Step by Step - How to Build a House

did you know that there's actually an order in which a house needs to be built and it actually matters otherwise you can train wreck the entire process and everybody involved let's dig in [Music] so we've all heard phrases like the rough-in or the roughin inspection or trim out or make-ready some people will use there's all kinds of different terms all over the country for different phases of construction so i figured i would talk about how a home should be constructed how they're typically constructed from the very beginning to the end so if you're a builder or you're maybe a superintendent or something like that you're trying to figure out when you should be in to do certain things or whether you know you should call people in to do stuff in what order at least you've got some kind of frame of reference of how it's done out in the field by all of us professionals [Applause] so the first thing that always gets done to a site is what we call site prep site prep is really where they will move earth a little bit they'll try to flatten a surface and get a building ready they'll get the site ready for a slab to be poured or for something to go up on pure and beam but they're just prepping the entire site or the entire property usually during this phase they're going to have all of the meps the mechanical electrical and plumbing in to do all of their underground work so this would mean getting mini excavators in and digging trenches and getting all of our underground conduit maybe from like a transformer over on one side of the property run all the way over to where the service location is going to be or for larger homes you may have multiple different buildings or things you might have different panels going in different places so you might actually dig trenches to get power run from one panel over to another panel to a garage something like that or if you have floor plugs or if you have an island in your kitchen all of that stuff all of that work needs to be done before that slab gets poured so you don't have to have guys in there just sitting there chipping stuff out with jackhammers or chipping hammers because that's a ridiculous amount of time wasted when you could have just prepped it all beforehand so the site prep phase usually is where all of the underground utilities are being brought in so that they can start a slab [Music] [Applause] the next phase is the slab this is when you're going to have a bunch of people out there that are going to frame up the structure of the slab there's going to be a plan very precise where everything has to go how far off the property it needs to go clear from any trees things like that they're going to start putting rebar in as a structure so once they fill it with concrete that rebar holds rigidity to the structure so you can't crack and break all of that concrete once the concrete has cured so during that phase there's also a time when electricians have to come out because we have to ground our slab meaning we actually have to run a conductor and attach it to all of the rebar that's inside of that slab there's a whole bunch of different methods of how we can ground a home what has to be considered a grounding electrode but a you for ground is a thing that we will ground a slab with and make sure that we've got a certain amount of conductor that's run inside the slab that's hooked up to the rebar so that pretty much all of that rebar becomes one huge earth electrode now typically at this point this is where you're going to start bringing in temporary power or temporary utilities sometimes you might have temporary water because if people need to have water on a site and there's no water around plumbers are going to have to come in and bring some kind of temporary water that can be used for construction same thing with the electricians electricians have to come in they have to create something called a t-pole or a temporary pole and it's usually a pre-constructed pole that could be i don't know maybe 16 feet long but typically we're talking about just a large pole that we put a huge disconnect and a huge meter on and maybe we'll put a panel with some receptacles all of this stuff on this pole and we'll set this thing up at the corner of a job site so that every trade has access to power they can bring electrical cords in plug things in bring them in cut have saws running all kinds of stuff like that but we're providing temporary power for construction and that temporary power is going to go away once we actually get permanent power to the building so it's just a temporary time that it's going to be there but this needs to be done very very early so usually around the time that the slab is being poured sometimes before sometimes after just depends on what the needs of the jobs are but you don't want people out there on this site trying to do construction and they don't have power and they need it because then they can't move things forward and then you're holding up this entire job now with temporary power a lot of times comes temporary lighting so if you're doing a remodel which you've got like an existing building that you're gutting things out you're cutting power you need to have some kind of temporary lighting in there as well so we'll string up lights everywhere just to keep light going for the construction process but usually on a brand new structure we're not doing that unless it's a structure that doesn't have a lot of windows and we do need to provide some lighting just so people can see and keep going with construction now for that power to be established you're going to have to place that pole according to whatever your power company's guidelines are or whatever authority that has jurisdiction in the area so like here in the city of austin city of austin is a government organization they are the people that have the authority to tell us how power poles need to be built or temporary polls need to be constructed we have to have a grounding electrode you know ground rod essentially that we drive into the ground we have to have a ground coming out certain number a certain size our meter can only be a certain height off of the ground it can't be too high can't be too low has to be a certain type of meter they want it approved for the city of austin so there's a certain type of material they want us to be using for every one of these we have to put receptacles and if we put receptacles they need to be gfci protected not only do they have to be gfci protected they have to be wrtr which is weather resistant tamper resistant or tamper proof so there's there's specific guidelines that we have to follow so when we build a t-pole at our shop bring it out to a job site and drop it in we can't just call the power company be like all right hook it up we have to go through an inspection process so we have to get that inspected either by the city or by the power company depending again what exact area we're in sometimes we don't have to get it inspected by a city but we will just have the power company come out they'll inspect it look at everything and be like yeah i feel safe putting this meter in there or they'll be like nah you need to do this this and this call us when you get that fixed and come out and we'll put the meter in once the meter's in though you have power established to the property that everybody can use now once you've got power established once the slab is actually set it's cured for a little bit of time so they actually let this thing dry out they let the concrete set up and it has to go through a curing process so they wait a little while for that to happen before they start piling weight and adding structure to the home but after all of that process is done it's time for framing [Music] [Applause] so framing's the next big phase framing of a house can take a few weeks it can take a few months and it could take up to a year it depends on the type of structure how big it is how many things have to happen how many processes have to go everything has to go through there might be some environmental concerns there might be jobs that get shut down because you built something too close to a tree and that specific tree has a specific frog that eats a specific fly and that specific fly is protected by a specific organization like lots of things can happen and especially on really big projects this process can take a long time and if a city comes and shuts your job down it can be a while before nobody's allowed to go back out there and do anything before this job can progress again but usually once you get through framing there's one or two ways it'll go either the framers will be allowed to get a framing inspection and then all of us mechanical electrical and plumbing meps can come in and begin doing our work or some places they want you to have all of the mep stuff installed before you can get an inspection at that point that is when they do the framing inspection and the electrical and the mechanical hvac we call that mechanical and the plumbing inspection and they'll do all of them at once so it just again kind of depends on your area but once it's broken loose and the meps can come in that is when we start the rough end stage so this is after the prep work and the framing all of the mechanical contractors electrical contractors and plumbers the meps will come in and do their rough-ins [Music] [Applause] so a rough-in is basically where we come in and pre-wire everything we run everything through walls through ceilings so that it can be covered up with drywall at a later date now typically my rule of thumb is if we have plumbing that needs to be done if we have hvac that needs to be done i like to wait until all of that stuff's done because i don't want to wire a bunch of stuff and then some mechanical contractor comes through cuts wires or like smashes our can out of the way to put up their air duct or a plumber like runs something through you know breaks our stuff in any way damages our wiring system i just don't want to mess with any of that i know that i'm going to be a lot more careful i'm going to be a lot more respectful of the other trades than a lot of other people are so i like to wait till all that stuff's in so i know like okay this is where everything needs to go and if i have to do like a lighting layout in a ceiling i want all of the ductwork done i want all the vents set so that way if there's an issue i can tell the builder like hey i have all these lights this is the only way these lights will lay out because we have framing constraints to think about so it's going to be much easier to move these two little vents and push them over a little bit than it is to be able to like re-engineer the framing just to get all of this lighting correct or deviate from the lighting plan so everything looks all goofy so i just like to wait for the end then i like to come in and start doing all of my wiring now when you come in to do wiring there's different stages that the framing can be in and it's okay a lot of times if the framing inspection didn't have to be complete for you to come in they're going to do it after you'll have a lot of things that are undone you might have chases that are not finished being built you might have some framing that's not completely finished you might have stairwells that are being like custom built in a lot of these bigger homes that we do so there's still a lot of framing that might not be done but generally you should have all of the outside of the house wrapped so they'll have green board put up they'll have a moisture barrier which is usually like black plastic or it can be a bunch of different colors but it's just this kind of like plastic paper stuff that acts as a moisture barrier and they wrap the entire house with it so that moisture doesn't seep into the wood when it rains but typically all that stuff's going to be done a lot of times you'll have the windows already put in maybe not all of them but most of them probably won't have any exterior doors put in usually it's just the windows that they do at this point um so you can you may or may not have those things done it shouldn't really matter for your wiring either way the only thing that would matter is making sure that there's some kind of exterior because a lot of times we have to cut in boxes to put in the exterior or they're going to have to put brick on the building so we have to get things stubbed out so that brick layers can come through next and start setting things accordingly so if you don't have the exterior wrap of the house that's another thing where i wouldn't go and start wiring anything i would just wait until they've got all of that done [Music] [Applause] then once you've gotten all of your wires in the walls and all your ducts done and all the plumbing done each one of the contractors is going to have to call for an inspection so this is a rough-in inspection so you'll have a plumbing rough-in inspection an electrical run it rough inspection and the inspector's going to come out and just make sure everything is wired to code you didn't overfill all of your boxes you didn't do anything that could cause any hazard any fire things are protected and once drywall gets put up or any kind of finish material gets put up nothing is going to be damaged by the installation of that stuff so a lot of times we'll have to have like nail plates that we have to put on because we've drilled holes a little bit too close to the front and you know when somebody's putting drywall up they might put a drywall screw through one of our conductors so little things like that and inspectors just walking around thinking about the entire job and whether or not your install is safe and whether or not people or equipment are going to be safe once your install is covered up and it can't be accessed anymore then once all of the mep rough inspections have been passed the next thing they do is start putting drywall up so they bring a whole bunch of drywall into the building they start putting it up everywhere they're going to tape and mud or tape and float the whole entire place and then usually they'll spray texture to make the texture you know appear as it appears on the walls but most of the time they're not going to start painting that until later once everything is textured then they tend to bring all of the cabinets and doors in and they start putting all the cabinets and doors in the reason they don't paint is because most of the time once you start bringing things in and trying to hang cabinets you're punching in walls you can like cut things shim things break things scuff up walls there's no reason to paint because at that point once texture's applied you can go through and kind of cover over something and patch a lot and then re-texture and get the texture to kind of match still because you haven't even applied any paint yet so typically you're going to have your drywall your tape and float your texture then you're going to have your cabinets and your doors put in and then you're going to have paint happen now sometimes that's not the case sometimes they'll paint before they put doors in because they don't want to have to tape off every single door through the entire place and they don't want to risk any of the doors getting painted so sometimes they will wait and they'll do all of the door jams they'll paint they'll do everything finished and then they'll come and put in all the doors into the door jams just kind of a matter of preference with that then once you have all of the finished cabinets a lot of times you'll have to spray like a lacquer or you'll have to paint or do something with the cabinets once all of that is done then they typically bring the painters in and the painters will do like a final finish they'll do a first initial primer coat throughout the whole place and then they'll add another coat of paint they'll usually spray on whatever the color the walls are going to be they might do one or two runs through the entire building to make sure that the finished paint is ready and at that point they will usually call the meps back out and say now it's ready for the trim out phase [Music] [Applause] so the trim out phase is the last kind of section or the last segment of construction and that's when we will take all of our actual devices we'll bring boxes full of materials we've got receptacles we've got light switches we've got recessed can trims we got our panels and all of our breakers our service everything that we're going to trim out and every outlet box everywhere gets a device and we're actually trimming or putting the trims in for everything that's why they call it trim out at this phase the plumbers will come into usually after we've done all of our electrical but it kind of depends it can be either or sometimes it's going to be right on top of each other you'll have hvc people out there and plumbers and electrical working on top of each other pissed off at each other pissed off at the builder because he didn't think to schedule correctly and give each one of us kind of an allotted time to just take over the whole space without having to worry about other people being in our way because a lot of times plumbers will take up like a whole bathroom and then we can't do anything in that bathroom and so we have to wait until they're all finished with that so if you have multiple plumbers working on multiple bathrooms and kitchen at the same time and then you have a whole bunch of electricians that are in there trying to do all of this stuff at the same time and you have ac company up there trying to put all of their ducks and their vent work and everything in place it's just too much so make sure that you're not scheduling people on top of each other if you are in control of the schedule now during the electrical trim out we're going to also install the electrical service most of the time you're gonna have electrical service panel outside a meter outside some kind of overhead service where conductors are coming in and going down into the meter you might have an underground service where you have to have the utility company open up a transformer or open up a manhole where they're going to pull wire to it and then you've got to pull wire into the panel but all of that is like a separate kind of project than the trim out itself so in austin we actually have to get a service inspection or a service only inspection where we can build the service uh the whole house doesn't even need to be trimmed out yet it could still just be drywall you know paint all or like drywall and like cabinets going in doesn't matter but we can at least get the permanent power brought to the building so that is one inspection so we'd have to go out and build the service make sure everything is grounded and bonded properly and we've got gfci protection and arc fault protection or dual function for everywhere that we have to have that make sure that the meter you know that all of that's bonded the exact same way that we don't have a floating neutral that we've got our bushings on all the crazy stuff so we do all of that then we call in get an inspection city inspector will usually come out so this is not the power company that's inspecting it this is the actual city that you've pulled your permit through so they're gonna come through and do a service inspection they're gonna give you a red tag if you have any corrections and they want you to fix them and then you're gonna have to call them back and come out to look at them again a different day or if you got a green tag because you knew what you were doing then you get a green tag and then uh you or the inspector or the gc the general contractor or the customer somebody will end up calling in and saying hey uh we passed our final inspection so now we just need to get a meter set so they have to call the power company to bring a meter out and energize that meter a lot of times they'll take it off the t-pole that you had providing temporary power and they will just move it to the house and then you pull your t-pole out and you go down the road now mind you this is still before you have any of the rest of the devices on the inside of the house hooked up so you have to be careful some jurisdictions will make sure that you go through and wire nut everything off or that you land everything in all of the panels in in such a way that you're not going to be able to energize any of the conductors because now you just got like wires sticking out everywhere throughout the house so there's a little bit of like logic that you have to go through with this situation but there also might be your ahj your authority having jurisdiction there might be specific ways that you want to do it so typically when i go do a trim out i do all of it at once i will bring all my service materials out i'll bring all my you know receptacles my switches my plates all of that stuff and i'll just start ripping through the house and once i've gotten all of it done i'll call both inspections in [Music] [Applause] so i'll have the inspector come out and while he's there i will say hey will you please do a service inspection and a final inspection final meaning everything's done there are some jurisdictions that are going to want you to have uh the power on for them to inspect and do a final inspection because they want to flip light switches on they want the whole building working so that they can truly do a final inspection that makes sure everything works and they're going to stick their plug tester in and they're going to trip you know the gfci circuits make sure that everything is gfci protected other jurisdictions might not do that other jurisdictions might give you a final without there actually being power turned on so they'll give you the thumbs up everything looks great you've got all your plugs everything's installed and they'll give you a final before that service inspection is finished so it just kind of again depends on what areas you're in most of the time though an inspector is going to want to look at a completed install everything in they're going to want to turn things on a plumbing inspector is going to want to turn faucets on make sure water's running it's final it's inspected it's ready then the last thing you're going to do is you're going to get a certificate of occupancy to be able to move somebody into the place so a co or a certificate of occupancy inspection is usually somebody that's a building inspector or it could be a fire marshal there's a couple different people that are in charge of doing cos but a co building inspector is going to come in and they're going to test everything and they're going to inspect everything that doesn't need specific inspections so they're not going to redo your electrical final they're not going to redo the plumbing final all that stuff's already been done but they're going to go through everything and they're going to look and if there's anything that they see they're going to make you fix it before they give you your certificate of occupancy so a lot of times they're looking for things that aren't in electrical code for us so like smoke detectors well we still wire smoke detectors but there's not anything in the electrical code about smoke detectors that's in the building code not the electrical code but you know things like that just making sure that a place is ready a hundred percent for a family to move in and live there and then once you get the co you're good to go you can start moving people in and get your money and get on down the road to the next job now if you want to see how i do rough-ins i have a video right here where you can watch how i will rough in a receptacle and make it ready so that drywall can be applied and i can go put a device in it at a later point if you want to watch how i do switches this is a different video you can click on to watch how i rough in my switches love you crazy people thanks for watching and i'll see you the next one

Channel: Electrician U

Views: 84,246

Keywords: electrician, electrical, electricity, dustin stelzer, electrician vlog, construction, commercial, residential, electrical vlog, electrical courses, electrician courses, electrical class, electrician class, electrician school, journeyman electrician, life as an electrician, master electrician, electrician life, exotic life of an electrician, electrical contractor, from a journeyman, terms of trade, residential vs commercial, sparky life, construction management, old wiring

Id: q3eqVL-O3DQ

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022