More electrics

When the electricians first came on site they told me they’d be here for two days, but it took them not much more than half that time to complete their work because they originally arrived late Thursday morning and were gone by early afternoon Friday. I don’t have a key to my house, and will not be allowed one during its construction for insurance reasons I’m told, but I grabbed some shots of the interior on Friday before they’d finished and the outside after they’d left.

So, starting with the interior, which looks like a rat’s nest with so many cables hanging down. This is mainly because I’ve specified that the house will be lit throughout by LED spotlights and there are over 40 of them!

Now the outside. Here’s a shot of the east-facing living room door showing the exterior light above it and the external plug point on the back wall on what will be the patio area. Very handy.

Another shot of the back of the house again showing the exterior light above the living room door and also the exterior light between the windows of bedrooms one and three. I haven’t quite made up my mind about the height of the latter which I’d always intended to be at the same height as the lights over the doors.

The same applies to another one on the front of the house. It wouldn’t take much to move them both higher before the interior walls are put in place – all that would be necessary would be to pull the cables back inside, drill new holes higher up and push the cables back out again, but I need to arrange for that pretty quickly if I intend to do it. I can’t understand why the electrician placed them lower – maybe he drilled one hole in the wrong place and decided to do the second in the same way 🙁

The next two shots show the exterior lights over the other two living room doors.

Now a general shot of the front of the house showing the cable for the entrance porch light, the other (low) exterior light between the bathroom and the utility room and the external plug point which will be handy for doing odd jobs in the garden or on the car that require electricity.

Here are the connections in place for the heat pump.

I was pleased to see that before leaving they’d sealed around the external plug point boxes with some mortar to secure them in the walls.

And finally, here’s the cable in place for the porch light.

So they got through a lot of work. OK, there’s an awful lot going on because I’ve specified the house’s electrical system quite highly, but it’s better to do that now during construction than to add features once the house has been completed.

One thing that’s missing though, is a connection for a generator. I’ll maybe have to add that later in an external structure, such as a workshop or garage, when I have such a thing available. It’ll mean breaking into the house’s main electrical supply but I can’t see any other way at the moment.