Everything You Need to Know About House Electrical Wiring

One cannot imagine a life without electricity. It's an inseparable part of our life. Our lives are better and comfortable only because electricity was discovered.

Every house has electric appliances. These electric appliances are supplied power through electrical cables and wires. This article covers everything you need to know about house electrical wiring and how it's done. Keep reading and find out if you need electrical wiring service or you want to do it on your own.

How does electricity reach our homes?

Let's first understand how our electrical appliances get powered. Electric power reaches our houses from a distribution transformer i.e a device that lowers the voltage rating to our standard voltage rating. It is first generated in power plant and after a long journey through overhead or underground cables and passing through various substations it finally reaches our home.

An electric meter is connected at the incoming wire to meter the use of electricity. The reading gives the number of units of electricity consumed. You have to pay according to the units consumed.

 

Wires

 Let's know the basic color coding of the wires used for wiring in the house. Remember that the colour we mention here is the color of the insulation. Copper wire strands are present inside the insulation.

Red wire- This is a live wire. It carries current to the appliances.

Black wire- This is called the neutral wire but it still carries current. It provides a return path for the current to flow.

Blue and yellow wires- These are also live wires but they are used for industrial purposes. Usually, they are not used in house electrical wiring.

Green wires- These are grounding wires. They are used for protection purpose. They won't carry current in normal conditions but will carry current during faulty conditions.

There are various kinds of wires with varied sizes and ratings. The size of the wire mainly depends on the load you are connecting to it. If the load is more then size should also be more so that it can carry more current.

Protection

Nowadays, every house has MCB's ( miniature circuit breaker). Earlier, fuses were used which contained a fuse wire that melted when a fault occurred. The MCBs break the circuit and protect the appliances if any fault occurs. The faults are mainly overload and short-circuit faults. They are connected at the incoming supply wire. The supply is then distributed to all our equipment.

We also do grounding / earthing for the purpose of protecting the equipment as well as protecting ourselves from shocks.

All the faulty current flows through this grounding wire so that it doesn't flow through our body when we touch the faulty equipment.

A few points that need to be considered while doing the wiring:

1)     Don't do it if you are not qualified!

2)     Always keep all the tools handy.

3)     Wear rubber slippers or shoes or you can also stand on rubber mats when doing the wiring to protect yourself.

4)     Never keep any wire exposed

5)     Make sure there's no broken insulation in the wire.

6)     Proper connections are very important. If you don't know what goes where then don't think of experimenting. First, educate yourself.

Whole house wiring costs

Now, you have a basic idea about the electrical wires. You can decide for yourself if you need the wiring service or not. The whole house wiring costs you a little bit but it is the safest way to get your house wiring done.