The electricians started the rough electrical work on August 5th. Today they may have finished with everything on the original plans. There were some changes that were challenging, like the fact that the ceiling wires had to be enclosed in metal flex conduit to pass inspection. I also had planned an indoor outlet for the mini split but it turned out that had to be an outdoor outlet which ended up being an outside junction box and a service outlet.
Outside Wiring
The setup looks very fancy for a small mini-split air conditioner that runs on only a 15 amp 110 circuit. There is a breaker in this sub panel that I believe is for the service outlet.
Lone circuit breaker in outside box
I am assuming a second breaker would be needed for the actual air conditioner. The electrician put two 20 amp breaker feeds in the new outside breaker box to this box but only one 15 amp in the box. I wish he had just put in the second breaker so the wiring for the air conditioner could be done more easily but I guess the idea is that they don’t put in the breaker unless the device is ready to be hooked up. Same with the wiring for the oven. They didn’t hook it up at all. I tried to find the 220 breakers that were hooked up to the stove and electric dryer electrical boxes and had to ask where they wired them. It turned out they were not hooked up in the breaker box. I told the electrician I needed an outlet for the oven I just bought. He moved the box that would have powered a stove to behind the cabinet where I will put the oven and had to install it higher but he put in the outlet for the oven.
Oven 220 Outlet
But he said he didn’t have an outlet for the dryer box. So I asked him to hook it up in the breaker box and label it anyway. I haven’t checked the box to see if he did this though.
He also finished installing the lights for the closets and the utility room. The two closet lights were wired but didn’t have junction boxes, and the light in the utility room had to be wired. He said he wired it to the washing machine outlet. The switch is next to the washer dryer stack, but there is enough room to use it.
Utility Room Light Switch
The closet lights are above the doors and because the fixtures I bought are LED they only have to be 6 inches from the storage areas instead of the usual 12 so there is plenty of clearance. They originally had issues with code and installing these lights, but I found the code and bought LED’s and asked for the lights over the doors which would have passed even with incandescent lights.
Closet light wiring
The fact that the electrical work has spanned three months seems to indicate that the project is just a slow one overall, and despite doing the work ourselves, we may not be that much slower than the professionals!
UPDATE:
The outside breaker box was installed too low so the electrician returned to put it up on a pole to avoid typical snow levels.
Box on Pole