Electrical Wiring in a Basement Finish
Hello everyone. I’m Caleb with Dansie Design Build, and today, we’re finishing a basement in Draper, Utah. We’re working on the rough-in here, and part of that is the electrical wiring.
I wanted to talk to you about the electrical components and some things we might have to do on a basement finish. I also want to give a little bit of context and information about upgrading some specific electrical components. For example, adding new electrical appliances to your basement kitchen such as a range or stove, bathroom, or a washer and dryer, will consume much more electricity. So let’s jump right in here and take a look.
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Exterior Electrical Panel for Home
We’re looking at the home’s exterior electrical meter and the main panel from the street into the house. You’ll notice this conduit, this gray pipe that comes up from underground and into this box. That’s what supplies the meter with power, and that’s where the power gets counted, and that’s where your electrical bill gets generated from. Inside this box, the power comes around to this side after it’s been measured and distributed to the house through these breakers.
Electrical Service Amps
This is a 200-amp service breaker. It feeds the electric subpanel inside the house, which has all the breakers for everything inside the home. The only thing not on this subpanel is the air conditioners. There’s a 20 amp circuit breaker for the air conditioner; the other is 30 amp. The entire house is running off of this 200 amp breaker. And that is going through a 4 aught wire diameter, and we’ll show that inside and where that goes from this meter box into the actual subpanel inside. So we’ll take a look at that.
Conduit in the House
So we’re inside the home now and right where the main cable comes in from the meter box outside. And that’s this gray one here. It’s a four aught, so it’s a massive cable that carries all 200 amps and goes clear down through this area in the ceiling. It then comes down here, and you can see it enter right here into the mechanical room and ties into this circuit breaker panel here. This is the subpanel in the basement, and it is full of breakers. This is supplied with 200 amps from the one outside, so we have plenty of power for this home, but we need more space for all the new circuits that we need to add for the basement.
Electrical Panel Update
There are a couple of options that you could do here. The first one is to add another subpanel, which is what we’re going to be doing. And the second one is to twin up several of these breakers so that it has the double. You can see there’s the 20/20, and then this one’s a single 20, so you can fit more of them in here.
So depending on your electrical design, the square footage of your home, and the number of circuits you’ll need, it can be an excellent way to go if you don’t have space for another panel or if there are some other constraints for your particular situation.
To Wrap Up
So if you need help finishing your basement or remodeling your home, you can reach us on our website and request a project consultation there. We look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks, and have a great week.
