Rewiring Your House – Essential Tips for a Successful Electrical Upgrade

If you’re thinking about rewiring your house, it’s important to work with an experienced electrician. The right professional will know how to minimize disruptions, protect your home’s current infrastructure and upgrade your electrical system.

Ask your electrician to create a power inventory of your household’s outlets, switches and sockets. This will help them plan a balanced system that can handle your household’s current power needs and any future expansion.

1. Map Out Your Space

A rewiring job is a big task that requires weeks of cutting, drilling and running wires. It’s also a dangerous job if you don’t know what you’re doing. So why risk it?

Before you begin any electrical work, you need to lay out your plan. You can do this by hand or with software, like SketchUp or RoomSketcher. Either way, you want your plan to be precise. Grab some graph paper and a ruler to make it easier.

You’ll need to map out which rooms and outlets have been used where, which will help your electrician determine what kind of wiring you need. Also, don’t forget to mark the locations of cable boxes so you can find them later on. Ideally, you’ll also put a guide inside the breaker box that lists all of the circuits and what each one controls. That will save you a lot of time when it comes to rewiring. A good guide can even help you avoid rewiring more than you need to.

2. Think About the Future

We use a lot more power than our parents and grandparents did. Having an outdated electrical panel can lead to overheating and other serious safety hazards in the home. That’s why rewiring your house is so important.

It can also add thousands of dollars to your home’s value. And if you’re thinking of selling, it will be a huge benefit to have the job done and ready for the new owner.

You can start by listing everything in your home that uses electricity (avoid putting anything on the list that you don’t actually use, as it could make your project more complicated). Then, think about what you might want to add in the future. For example, many people opt to install smart panels in their homes. These let you prioritize your power usage, pause EV charging, and more. It can save money and help you stay safe. You can even monitor your energy consumption remotely.

3. Don’t Forget About Safety

If you’re going to upgrade your home, you need to ensure that the electrical system can handle it. Start by checking the total amperage of your house, which you can find at the main breaker panel. Ideally, you want more than 200 amps, which can support modern electronic devices and appliances.

The next step is to look at the fuse box. If it has old-style, white ceramic-style fuses, you need to rewire your house. Newer houses usually come with modern wiring, which is safer.

The best time to rewire is during major renovations, when walls are already open and access to wires is easier. If you can’t wait, move furniture and appliances to other rooms during the rewiring process. This will minimize the impact of the work on your daily life, and it will keep you and your family safe from electrical shocks. Also, don’t forget to turn off the power source for the duration of the project.

4. Don’t Go It Alone

Rewiring your house is a big job, and the process will disrupt your life. You will not be able to use lights, appliances or plug-in devices until the job is complete. If you plan ahead, however, you can minimize the disruption.

For instance, if you’re planning a remodeling project, such as redoing the kitchen or adding an addition to your home, it’s often easier and cheaper to include a full house rewiring at the same time. That way, the carpentry and drywall crews can open up the walls where needed to expose the old wiring and give the electrician easy access.

Electrical rewires are dangerous work and should be left to the professionals. Electrical malfunctions are one of the leading causes of house fires. A DIY rewire can lead to electrocution or shock and damage the integrity of your home’s structure. It can also cause short circuits which, if unnoticed, may result in a house fire.