Mapped my whole house wiring!

[Jim Doolittle]

Guess I need to map my circuits. Some of them are not intuitive and there is not enough room within the panel descriptions to fully describe the circuits. I would like to better balance some of the load on one circuit.

We trip a breaker if we run coffee pot at same time as microwave. Not often enough to doing anything but avoid running both but often enough to gripe about it :blink:. Also causes four digital clocks to blink 12:00 AM and have to be reset!

 

[IVB]

Yeah, I hear you. The next shocking thing my mapping revealed is that we've got certain circuits close to capacity, while another circuit only has 4 60W bulbs on it. And, those bulbs are rarely turned on - 3 of them are on for 30mins/day, the other one is on perhaps once/week.

I think i'm going to bite the bullet and write down which electrical device is on every circuit, so I can map usage. I need to call out the electrician anyhow to move some HV wiring away from my LV stuff, so that would be the perfect time to have him move around wires inside my box.

 

[bfisher]

Bravo IVB! I did this exercise about a year ago and its so worth it. What a time saver! Plus I like knowing exactly how my house is wired. A worthwhile project that only took a couple hours. Saves me a lot more time now that it's done.

 

[Steve]

Yea, I did it too last year. I also needed to know my circuits so I knew which ones I could safely turn on for the generator. I made a simple table with the mappings typed out and it is taped on the inside cover of the breaker box cover over the original handwritten chicken scratch. It does save alot of time.

 

[lazyone]

I built and wired my house, so the this was done from day one. Very, very useful information. Nice job those who have done it after the fact, much more work.