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[bannerd]

Running wiring for a new home and the owner wants to see the lights.. problem is this home is 100% solar and the main panels and batteries and all that stuff is months out.

I thought about making a male to male and hooking up the outlet that is there.. but I've never done that and usually only go through a main panel or sub. Any thoughts on this? The lights are very high up and there is a small switch that shows different lighting so I'd rather do this once!

 

[ArcReactorKC]

A male to male cord? no.

You are running wiring? What wiring? Who is the EC on the job?

 

[mike93lx]

Feed it into a breaker in the panel, like a normal generator or solar disconnect

 

[larry_g]

I did that exact thing when I was adding onto the house, called a suicide cord for a good reason. For testing purposes only and only if YOU know exactly what your going to power up.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Agree with the above. Wire a generator temporally into the panel that feeds the lights.

Are you the electrical contractor?

 

[ArcReactorKC]

Rereading the OP. If there aren't any breaker panels in the structure yet, are you sure the lights you are trying to energize are on the same circuit as a receptacle? With no panel, the homeruns can't be landed yet.

 

[justsam]

So are all the branch circuits in place? Are the lights wired yet? If the wiring is there and run back to the future panel location why not energize from there?

 

[Noltz]

So are all the branch circuits in place? Are the lights wired yet? If the wiring is there and run back to the future panel location why not energize from there?

This right here. Put an extension cord repair plug on the end of the circuit and power it from a generator or other mobile 120v source.

 

[bannerd]

Yeah there is no breaker panel, there will be a main and a sub in this home. The stuff is literally 5 months out so I have about 40 MC terminations hanging where the main panel will be. The lights are here and the owner wants them installed but these lights have a setting on them and it has to be set at the light. She wants to choose the lighting for them before we install them up into the 20ft great room. I don't like heights but I will do what needs to be done. She doesn't want draft on those switches either.. so no dim/function.

Yeah, everything is labelled but I've never had shipping delays so I never ran into this. I could literally backfeed this outlet which will power the great room for now and I think that is what I'll try to accomplish so she can see and pick what she loves best.

 

[mike93lx]

I'm sorry ma'am, there isn't a safe and code compliant way to do that. We have to wait for the wiring to be properly installed.

Or a suicide cord. Your call

 

[justsam]

I am missing something here. She wants to select the setting "before we install them" so fire one up from temp power or whatever you have available. What is this "setting"? Is it intensity, color temperature or what are you dealing with? Is painting complete as that will change how she perceives colors. I must admit I have no clue what "she does not want draft on switches so therefore no dim/function"???

 

[dave*99]

Draft meaning air leaks?
That’s fixable.

 

[Bucko]

You could just sacrifice a cheap extension cord and wire nut it to one of the lights before you put it up but if the room is not painted the lighting she pics may not suit her taste once there is color on the walls and she will want you to change them again.
I painted our laundry room and then installed the new light with some daylight bulbs and the paint looked totally different, went with cool white and the wife was much happier.

Eta: looks like Justsam had the same thoughts about 40 minutes before me that I didn't see.

 

[dave*99]

Could light one up with this too.

Milwaukee M18 18-Volt Lithium-Ion 175-Watt Powered Compact Inverter for M18 Batteries (Tool-Only) 2846-20 - The Home Depot

The M18 TOP-OFF 175W Power Supply provides faster simultaneous power to personal devices and small electronics. Quickly charge up to 3 devices simultaneously, without the barriers of speed throttling.

www.homedepot.com

 

[PCustoms]

Yeah there is no breaker panel, there will be a main and a sub in this home. The stuff is literally 5 months out so I have about 40 MC terminations hanging where the main panel will be. The lights are here and the owner wants them installed but these lights have a setting on them and it has to be set at the light. She wants to choose the lighting for them before we install them up into the 20ft great room. I don't like heights but I will do what needs to be done. She doesn't want draft on those switches either.. so no dim/function.

Yeah, everything is labelled but I've never had shipping delays so I never ran into this. I could literally backfeed this outlet which will power the great room for now and I think that is what I'll try to accomplish so she can see and pick what she loves best.

If there is no panel, how/why are outlets installed? What inspection have you passed?

Why are the outlets on the same circuit as the lights? Not unheard of, but unusual.


Pull the outlet, add a plug or wire nut a old cord end to it. Kind of concerning that a qualified electrician has to ask how to make this work IMHO.

 

[Chuckster in NJ]

If there is no panel, how/why are outlets installed? What inspection have you passed?

Kind of concerning that a qualified electrician has to ask how to make this work IMHO.

You would be amazed what type of questions "qualified electricians" ask. The "best one" in my 30 years as an inspector from a "qualified electrician" was:
"I have all pex piping in my house how do I ground it?"
I jokingly said: "use a non metallic ground clamp"…..…. The qualified electrician comes in two days later and tells me he cannot find a nonmetallic ground clamp and the supply house guys sold him 3 metallic ground clamps so he could bond the incoming well line along with the hot and cold pex piping at the water heater.

 

[dcg9381]

Running wiring for a new home and the owner wants to see the lights.. problem is this home is 100% solar and the main panels and batteries and all that stuff is months out.

No grid tie?
Sounds like additional scope of work to me.

If someone wanted me to do that, I'd offer up an interlock and generator inlet at a fee. Should work with existing solar/battery systems. I would not want (personally) a 100% off grid home that doesn't have a generator backup anyway.

I've had several homes built. I've never asked to "turn on the lights" in advance of electrical inspection or main power going in.

I'm assuming lighting is AC... But that might not be the case necessarily...

 

[ArcReactorKC]

No grid tie?
Sounds like additional scope of work to me.

If someone wanted me to do that, I'd offer up an interlock and generator inlet at a fee. Should work with existing solar/battery systems. I would not want (personally) a 100% off grid home that doesn't have a generator backup anyway.

I've had several homes built. I've never asked to "turn on the lights" in advance of electrical inspection or main power going in.

I'm assuming lighting is AC... But that might not be the case necessarily...

I always think I've hear it all when it comes to residential customer requests but they consistently surprise me with more nonsense.

There is a reason all of my businesses are b2b and I do my best to stay away from anything public facing, especially homeowners.
I recall in my youth as an electricians apprentice we were building a fancy restaurant. The owner wanted to see his new super high dollar chandelier lit up, we only had temp service to the building running battery chargers and such. If I recall the journeyman on the job had a waiver drawn up that we weren't liable if anything at all went wrong and it was all on him and that basically we were releasing the chandelier portion of the building to him at that point. He signed it. We got to work running a temporary whip to the chandelier, Stickers on everything said 277v... prints said it was 277v... all the other lighting in the damn place was 277v... well the chandelier was 120v and went PFFFT and all of the lamps burnt out. The way the thing was assembled you couldn't just screw in new lamps either, you had to dissasemble parts of it to be able to get to the next layer of lamps. The customer ended up having the lighting rep who sold the thing come out, they lowered it and relamped it. Argued with us that it was indeed 277v. We fed it 120v and it lit up just fine with no issues.

Things like that are why I ask a ton of questions before bringing anything online prior to complete construction. Had my journeyman not had the forethought to get the release signed the little 6 man EC I worked for would have been out of business having to pay the cost to fix the fixture.

 

[nadogail]

No matter how you handle this, somebody will be pointing fingers and looking to blame somebody else.

 

[dave*99]

Despite all the practical concerns voiced here, the homeowner likely has an important choice to make. Color temperature and possibly intensity.
Many modern LED fixtures have switches for these parameters and they are not easily accessible after install.
Imagine having 50 puck lights in your ceilings and asking the EC to pop them all out and fiddle with the tiny switch on the driver box stuffed into the ceiling hanging from stapled NM cable and reset the color temperature from 4000K to 3000K because the color temperature doesn’t match the under counter lights in the kitchen.
Sure there are ways to make this decision ahead of time, but the issues of setting switches is here and now.
It drives me nuts to see mismatched color temps in a room. Some folks don’t even notice.