Rough Wiring and Half-Sistered Joists

Lately I've been trying to get some of the rough wiring done, but this is another one of those jobs where I can't do the main task-at-hand until I finish another seemingly non-related task.

I'm planning on putting ceramic or porcelain tile throughout the house. One of the prerequisites for laying tile is a strong, stiff floor. If the floor flexes, the grout between the tiles can crack. In order to help stiffen the floor, I'm reinforcing all the floor joists by screwing and gluing a 12" wide piece of 1/2" plywood to one side of each joist. (When renovating existing homes, sagging floors are often fixed by installing new joists directly beside existing joists. That's called "sistering the joists".)

Since a lot of the wiring will run through the floor joists, I need to get the joist reinforcement done before I can run any wiring. Once the joist reinforcement is done, I'm able to drill some holes and run my wire through the joists.

Electrical Service Panel

I've got my electrical panel installed now. The electrical code says that the electrical panel must be installed "as close as practicable" to the service entrance (i.e. meter base on the outside), so I've installed the electrical panel just on the other side of the wall from the meter base.

I've used 2" PVC conduit to go down from the meter base and through the wall to the electrical panel. There are three 2/0 gauge wires that run through the conduit. The wire is very stiff and difficult to work with, and it took me an hour of pushing and pulling and cursing to get the three wires through the conduit.



The center wire (white tape) is the neutral wire and the other two are the "hot" wires.





Oh yes... there is no power on any of this yet. I wouldn't be doing any of this if there were. Once I have everything installed the electrical inspector will have a look at it, and if he approves it then the power company will come and install my electrical meter and hook me up to the grid.

Electrical Service Entrance

I've been spending a bit of time building my electrical service entrance. The service entrance consists of the electricity meter and the associated conduit and wire... basically all the electrical stuff that's on the outside of the house.

The meter base is mounted on a piece of treated lumber. It has to be anchored securely to the house, so I drilled holes in the concrete wall and used 1/2" galvanized lag bolts and anchors. The service conduit is a 2.5" galvanized steel pipe, and it's mounted to the wall in a similar fashion.

I was worried that it was going to be a huge, ugly task drilling large holes in the concrete, but I rented a rotary hammer drill and it was a piece of cake. You can drill a 3/4" hole through an 8" concrete wall in under a minute. I used a block of wood attached to the outside of the wall as a guide. It helps to hold the drill bit straight so you don't end up with a wobbly hole in the wall.

I'm having a 200 amp service installed, so the specified wire is 2/0 guage. It's about 7/16" in diameter and very hard to bend. It was quite a task getting it to bend and fit through the weatherhead on the top of the conduit.