woodzy
Well-known member
My sons and I did all the electrical work on my new house. Both of the sons are electricians. When I asked my inspector on how to calculate load, he really did not have an answer.
If my sons did not help me, I would be running 12-2 everywhere and would be using 20 amp breakers. My sons thought that was crazy and best to use 14-2 (15 amp) and just add more circuits. They said only use 12-2 where you need a 20 amp circuit based on load calculations. My son was given this schedule and really is a very good base point to calculate total loads based on what type of item would be plugged into, or where it is located. This is not gospel, but I would guess if an inspector saw you used something to calculate your loads it would go a long way getting your inspection passed.
Here is the schedule:
I must say, after finishing up on the electrical, using the 14 gauge wire was a pleasure to work with as the 20 gauge wire takes more finesse getting it all into the boxes with the outlets. When I talked to the inspector about using 15 amp circuits anywhere I could he said that, that sounded like some advice from people that do this all the time and make perfect sense.
We did not use one circuit for each room and also included lights and outlets on the same circuit in the bedrooms. I would not do this in a work shop but the odds of blowing the breaker in the bedroom is slight. I was only required to use AFCI in the bedrooms.
Just to give you an idea on how we placed the outlets, we started at the bedroom door and first outlet was to be within 6 feet of the door and then went around the room with a 12' distance max. If there was a place we really wanted an outlet, we added one at that location. Using the schedule above and stopped when we got to 1500 or 2000 based on the size of the wire. If there was less than 200 we ended that circuit and went to the next one.
If my sons did not help me, I would be running 12-2 everywhere and would be using 20 amp breakers. My sons thought that was crazy and best to use 14-2 (15 amp) and just add more circuits. They said only use 12-2 where you need a 20 amp circuit based on load calculations. My son was given this schedule and really is a very good base point to calculate total loads based on what type of item would be plugged into, or where it is located. This is not gospel, but I would guess if an inspector saw you used something to calculate your loads it would go a long way getting your inspection passed.
Here is the schedule:
I must say, after finishing up on the electrical, using the 14 gauge wire was a pleasure to work with as the 20 gauge wire takes more finesse getting it all into the boxes with the outlets. When I talked to the inspector about using 15 amp circuits anywhere I could he said that, that sounded like some advice from people that do this all the time and make perfect sense.
We did not use one circuit for each room and also included lights and outlets on the same circuit in the bedrooms. I would not do this in a work shop but the odds of blowing the breaker in the bedroom is slight. I was only required to use AFCI in the bedrooms.
Just to give you an idea on how we placed the outlets, we started at the bedroom door and first outlet was to be within 6 feet of the door and then went around the room with a 12' distance max. If there was a place we really wanted an outlet, we added one at that location. Using the schedule above and stopped when we got to 1500 or 2000 based on the size of the wire. If there was less than 200 we ended that circuit and went to the next one.
