Interior Electrical Boxes

The Ram made himself a little office with a view upstairs in the Momplex, and drew out the electrical diagrams. He does have experience in the electrical field, and up here in Alaska you can run your own wiring, but we are also going the extra mile and will have everything looked over and approved by a licensed electrician before drywall goes up.

It's probably a good thing that we are deciding on the electrical plans in the darkest part of the year in Alaska. Had this been June, we'd probably have said one light is more than enough for this tiny space.

But since it's January, and it's dark 20 some hours a day, including our work hours, it's apparent we need another ceiling light box here. In Alaska, it's better to add the extra light box than to spend your life wishing there was a little more light in that closet or dark spot at the end of the hall.

Like the electrical boxes upstairs, it's as simple as placing a wood support between the joists and then hammering on an electrical box.

Then we move on to putting up electrical outlet and switch boxes. For the garages, the boxes are placed at 48" height. Since I was shivering cold (the momplex is insulated, but getting heat requires putting wood in the woodstove, and we just started the fire) the Ram measured and I get to hammer the boxes on.

Where a box goes, there's a mark on the stud.

Each box has a tab on the stud side so the box can overextend the stud enough for drywall.

This is really actually easy. You just line the box up on the stud with the mark, using the tabs as a guide.

And hammer away!

For the outlet boxes not in the garage, we cut a board to the height of the boxes

And let me tell you, there's a lot of boxes to put up, so little things like this can save a ton of time.<p><br /></p><p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p-UxnZSbR8Y/UQlj4j3IIhI/AAAAAAAANXU/…; style="width: 470px;" alt="" /><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>In case you are wondering what the Ram is up to, he spent quite a bit of time&nbsp;clearing&nbsp;out the walls and moving extra materials and supplies to the center of rooms for mechanical installation.</p>

Because this the Momplex, we got to be fair, and each Mom gets the same amount of boxes.

You do everything once, and then you do it again for the other side.

We've got all the boxes up on the interior walls.  Putting the boxes up actually goes quite fast, and it is definitely something you can do to help out.  Pulling wire and hooking things up?  I'll let you know when we get to that stage!

But first, next up, we'll be putting the boxes in the exterior ICF walls. We've done some testing and are hoping in practice things go just as smoothly.  

Hopefully by the end of this week we can wrap up electrical and start working on the plumbing supply lines, getting the thermostats in, and all the other odds and ends utilities like telephone jacks, internet, and tv jacks to finally get to the point of interior finishing!!!  I cannot wait!!! 

Have you done electrical in your home?  Do you have enough boxes?  Or do you always wish there were more outlets?  More lights?  Or are we putting too many boxes in?