Too busy to blog. Watch this video instead.
On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.
I’m working hard to meet a deadline for inspections and really don’t have any time in the morning to blog. In the evening, when I have plenty of time, I’m too exhausted!
So here’s a walkthrough video I shot today with my iPhone and threw together with iMovie. It’ll show you the interior of my place as it was this morning, with an emphasis on layout and electrical setup. Enjoy!
What do you think?
Looks good but I’ve got a few thoughts.
1. Leave yourself longer tails when you rough in your boxes, an extra couple of inches of tail is easy to trim off but can be useful.
2. The outlets below your living room window may be close enough to the window that they will interfere with your mouldings. I’d block them down 1.5″ on a piece of scrap 2×4 now while it is easy.
3. Did you account for the thickness of your backslash in the kitchen outlets? If you don’t know yet it is easy to switch for adjustable depth boxes now.
4. Make sure you plan for a vent fan in your laundry area, code requires one and it’s helpful for anything you want to hang to dry.
5. Spend the extra money for a very quite vent fan in your bath, you don’t want to have to choose between silence and fogged windows. Plan on using a timer switch or a switch that includes a humidity sensor to switch.
6. On the garage window you might be able to meet code with some sort of gravity operated heat activated shutter. If your inspector is nice or you have access to a sympathetic engineer it might not need an actual fire rating. .
1. Yes, I’ve been told the same thing by an electrician friend.
2. Nope. They’re fine where they are.
3. Yes.
4. Installed already.
5. Installed already. I don’t often use fans because of the noise, but the ones I bought are rated “quietest.” I live in a desert-like area, so humidity is not an issue except maybe in the winter.
6. Too costly. I’m covering it up.
Thanks for the input!
#5 Humidity isn’t an issue but moisture management and condensation (sometimes in places that you can’t see) are key to building longevity. You are well insulated so this may not be as much of an issue. Make sure that any condensation that forms in the exhaust duct isn’t going to drip out of the fan.
#6 It’s just an excuse to bust out a sawzall at some point in the future when you are feeling flush.
5. The building is made of metal so I’m not too concerned about moisture and longevity, especially given the generally dry conditions here. But I do have exhaust fans as required by code.
6. Exactly.
Love, love, love the video tour!!!! Thanks for doing that. Great to see all this… and no, not the least bit boring. Interesting!!!!
Thanks! It was fun to do.
I am going to try to do more of these. They’re so easy to do. iMovie does all the work, letting me combine clips and then publishing to YouTube.
Shirley said it all. Love all your outlets. If I could rewire my home I would. I would put my outside lights on one switch and not one in the entry and one in the garage and I would put light and fan control switches in a defined pattern and not all mixed up! Suppose I could correct that second problem myself. Thanks for causing me to think of that!
Thanks, Sharon! Although my last home had sufficient outlets, I’ve lived in enough places that didn’t to make me very generous with them. And I really gave my light switches a lot of thought. Let’s hope I can pull it all together when it comes time to hook up the outlets, fixtures, and switches! I can be pretty complex. Running the wire is the easy — although time-consuming — part.
While you can change the order of switches on your panel, it isn’t easy to move a switch to another place. Wire needs to be run. I’ve been in homes that had illogical wiring. In fact, I’m pretty sure we changed the order of switches somewhere I used to live — Arizona? New Jersey? In my RV, I labeled the switches on one bank; never regretted it.
Have you thought about convenient exterior outlets if you wanted to put up a string of lights on your deck railings or eves?
Have you made provisions for using solar switches to automatically turn on a minimal amount of exterior lighting?
I put a total of three outlets on my deck – two on the wide part where I will be putting my barbecue grill and Traeger, which needs to be plugged in, and one near the door of the long, narrow, covered deck. Between those three outlets, I should have enough options for holiday lights or anything else I need to plug in out there.
I won’t be using centralized solar switches. Instead, I’ll buy light fixtures that have solar sensing built in. For example, I’ll be installing motion sensor spotlights over each garage door but those lights will not go on unless it’s sufficiently dark. I’ve already scouted these things out and they are not only affordable, but they’re also easy to install.