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There isn't much options with electrical work: almost everything that goes in
the house is dictated by code. Most of the electrical code is all
sensible, safety related stuff, but code also dictates how many outlets and how
much lighting. Its probably all well intentioned, but when your building a
house designed to use very little energy, you start wondering why you needed
outlet on every wall, no more than twelve feet apart and all over the kitchen
(our favorite rule was than there has to be an outlet within 30"(?) of the
kitchen sink. This of course is so you have the opportunity to dump
various electrical appliances into the kitchen sink to regularly test the GFI
breaker..only kidding). What it seems like is that the electrical code is
dictating the suburban lifestyle that we're rebelling against. Having
lived our entire lives in houses that were built before outlet mania, all we
want is two outlets at our bathroom vanity and the ability to run the toaster
and microwave at the same time. Its certainly nice to have plenty of
outlets, but code forced us to put outlets where we don't think they'll ever get
used (which made us check out current house, which is the first
"modern" one we've every lived in (re-wired in 1994), and in fact
there were outlets all over the place we never even noticed before. Part
of the problem is society's expectations: one hundred years ago no one had
electric, now we can't walk down a hallway, up a stairs or fetch a coat in the
dark. The humorous irony in our situation is that there are two bright
street lights outside our house that make it bright enough to walk around almost
everywhere in the house without any lights on - I tried it just after the
sheetrock went on.
All this leads to the central problem, which is that all the electrical
system is buried behind sheetrock and so difficult, expensive and messy to
update. Even worse, wires run through ceilings and walls everywhere in
whatever route was convenient, so if you do go to update something you have to
be super careful about drilling through anything for fear there are wires on the
outer side that you can't see (unless, of course, you cut big chunks of
sheetrock out, but that's not how its typically done). Electrical systems
are designed specially as overkill because they know you won't go back and
update it, so they try to give you everything you ever possibly want. We
think this is a really bad idea. If the system were only easily adaptable
(for example but putting the wiring all in chases that can be easily accessed
(like by unscrewing or unsnapping), we could add or move both outlets and lights
as our (or other occupants needs changed over the years). Office buildings
already often use an adaptable system, because offices get remodeled very
frequently, but that system is a surface mount that is not the most attractive
in the world (eg see www.wiremold.com). Of
course even if we did install an adaptable system, code would still require us
to have lights and switches everywhere.
The one big "green" thing we did was run a wire (12-3, so it can
carry 20 amps at 240V, or about 4kw) from the attic to the power panel so
that when the cost of PV comes down (or we decide we can afford it anyhow), we
can install PV panels on the roof without having to tear out a lot of sheetrock.
Lighting - ambient .vs. task lighting
Ambient lighting is the amount of light necessary to be able to get around the
room, to be able to see the other occupants clearly, and do "big
picture" tasks (like straightening out my pile of magazines!). Task
lighting is for close up work: things like writing, reading, or sewing. In
most homes, no distinction is made and we put 100 watt bulbs everywhere in case
we want to plop down and read. The problem with a system that isn't
adaptable is that the only way to retrofit task lighting it to plug in a desk or
table lamp, which generally works well, except when no plug is convenient (in
spite of the code requirements!)
Adaptable system for low voltage
While code dictates just about everything for power, it doesn't say much (or
anything) about telephone, cable and computer networking, so here we could
create chases behind the baseboard and around door casing that would allow
future access with just some unscrewing or removing nails. Ideally we'd like
them all to be screwed in, but the obvious path for some wires is under clear
finish fir trim that we don't think would look too good with screw head in
it. The baseboard is painted pine, so we will paint the screw heads also
and no one will probably notice, except all our architect and builder friends!
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