for you want to figure out approximately how much power these your receptacles are going to be using and then base your your layout on that so now that's just some of the kind of principles behind it I'll show you the way I laid out uh the wiring in my house just for the receptacles so that you can kind of get a picture of what I did and so maybe give you some ideas so here's my panel layout and I'll just kind of go through specifically what I've done and I'll try to maybe Point some stuff out in actual rooms as we go along but initially we'll just talk through this so I've got my septic pump that's a dedicated circuit some pump that's a dedicated circuit furnace as well and then when you get to the bathrooms uh if you had uh two bathrooms in a house uh you could actually put both of those bathrooms on one circuit but it's not really recommended you really want to have one 20 amp circuit going to each bathroom so I have my upstairs bathroom and Main level bathroom each have a 20 amp circuit that's just required mostly required by code uh then they got upstairs laundry and basement laundry each laundry area has to have a dedicated circuit that can include the washing machine so the washing machine could be on that uh laundry circuit included in that uh so in uh the case in my case I'll show you here's my upstairs bathroom and it's both a bathroom and a laundry so you can see right here that's going to be the where the vanity is going to go and I've got a recepticle there and a receptacle over there and uh that is going to be for the upstairs bathroom circuit now coming over to this side of the room you can see we've got a spot there for a stackable washer and dryer so I've got a recepticle back there that's for the washing machine and then a recepticle right here and that'll be right above like a folding table there's also a receptical down there and those are also part of the laundry area circuit if that makes any sense so we got attic and kids bedroom receptacles here and as you can see where this is the kids bedroom I've got receptacle there there there and there that's just just a junction box and um those ones up there are for if you were to plug Christmas lights in in the windows you don't have to have the cord dangling down here where it's uh an easier reach of the kids so as you can see you can add more receptacles just for convenience but it doesn't really it's not really going to increase the amount of electricity being used it just gives you more options for plugging stuff in so this since it says attic and kids bedroom kids bedroom is not going to hardly draw very much electricity at all so I've combined it with the attic which is kind of just like a Family room/ Den whatever you want to call it and so up here uh is also not going to be a lot of electricity being used so as far as just for the general receptacles so those are combined on one 20 amp circuit same thing kind of applies here master bedroom and hallway master bedroom again we have General receptacles and uh that's the master bed doesn't need a 20 amp circuit all to itself so I have decided to share that with the hallway so the hallway recepticles are also included on that particular circuit now sorry about this one here this is the one spot where I had made an error after talking to the electrical inspector this is the living room and stair receptacles that's it so uh the dining room receptacles ended up not being allowed the dining room receptacles are not be not allowed to share another receptacle from uh common living other living areas so your dining room receptacle is kind of I I put it in under the category of kitchen it's right adjacent to the kitchen but basically you're going to want to have a dedicated circuit to your dining room uh but yeah so I've got my living room and stairs uh together I'll show you so there's the receptacles on the stairs those are probably going to be just to plug in night lights or something else and then this is actually my living room right now all the kitchen cabinets are in there but all the living room receptacles are also on that circuit now you already saw the office but the office receptacles are dedicated circuit I mostly just wanted to have that dedicated uh not because I need 20 amps there but because it's nice to have all that sensitive electronic equipment and stuff that'll be in the office have its own circuit and then I have uh the rest of the basement uh which will have a dedicated circuit just for the unfinished part of the basement uh and then outdoor receptacles dedicated circuit for that you're required to have a receptacle in the front of the house and one in the back I have more around the house but that is uh the main uh one that I have for that and then uh in your kitchen which we happen to be back to the kitchen again here uh you're required to have two dedicated circuits that serve the countertop so in my case I have countertop that's going to be coming along here and a little bit over here here and so I've got two separate circuits and I alternated these boxes so every other box is on every other circuit and that way if you were to uh plug in more so let's say you plugged in a griddle on this circuit and then you wanted to plug in another griddle on that circuit it's two separate circuits so you're less likely to trip a breaker so you can alternate the position of them it's takes a little more wire and a little more work but it's worth doing in my opinion and then my third uh kitchen uh circuit like I said in it includes a dining room uh this was and then it also includes the uh range hood right there as well as uh the gas range plug just a 120 volt plug for the range and also includes a couple of outlets right over here which most likely going to have a little coffee pot plugged in in that area that all is kind of flexible but that's how mine is set up dishwasher requires a dedicated circuit and uh another thing that would require dedicated circuit would be a uh garbage disposal but we're not going to have one cuz we have a septic system and garbage disposals are bad for septic systems so that would be something that could potentially be a dedicated circuit another one that could be is a microwave but I don't really love having a microwave in the kitchen so we're not doing that and um so that kind of tells you that now we're finally to the lighting circuits so uh because of the way uh I'm using all LED lights I'm not needing a a huge number of lighting circuits cuz it's all dedicated circuits and on LED you can go get a long ways with not very many amps so I've just kind of broken this up based on common sense the attic and upstairs lights are all in one circuit 115 amp circuit main level lights all in one circuit the basement lights and the outside lights and the smoke detectors are on one circuit now you always want to have your smoke detectors your wired smoke detectors on a lighting circuit so that if the breaker gets turned off inadvertently or it trips or something and let's say it was on some other obscure circuit that you don't use very often uh then you'll notice right away cuz when you go turn the basement lights on or the outside lights on you're going to know something's up and then you can restore power to your smoke detectors uh now I'll just talk through these ones too even though it's probably out of the scope of this video this is a surge breaker it's a whole house surge protector I'll put a link in the description uh to to that and then um upstairs dryer these are all uh 240 volt uh circuits uh electric dryer in the basement electric range water heater and in this case it's an air source heat pump so over overall that's the deal you want to break up your circuits based on anticipated use and just common sense based on different areas of the house and uh if you kind of apply these rules and do some research to make sure that uh based on your local codes that you are good to go U that's going to be the best way to pursue it it doesn't have to do with it being exactly 10 receptacles has to do with what's being plugged into them I hope this video helped you out a lot and if it did please rate It Up And subscribe to the channel for more helpful videos that I'll try to provide on a semi-regular basis thanks again and we'll talk to you in the next video

Channel: Benjamin Sahlstrom

Views: 1,208,486

Keywords: Outlets, Circuit Breaker, Receptacles

Id: 9WPhmfNYWvo

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2017