wiring methods

rewiring the entire house.

i'm debating on a method of rewiring the entire house. of course i know the bathroom/kitchen/laundry need their own dedicated breakers, but i was thinking of the living spaces.

option 1
1) dedicate one breaker per bedroom/living room.

option 2
1) Use 15AMP breakers for lighting and use 20AMP breakers for receptacles and spread them across multiple rooms.

what's the typical method in which these things are done?

thanks

 

#2 sounds like your best option but also make sure you don't overlook the other requirements. i.e. arc-fault breakers for your bedroom circuit recepts.

Also your local code may require hard-wired smoke detectors. If so you can use a 12-2 or 14-2 to feed the first detector and a 12-3 or 14-3 running from the first detector to the others. The red wire would be connected to the yellow wire from the detector to provide a common trip.

 

I'm just going to assume that you are well versed in the thousand other code issues you need to be aware of.

I generally agree with KenD. Keeping the receptacles and lighting on different circuits avoids that annoying dimming of the lights when you turn on the vacuum cleaner. Just my preference, but I'd use 12-gauge wire and 20-amp circuits for everything (but 15-amps for the lighting is perfectly fine).

It's also nice when you have access to receptacles on more than one circuit in a given room. This gives you some flexibility in case you need to split up heavy loads. This is a minor consideration.

P.S. KenD, welcome to the forum. Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

If you don't have a "central" HVAC system then you should consider the load of window air-conditioning units.If you don't have seperate-circuits for each window AC unit then Art. 440.62 (C) applies which reads-----"the (current) rating of a room (AC) shall not exceed 50% of the branch-circuit rating where other outlets are also supplied". This means you can operate one 7.5 amp AC unit AND "other outlets" on a 15 amp branch-circuit or one 10 amp AC unit on a 20 amp branch-circuit with "other" outlets.Allow 1.5 amps for each one of the "other outlets" when calculating the brach-circuit load.--Good Luck!!!