What would you have changed?

[Waldo]

I was told once that it is a good idea to have your lights in a room on a different circuit breaker than your wall outlets. Their reasoning was that if you needed to work on something in that room, you could turn off one circuit and still have access to a power source (for tools or lights ect...). I thought about this for the house I'm building right now, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble for me because I own enough cordless tools that it should not be a problem.

Waldo

[Hank]

<font color="purple"> How about installing PVC pipe between walls from the attic to the basement for future wiring runs?? </font color>

The only way to go!! For our just built AZ home, I had the builder install PVC conduit, rather than wire, to each room. I'm using Cat 5e cabling now, but if I want, and if the need arises, I can yank that out and replace with fiber (or whatever) 5 years from now. I left pull strings in place to faciltate this.

[AndyM]

Our builder did several things that I didn't catch before they were installed, but aren't easily fixed now that they're there. A couple of them really bug me! [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

For example, the dryer vent is on the front of the house, a couple of feet away from the front door. Not only does it look ugly, but it looks like there's smoke coming from the front of my house on a cold day when the dryer is running.

[dummy]

Exterior outlets, speaker wiring and hose bibs. Seems like the hose connection is always too far away.

[RobS]

All sorts of construction details to pass along but the best thing we did in both houses we built was to photograph each wall before sheetrock. Video is fine but the still photographs will last forever and are far handier to refer to. Can't tell you how many times I've looked at those pictures to see where studs, pipes, wires etc. are [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[GaryM]

Not only hose bibbs, but if you have a water softener, run untreated water for the garden and such, but treated water to the driveway for washing cars.

[Waldo]

One thing that we are doing in the house we are building right now is placing a hot and cold water outlet inside the garage for a garden hose. That way we will have warm and or hot water for washing what ever we need to.

Waldo

[AndyM]

<font color="blue"> I was told once that it is a good idea to have your lights in a room on a different circuit breaker than your wall outlets. Their reasoning was that if you needed to work on something in that room, you could turn off one circuit and still have access to a power source (for tools or lights ect...). </font color>

My cousin always wires his houses with the light at the top and bottom of each staircase and the light by the breaker box on one circuit, with nothing else on that circuit.

Since there is almost nothing on this circuit, in theory, it should never trip, so you will always have a lighted path to get to the breaker box when one of the other circuits trips.

[dhunter65]

I saw a really cool tip on one of those home improvement shows on TV recently. They were running extra conduit in a basement for future use. After it was installed, they tied a string to a ziplock sandwich baggy that was about 1/4 filled with air. They stuffed the baggy into one end of the conduit and attached their shop-vac to the other. When they turned the shop-vac on it sucked the baggy with the string all the way through the conduit (I can be very easily amused). I think the extra conduit is a great idea. You never know what you might need it for.

[GaryM]

Forty years ago, yes that's right forty, I was visiting a job my Dad was an engineer on. They were running wires through conduit, not EMT, that ran up several floors in a office building. They had a spool with a nylon cord on it. this spool was placed in the conduit and a CO2 fire extinguisher with a tapered nozzle was placed in the conduit opening. A squeeze of the handle and the spool shot up several floors and out the other end. the wires were then hooked on and pulled back through.

Usng a shop vac's a lot cheaper!