I Wired My Entire 3 Bedroom House and Failed Inspection. Here’s What I Learned

I just wired my entire three bedroom house all by myself I just got the green sticker and I wanted to walk through and share with you what I learned in this process I actually did not initially pass inspection but I had a really nice inspector that told me the few Corrections that I needed to make and he said he was just going to go down the road and then I could call him as soon as I was done with a few of the minor things that he wanted me to work on and then he would come back and approve me and that is what he did I want to talk about those few very minor things that I needed to change and also just my experience as a diy-er not necessarily a licensed electrician but I was able to wire my entire house and pass the inspection for the rough-in so this house is in Detroit Michigan it's a house that I bought from the Detroit Land Bank um in the process of wiring this I really sweated a lot of the small things just like this box here like is there too many wires coming into this box do I have them anchored correctly uh what's he gonna say about all that but he really didn't seem to pay a lot of attention to that ironically it was this the the one thing was this fire stop for wires gone from the second floor to the third floor from the basement to the first floor just uh spray foam and the holes where the wires pass through um and I asked him I said what like practically why are we doing this and he's and I guess has to do with the the draft uh in the case of a fire stopping the draft of course but I said in the case of an open stairway which is what I have what I mean what what are we talking about he just laughed he said he doesn't really know he said it doesn't make sense but it's uh it's code and he needs me to put spray foam in the holes where my wires are going uh between floors so this is where it all started for me I put my own meter socket in I did all the prep work that I needed to do for my electric company to come and make the connection uh underground here I've ran the conduit uh did everything that I needed to do prepping it ran the service cable into the basement to a 200 amp panel in the basement so actually a lot easier than you might think and very possible to do as a diy-er so this was one of the things I was sweating more than anything else is I really wasn't sure uh how many receptacles I can put on uh 15 amp circuits how many receptive circuits that I needed in my kitchen Etc um and so I'll just show you what I did here and there was one small thing that I needed to change in order to pass and that was in my kitchen I had the refrigerator on a dedicated circuit which I really thought was necessary um and then I had one 20 amp circuit for all of the countertop receptacles um and he wanted to see two circuits on the small appliances and countertop circuits uh or countertop receptacles sorry and so he basically just asked me to tie one of the countertop receptacles into the refrigerator circuit so that I had two 20 amp circuits feeding the countertop receptacles um that was easy enough to change um I you know one of the countertop receptacles ended up being really close to the refrigerator and so I just took from the refrigerator circuit right up into that and I was good to go uh but apart from that everything I did right here in the panel passed he didn't ask too many questions about anything and basically what I did upstairs I have a 15 amp circuit for every single bedroom and I knew that that was gonna I knew that the dog was gonna have any problems there um so that that takes care of four 15 amp circuits here in my box um three bedrooms and then a spare room and then I have a 15 amp circuit for the attic and the hallway uh I have two 20 amp circuits next to that uh bathroom upstairs and Powder Room and then these two down here are just uh to as a 20 amp and a 30 amp double pole for Mini Split Heating and Cooling that I'm doing um I put four uh like General lighting and receptacle 15 amp breakers for the first floor I have a smoke detector receptacle that's tied into my basement lights um because they say that you should put some lights onto that receptacle or sorry onto that circuit so that you know if there's a problem with that circuit if you just put your smoke detectors on a dedicated circuit there could be an issue there that you're never going to know about I know you're supposed to test your smoke detectors as well and that would tell you but they said it's a good idea just time into some light somewhere so I put my basement lights on to the circuit with my smoke detectors and then I have another 15 amp circuit for a circulator pump that's gone in for our hydronic floor heat and then I've got four 20 amp circuits for the kitchen uh and I already told you about the one that was an issue uh he wanted two 20 amp circuits for the countertop receptacles but basically what I what I had was a dedicated 20 amp for the refrigerator a dedicated 20 amp for the microwave and then a 20 amp was doing my dishwasher and my garbage disposal and then I had one more 20 amped on all my countertop receptacles and the only issue with any of that was that he wanted a second 20 amp circuit feeding countertop receptacles which we basically took care of by just um tying into that refrigerator um circuit so this is in the kitchen this is where my refrigerator is and then there's a countertop circuit right up here to the right and he basically just asks that I take this uh countertop receptacle I work very well because it was the second to last in line I have another one it was tied into that down here uh just on the corner of the kitchen but it's kind of the only other receptacle in the kitchen I just had put that in there with it so he basically just asked that I take this receptacle and this one countertop receptacle and tee off into the refrigerator circuit and then he was good with all of that for the rest of the kitchen um there's a number of countertop receptacles all tied into that one 20 amp circuit he was good with all that so like I said everything else with the way that I um the amount of circuits that I have and the way I I put them in he was he was good with everything else so one of the other things that came into question and he acted as if he was going to fill me on at first was this here is my dining room which I have on a 15 amp circuit and apparently now the dining room needs a 20 amp circuit and so I explained to him when he told me that that there was going to be a peninsula coming out right here this is the kitchen and dining room kind of runs together uh if you if I step back here you can see that is basically kitchen and dining room and then right out under that beam there's a peninsula coming out and I said well you know we're gonna have a peninsula with some bar stools this kind of counts as a dining area right in here I have a 20 amp circuit and uh he was like ah yeah okay okay so he he left that guy only because um I said that that was you know that should count as a dining area and I have a 20 amp circuit and so he the inspector was okay with it at that point um but for the future I would run a 20 amp in the entire dining room area Apparently that is I was just completely unaware of that but apparently that is code now and then in the living room area everything was fine it didn't seem to be any problems the only thing was this is uh going out the front door and I hadn't put an outdoor receptacle in the front it was only in the back and so yeah it is code to have one in the back and the front I'm not even sure why I hadn't put one in the front because it does make sense to actually put one out there and so he just asked that I add a receptacle in the front and I just tied right into the circuit that was running right past there with the outdoor uh lights being right here and then it was coming right down around there and I just tied right into that and just brought my wires right out here and I was able to do all that while he went and just uh waited on me I I don't know what he was doing but um he just took off for a while until I was able to make those changes another area that I was very uncertain as to whether he was going to be okay with everything was on this these closet walls where they uh built the closets with the uh the studs turned the opposite way so inch and a half walls and so I use these 13 cubic inch boxes um that end up being a little crowded with wires when you actually have three wires coming into it and I wasn't sure if that was gonna pass I tried to do some research as to how many wires you can take into a 13 cubic inch box and I was really concerned that that was going to be an issue that ended up never being an issue at all the stud guards here I was concerned about because on these walls I had to take two of these and just put them beside each other vertically and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be getting a bigger metal plate to cover that all up uh but that ended up not being an issue at all um again a lot of the small stuff that I sweated really was not an issue so overall this was a great experience I would totally do this again I could have hired an electrician and I'm sure they would have done it faster I did save myself a lot of money even though it took me longer to do this myself of course and I learned a lot along the way it did come with some headaches and some uh frustration along the way uh just trying to figure some of it out and trying to decide exactly how to run certain things but in the end I know exactly what's behind my walls I know exactly how everything is done I'm super glad that I decided to do this all by myself I would totally do it again I I love the experience I love to learn new things and so um hopefully this can be encouragement for you to go and wire your own house

Channel: The Adventurous Entrepreneur

Views: 330,300

Keywords: Electrical, Square D Panel, DIY, Electrical Inspection, Detroit Land Bank

Id: KcvohGvGJf8

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023