An electrician to himself or everything about independent work with electrical wiring

If you live in a house that was built 10-15 years ago, then you probably have already touched on the problems that arise with electrical wiring.

More recently, our life was not saturated with such a large number of household appliances that consume electricity. Accordingly, the wiring in old houses was done based on a small electricity consumption.

Mostly the electrical wiring was laid by builders using aluminum wires and, often, without grounding. Our time makes higher demands on wiring.

As a rule, various faults constantly occur with old wiring. It can cause increased energy consumption, electric shock, and fire.

Advantages of self-replacement of wiring:

• when chasing the walls of hired workers, they are not at all interested in how well you covered the furniture from dust, whether you moved things to a place inaccessible to dirt - they usually work “all along the front”, and there is a lot of dust and dirt. When you work independently, you plan your activities yourself, if necessary, you can even remove all things from any room;

• you can rush to mark the places of attachment of the required number of outlets, knowing where and what household appliances you have or will be standing on, all the marking of the wiring can be transferred to the plan, so that in the future you know where the wiring passes in your walls;

• and finally, you save a significant amount of money.

First, some concepts:

• strobes - grooves in the wall surface for laying the wire;

• installation box - a round-shaped plastic box mounted in the wall for mounting switches and sockets in it;

• junction box - the round plastic box fastened in a wall for electrical wiring to multiple outlets or switches.

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Tools and materials needed to replace wiring:

• a grinder with a stone disc for breaking walls;

• electric drill and crown with victorious nozzles for drilling holes in the wall (only when transferring sockets and switches); - pliers and nippers with insulating handles;

• LED screwdriver;

• insulating tape;

• the required number of electrical wires, junction boxes and installation boxes.

You need to start work with the marking of the wiring and the installation places of the switches and sockets, the marking is done on the walls with a marker.

Now you need to determine the size of the cross section of the cable. Best used cable with copper conductive core. The electrical conductivity of copper is higher than that of aluminum, the service life of aluminum wires is no more than twenty years, copper - much more. Less - copper wires at cost are much more expensive than aluminum.

To calculate the cross section of a conductive core, you need to know rated power of each installed electrical consumer (electrical appliance). Usually this parameter is indicated in the technical passport for consumers or directly on the information sticker on the electrical receiver itself.

It is necessary to distribute all electric consumers into groups, to think in which place of the apartment the most powerful consumers will be located, such as a water heater, electric stove, washing machine, etc. When distributing electrical appliances into groups, it is necessary to adhere to the unspoken criterion: a load of more than 4-5 kW should not be created on one electrical wire.

Typically, apartments use such sections of conductive conductors: 2.5 square meters.mm - for less loaded lines, sockets, switches, 4 sq. mm - between junction boxes, electrical sockets, washing machines and dishwashers.

Usually, removal of old wiring quite a time-consuming process, it is much easier to de-energize it and leave it in the wall, laying a new one.

For wiring replacement in each room, you must first disconnect the entire apartment, then find the junction box, which is the main one, that is, it contains the end of the cable that supplies electricity to the room and the ends of the cables going to the sockets and switch. They are usually connected twisting method (twisted together).

We remove the insulation, we spread the bare ends of the twists to the maximum distance from each other. We turn on the electricity supply to the apartment and using the LED screwdriver we determine the phase wire on the supply cable, remember its color. This is necessary to install wiring under the switch, since the switch is a device that breaks the electrical circuit through a phase wire.

Then we again de-energize the apartment, unwind the twists, isolate the bare ends of the supply cable, we simply cut off the remaining ends. We ditch the walls, put the new cable in the strobes, leading it to the junction box. We again de-energize the apartment, connect the ends of the supply cable to the ends of the wires going to sockets and switches.

The most reliable and functional method for connecting conductive cable cores is to use plastic self-locking terminal boxes. Self-locking terminal blocks can have from 2 to 8 places for wires with a minimum cross-section of 0.75 mm2 and a maximum of 2.5 mm2. Able to withstand loads up to 4-5 kW (24 A). They are convenient to install - no need to twist, and then insulate the wires. However, they take up a lot of space in the junction boxes, so when using them, it is better to route no more than four energy consumption points (sockets or switches) through one junction box.

Going to electrical wiring in the next room, we act in the same way, so we can de-energize the apartment "by zones". The conductive cable for chandeliers and lamps is usually laid in cable channels inside floor slabs and, basically, for a long time is not subject to destruction during operation. Therefore, in order not to shatter the ceiling slabs, it can be left the same, simply by connecting to a new wiring.

Thus, self-replacement of wiring is carried out "from end to beginning", that is, from the extreme room of the apartment to the hallway. In the hallway is junction boxresponsible for the supply of electricity to your apartment from an electric panel on the landing. Here at this stage, the amateur should give way to professionals and call an electrician from the house management.

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