It is very important to develop your own electrical plans on a drawing when you are planning a remodeling project. Now some
people fear having to plan electrical systems, and they think that only trained technicians or engineers are capable of creating a
plan, but this is simply not true. You can learn the basics here in this article to be able to develop your own layout plan. While it is true that there are many local, state and national codes around the installation of electrical systems, you do not need
to know all about these code in order to develop you plans. They way you cover yourself is that you develop these preliminary
plans, and you talk to your contractors or local permitting office to have them review your plans, and they will provide you further
input on items that you would need to include in your drawings or written specifications.
One additional way to protect yourself
is to have written specifications that accompany your drawings as follows: “The contractor shall meet or exceed all local, state
and national electrical and/or building codes as a part of this installation, and the drawings are only provided as a guide for the
installation. These written specifications supersede any information on the drawings, ad the contractor is responsible to verify
any field requirements, as well as measurements, to make sure all necessary codes are met.” As you can see in the above written
description, the electrical and buildings codes, as well as the process of permitting a project, are in place to protect you from
poor workmanship. The permit system and codes are your companion for safety and good practices of installation, so use the system
to your advantage, instead of trying to get around the system.
Now the first step in developing a plan view electrical drawing
is to make sure you draw you plan view layout, details all of the existing rooms as well as the planned new construction you anticipate
building. This is not a tough procedure, and really it can be quite fun making your own drawings. We have another article
on this website which provides you with the basics of preparing your own plan view layout drawings (Link to Preparing Layout Drawings),
and I will not cover that topic again. If you are unfamiliar with completing a layout drawing, read that article and then come
back to this article after you have prepared your existing and proposed plan view layout drawings. So for our electrical layout
drawing we will begin with utilizing a copy of the proposed layout drawing, which graphically shows the location of your new walls
and furnishings planned in your remodeling project.