How To Wire A Kitchen - Rough In Electrical Circuit Wiring Guide

in this video i'm going to show you how to rough wire a kitchen so we're going to be going over receptacle height the correct distance per coat away from the kitchen sink etc and if you're new to this channel my name is josh's channel it's all about building your own house saving ton of money be sure to subscribe ring that bell so you get a notification every time i release a new video and hammer that like button for me that's all i ask in turn for making this video we got a lot to go over today so let's get started i'm going to show you the correct height in which to place this outlet and the reasoning why you do so so let's pull the camera up closer so you can see what i'm talking about this is an 18 cubic inch outlet box and this is a single gang because we're just doing one outlet and this measurement right here is going to be the top of the countertop which ends up being 37 inches off the rough floor to right at that mark so as you can see there's the outlet and this mark is going to be the bottom of the upper cabinets and this measurement between this mark and this mark is typically 18 inches so if you go ahead and place your outlet box at 48 inches to the top of the outlet that's the correct height off a rough floor now if the floor was finished you'd want to go ahead and move this measurement down to 47 inches since you already have a finished floor but if you're going to be roughing in electrical i assume you have a rough floor this kitchen i'm building is an l shaped and as you can see i got outlets placed every so often across the kitchen and this is one side of the kitchen then this is the other run on the other side of the kitchen and i'm going to go over to the whiteboard and explain to you how i got these distances and why their place where they're placed before we begin kitchen outlets 101 i just wanted to disclose that i am not a licensed electrician i am somebody who's built my own houses i have built four of them on my own and have wired all of them they have all passed inspection and these notes i'm about to give you are what i have done and have learned trial and error you know a couple inspections i had to have tweaks so i wrote down the reason why i had to add an outlet or take one and move it so this is what i came up with and again check with your local building codes before you do any project and get the proper permits and talk to inspectors or anybody in the trades that you need to to find out details in your area but here are my notes from my area so let's go over those okay so in kitchen outlets 101 the first rule is outlets can be no more than 48 inches apart so whenever you're going through spacing your outlets across your kitchen you want to make sure you have them at least 40 inch 48 inches or closer but you don't want them any farther apart than that and when you come to a corner in a kitchen if you have an l shaped i like to go only about two foot from those corners if that just because i know sometimes you'll have appliances or something you need to plug in that's in the corner of the kitchen and there's gonna be an outlet there for you if you do so so i don't think there's a coat for having two foot away from the corner but i usually do that all right and the next rule that i play by is you must have an outlet 24 inches from a sink on each side so there was a house i built last year i had it at a outlet beside the kitchen sink after i built it it was like 28 inches from the edge of the sink so i had to go through and move wires and then put an outlet and then redo drywall it was a pain in the butt so so i will always remember to put an outlet 24 inches from each side of the sink so if you're standing in the middle of the sink go to the edge and this comes from the cutout by the way not the sink base the sink based cabinet so go has to be within that 24 inches from each side of it and next rule we have if it's a 12 inch countertop you must have an outlet so any countertop over 12 inches wide which i never ran into this but i've always known this to be a rule it has to have an outlet at least that's what it is in my area so if you have a 13 inch countertop for whatever weird reason um you need to have an outlet up above that countertop okay so the next thing is you uh must have two 20 amp circuits a left and a right when you wire your kitchen so i'm going to show you in my kitchen here in just a minute but and whenever you have a l-shaped or a run of outlets let's say it's on a straight wall and there's no corner you just got to find a way to break up the kitchen a left and right so again the l shape's perfect because it's typically right in the middle and that's just the easiest way to do it and just so you know if you break well when you break it up to left and right because it's code right now you can go off one side and add your island outlets to one of those sides one or the other you don't have to run another circuit just to power your outlets so that's one thing that's nice about that and let's go to the next thing and so yeah so when you run a for 20 amp circuit be sure to use 12 wire and don't use any smaller gauge when you do a 20 amp circuit all right so outlets have to be at least 20 inches above the countertop they can't be more than that so you got to have them below that which is fine because typical height of upper cabinets which i said earlier is 18 inches so you shouldn't be setting your upper cabinets any higher than that anyways all right and then the next thing you need to know is you must protect that circuit with arc fault and gfi so the best thing to do here is just get a combination breaker and what a common combination breaker is it includes your arc fault and gfi and one breaker so you don't have to put a gfi outlet and then arc fault breaker it's just all in one which that's the way to go which nowadays i had an inspector tell me the other day he actually recommends just buying arc fault gfi breakers and doing the whole house that way because it's just way easier and less complicated but i still break it down because it saves a little bit of money but just fyi so make sure you get a combination breaker to protect the left and right side of your kitchen and over here as far as the island goes you want to make sure you have an outlet 12 inches from the bot from the top of the countertop so if you are sitting on top the countertop or looking down at it if you measure down from the top of it it has to be in that 12 inch range that way if you're sitting at the island i guess it's just easier to reach over and plug ins what i'm assuming so that's just something to keep in mind so this is uh the rules i live by when i'm doing my kitchen outlets so now let's go over and keep running some wires [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so this outlet here this is going to be for your refrigerator and this refrigerator is going to be gfi protected because we got a water source that's close to it if your refrigerator does not have a water source for an ice maker or a water dispenser check with your local building codes you may not need to have a gfi protected because of that but this outlet needs to be also a home run right to your panel box what i mean by home run is you're going to wire it and then you're going to go ahead and run it straight to your panel box you're not going to put more than just this outlet on that circuit now i want to show you some things about the microwave if you look here on the wall behind me this says range that's just your cooktop or your oven and i'm sure everybody's familiar with that so everybody knows for the most part that you have a microwave setting above your range that's the most common design in america so with that being said when you go to rough in your kitchen you want to make a home run coming from the wall where your microwave is going to be straight to your panel box and you don't put it in an outlet box yet because it's going to be placing an outlet box inside the kitchen cabinet where the microwave is going to be secured to so what you want to do is just go ahead and staple this to a stud that's in the vicinity and then run it straight to your panel box and then you're going to place it inside the cabinet when you're when you go to install it and that does not have to be gfi protected unless it's six feet away from your kitchen sink or any water source all right this is where my kitchen sink is going to be and you guys might recognize this from my previous videos on how to pressure test plumbing if you haven't seen that video be sure to check it out up above it's a good video all right so we all know that a dishwasher needs to be to the left or the right of your kitchen sink so with that being said in order to wire that we're going to do a direct hard wire to the appliance in my area that's okay to do as long as the circuits gfi protected via gfi breaker and all you got to do to do that is let's say this is the edge of the kitchen cabinet here for your sink we just need to come over a few inches drill right through the floor next to the wall and run it straight to the panel box and it's going to be on its own dedicated circuit which means its own breaker and again make sure it's a gfi breaker and you need to put a lockout on that breaker so an electrician can lock out that breaker so no one can kick it on since it's hardwired right to the appliance and again make sure you use 12 2 wire for your 20 amp circuit just like the microwave just like the refrigerator and just like the whole kitchen let's move on to the range all right guys this is where the range is going to be placed and in order to wire an outlet for a range you need to put it in a double gang box or a two gang box whatever you want to call it and need to get what's called six three wire that's six gauge wire and it's going to run right to your panel box in a home run it's going to be a dedicated circuit just for that outlet and you're going to be wiring it to a 50 amp breaker so i'll show you how to do all that in another video but i just wanted to let you know how you wire for a range and i'd show you the wire if i had some on hand but i don't so that's how you wire arrange all right guys so here is the l-shaped kitchen i'm building so if we come over here this is going to be the left side so this is going to be on its own circuit so as you can see i'm going to continue this run because there's only one single wire as you can see and it's going to go down through under the floor and come up to the island so this is going to be the left side of the kitchen and then over here we have an outlet as you can see no more than four foot away this one's only 32 inches away and then we got the range right here so there's no outlets there and then this outlet and this outlet is four foot apart which is actually a little less which that's what you want for code and then right here the refrigerator starts so this outlet is going to be right on the end there and then this run over here sing song and dance the power is going to be coming in here and i just do all the home runs last so that way i can go buy exact enough wire to finish up the wiring job but that's for another video but this is going to get the home run ran right to it from the panel box and it's going to power these receptacles and then we're going to end at this switch so before i talk about switches i just wanted to show you this issue i had here so right here is the center of the sink so from here to the sink base edge with that's a sink cabinet where it's going to end it puts me right at my 20 a little less than 24 inches which is just code if that was the edge of the sink but that's the sink base and most 32 inch sinks as you can see is going to end right there which would have put me beyond the 2 foot mark so i'm going to do i'm going to get a 36 inch sink so it ends right here and that way this is going to be only 23 inches away so that meets code right there actually a little less so i'm just gonna have to get a bigger sync to meet code because if i don't i gotta mount an outlet sideways horizontally instead of vertically like typical to meet code to get it closer to the sync so i really don't like the looks of that so that code issue is going to be resolved by getting a bigger bigger sink and then as far as switches goes the run of the countertop's going to end right here then a pantry so i just put a double gang box here so one's for the island one's for the kitchen lights the re the recessed lights i'm going to show you how to install in another video it's going to go into l shape through here so that's where that's going to be and just put that somewhere comfortable for you and then over here i'm going to do a three-way switch to the island lights and there's going to be a switch right here that's going to power the island lights up above so i hope that gives you a good idea of something that you might want to do for your kitchen rough-in job [Music] [Music] so [Music] when it comes to lighting i'm going to be installing these halo recessed lights and i'm going to make a whole video on how to do that because i know it's a pretty common subject i know a lot of people are going to want to know how to do it so that's what the lighting's going to be going around the kitchen here and the island it's going to be done using one of those saddle boxes that i did in my previous video just holding a light so that's going to be over the island and those do not get placed on the receptacle runs those will be placed on another circuit you do not tie those in with your kitchen outlets just so you know and again check with your local building codes with everything i said in this video because the codes change all the time in different counties different states all require something different i just told you everything that is done in my county all right guys i hope you found a lot of value in this video if you have any questions or comments be sure to ask them in the comment section below check out my amazon store in the description below and i'll see you in the next video have a good one

Channel: The Excellent Laborer

Views: 268,467

Keywords: wiring, wire, how to, how to wire a light switch, kitchen, how to wire a kitchen, how to wire, how to wire a spur, how to wire a house, how to wire a cooker, how to connect, how to clean kitchen, how to wire oven, how to wire a gfci and receptacle, how to clean kitchen sink, how to wire fcu, how to wire an electric hob, how to wire oven and hob, how to wire an electric oven, how to wire ceiling, how to wire downlights, how to wire an electric cooker

Id: RYBIDAsqA8M

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021