And, we’re immediately on to the next challenging bit. Maybe after the relief of the tiny house coming in at a good mid-build weight, we were feeling up to the next big task: the electrical. Since day one, thinking about doing the electrical work has been daunting to me.
I’m a pretty safety conscious lass, so doing our own electrical made me pretty nervous. Hearing so many warnings about the possibility of electrocuting yourself had me spooked. But Eli, the less risk adverse half of our pair, felt we’d be fine to give it a go, so he lead the charge with me anxiously aiding.
Using my digital model of Hygge Hale, we had already determined where our lighting fixtures, switches, and outlets would go. Eli then drew up the circuit map, figuring out how many circuits we would need and which fixtures/outlets would go on which circuit. I assisted by testing all our appliances (like blenders, fans, laptops, computer monitors, hair straightener, electric toothbrushes, etc.) for their power draws using my trusty Kill A Watt Meter – a Christmas present I got some years ago. (Seriously, this meter is awesome; it’s super cool to see how much power anything that plugs in is drawing.) We needed to know how much power we might be using and where.
While Eli was developing the electrical plan, I finished up the final coats of polyurethane on the bedroom loft. We went with four coats for the floor since it will see some substantial wear and tear from us crawling around on it. The shine makes it look so good.
Back to the electrical, once the plan was laid out, we had to move from paper to real. We definitely did some homework throughout all of this. We watched the video series by Andrew Morrison, Building a Tiny House, that includes some tips for tiny house electrical work. (Andrew Morrison’s series is actually an excellent resource that’s done very well by an experienced builder that takes you through the entire process of building a tiny house – we’ve been reviewing this series for our entire build for great info.) I had also purchased a book, Tiny House Design & Construction Guide by Dan Louche, that had some helpful advice. Our local library provided a few more books on do-it-yourself home electrical work. One of the books we found exceptionally helpful was, Wiring a House by Rex Cauldwell. That book was such a great resource, we decided to purchase it, and have since loaned it to a few folks.
And, there is always the internet, that bed of thoughts, advice, answers, and opinions. I’m becoming a master of the most effective search phrases in internet search engines – and, also in realizing you may find informative tidbits in the strangest chat forum posts (those Q and A’s can often diverge a bit – particularly the A’s). So, I did the online and book research for any questions we had (pretty common), while Eli did the electrifying work (come on, you knew there was going to be a pun in here somewhere – just too easy when talking about this topic) of figuring out how to attach all those wires – safely, of course – no lighting ourselves up!
Outlet/fixture box placement and wire running first:
Next, attaching the wires to the outlets, light switches, and smoke alarms. We had multiple three way switches, a ceiling fan, a double outlet box where one outlet was wired to two three-way light switches, dimmer switches, and one 20-amp outlet on it’s own circuit (for a window or portable air conditioning unit), so kept ourselves on our toes with more than just the basic electrical set-up (which kept me with my nose in the books or the internet).
I did try to help with the physical, instead of just the mental, work of wiring our house. But, it quickly ended in a meltdown… Don’t worry! Just an emotional meltdown, not a physical one! ( 😉 Hehe!) Trying to push all those thick stiff wires into that tiny little outlet box was maddening to me. I couldn’t figure out how to get those buggers in there! We were careful that we weren’t overfilling the boxes, but it still drove me crazy how hard it was to get the wires in. Particularly the 12 gauge wires for the 20 amp circuits — ARGH!! So, I quickly got relegated back to flipping pages – both real and virtual. Eli, really, was the DIY electrician, doing most of the wiring of the outlet and fixture boxes and all of the wiring in the breaker box. Apparently, he’s the one with electrician genes.
We decided to wire the power input for 50-amps in case we could get that, but most likely we won’t need that much power at once. So, the main power input is a 50-amp outlet. In the photo above, you can see the adapter to attach to an extension cord. This limits us to the amperage of the extension cord and the hook-up from which we’re drawing power.
And then we there we were. All the wiring and connections were completed. This may all be condensed into one blog post, but I assure you it was no quick endeavor. It took quite a bit of time to figure everything out and get it all in place. After all that work, the moment of truth… will it work??? Will something crazy happen??? …… We plugged her in (using an extension cord running from our rental house out to the tiny house), flipped the breakers, and flipped a light switch….
YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We had to make sure all the outlets worked, too, and were wired correctly. Eli had a little device for testing this that you plugged into the outlet. We wired our outlets with the ground slot up, which we learned is much safer than the other way around should something metal happen to fall on a plug inserted into the outlet – the falling object would hit the ground pin first without incident. So, on the testing device, this meant we were looking for the two lights on the left side to light up…
Success on all the outlets, too!!!! Double YES!!!
With all our electrical work finished and in place, we had a professional electrician come out and give everything the once over. He had a few suggestions for improvement and to bring a couple things up to code, but overall he said we did a really thorough and well-done job. He even said Eli should consider doing electrical work professionally – literally, he offered Eli a job! He was also excited to get to look over a tiny house!
Whew! I am super excited to have surmounted this challenge! Hygge Hale is looking even better with its brightening lights!!
Is there a tour happening soon?
As soon as you guys come visit! 🙂