Wiring Our Old House

[JakeOfAllTrades]

Good morning......

It's been awhile since I've visited the site. Actually, I've taken some time off from remodeling since I finished the nursery. That was a major job, but now our baby is 1 & it's time to move onto the next room. I had started on the dining room initially, but we found out we were pregnant & remodeled the nursery instead. Now it's back to the dining room!

So far I've installed a tray ceiling & refinished the old beat-up bead-baord ceiling. Just tore out all the old sheetrock. Although it wasn't absolutely necessary, I wanted to do it to install new insulation and inspect the wiring. The dining room is actually right across the hallway from the nursery that I have already finished. Now when I worked on the nursery, I noticed that the light was on the same circuit as the dining room light. I figured I would just leave it that way, as our home is 2 stories, and it would be a pain to put the nursery light on the circuit with it's own receptacles.

The fella who owned the house before us dropped the hallway ceiling from 12' to 8' so he could use the extra space for storage & as a cable tray for the new wiring he ran upstairs......very shoddy indeed.

What I want to do is while I'm redoing the dining room, I want to also raise the ceiling in the hallway to 10'.....allowing for the arched casing I'm gonna install from dining room to hall.

As I'm thinking about doing this, I think it would be the perfect opportunity to try to straighten out some of the confusing wiring in the house.

OK......

I have one 20 amp breaker that is powering the following...

1. hall light
2. dining room light
3. master bedroom light
4. nursery light
5. living room light
6. guest bedroom light
7. light above stairs

It seems odd to me that all of these are on the same circuit. Is that the way people wire houses? Is that too much of a load for a 20 amp circuit?

Ideally, I'd like to have the dining room light on the sam circuit as its receptacles.

Someone with a little knowledge please shed some light.

Thank you so much!

[HayZee518]

its not unusual because if you take a 100 watt light bulb and multiply that times 7 rooms you get 700 watts. divide this by 120 volts and you come up with about 5.8 amps well below the 20 amp circuit rating. if it works don't fix it!

[mrcaptainbob]

I tend to keep things as 'separate' as possible. For instance, I try to keep the lighting in a room on a separate circuit than the plugs. Usually, if something pops a breaker it'll be when it's plugged in. I don't want to be in the dark when that happens. I also try to have that light on the 'other' side of the panel from some of those plugs, too. It's difficult to balance out a breaker panel this way, but I try to spread the load in every room across both sides of the box and different breakers, too. ($0.02).

[HayZee518]

when I wired new and old houses I tried to keep all the power circuits (outlets) on their own breakers. Lighting went three rooms more/less on one circuit. Kitchen lighting on its own, hallways and the hard wired smoke detector on one. Basement lighting on one. All dedicated circuits separate ( fridge, washer, hog and dishwasher on one etc) Kitchen gfci-s two outlets per circuit based on two foot spacings apart along a counter top. Outdoor gfi-s separate. Bathroom power, separate, lighting independent of the power ckt. in a bathroom. Outlets in a bedroom all on those new fangled arc breakers.

[mrcaptainbob]

I like that set up, too....

[uconduit]

Usually lights don't take up much and you can have a surprisingly (safe) amount of lights on a single circuit.

A general rule is to figure 1 amp per receptacle with a maximum of 12 (for a 15 amp) and 16 for a 20amp fuse/circuit. That's about 80% and then you'd be pretty safe.

Usually people like to isolate a room to its own circuit however doing that after everything has been wired and set would be difficult. If you're house is somewhat "scattered" like that (as I found out that my house that we just bought was the same way), just make a map of which receptacle/switch is on what circuit.

And if you generally keep to the 80% rule, you'll be fine. Since you're remodling, you may want to check in to the type of wiring your old house has - Knob and Tube, Aluminum or Copper. You may also want to take the opportunity to upgrade while the walls are down (if needed).

[mrcaptainbob]

I like to have as many different circuits in a room as possible for no other reason than, should one of them trip, the lights from the other ones would still be on. Had a wire rub through on a tree 'one-dark-and-stormy-night'... and that half of the panel was out. Fortunately, many of the rooms we needed still had power on some of the outlets/switches.