Electrical New Home Options Advice (Dallas: how much, construction, costs)

[tbone9900tx]

Outlet over fireplace $100...im doing
outlet for freezer $100 in the garage..dont know..i dont think id get a freezer...thoughts?
Double floodlights pointing up from ground..195
Lamp lighting for exterior 125

What do you all think? go or no go on any of these?

[nsumner]

I would probably go with the exterior lighting only.
About the freezer, does the utility room have room for one? I'd consider it there for sure.

Naima

[lh_newbie]

If you ever plan to put a flat panel tv over the fireplace mantel, make sure to get coax and a power outlet put up there. And getting an extra dedicated ckt in the garage is never a bad thing. It's pretty cheap to do it now and not nearly as messy.

Ask the builder how many ckts are being installed in the kitchen. I know that the common design criteria is two 20-amp ckts, but I'm a fan of over engineering. Look at how many plugs there are and see if it makes sense to spread three ckts within the kitchen outlets. We are a couple months from redoing our kitchen and we're going to have three 20-amp ckts in it - though primarily because we need a dedicated 20-amp ckt for our espresso maker (yeah, I'm addicted).

Other things during construction - they typically terminate all your phone lines into the master bedroom closet. If you have an office, I would consider asking them to terminate there instead. I did this with a home I had built. Additionally, I had a coax and an electrical outlet added into that same office closet. Since they use CAT5 for phone lines now, I was able to replace all the phone jacks with an Ethernet + phone cover and then reterminate the phone lines in the office closet, giving me CAT5 ethernet into each room. Then in the closet, I was able to install the cable modem (coax + power), wireless router and a small switch to allow fast wired connections pretty much anywhere in the house.

Hope this helps!

Brian

Brian

[lainieramsey]

I would do those things, except probably not the outlet for the freezer... You'll need the outlet over the fireplace, and the lights outside pointing up and the lamp lighting will increase your curb appeal.

[escanlan]

Originally Posted by tbone9900tx

Outlet over fireplace $100...im doing
outlet for freezer $100 in the garage..dont know..i dont think id get a freezer...thoughts?
Double floodlights pointing up from ground..195
Lamp lighting for exterior 125

What do you all think? go or no go on any of these?

The cost of properly adding these later can potentially exceed the costs you're quoted now. It would mostly matter if you plan to use any of them. Here is my take:

Outlet over fireplace - I would never mount electronic devices over a fireplace unless they are inexpensive and easily replaced. Hard to determine how much damage, or shortening of its life, the heat from the fireplace can cause. If you have a nice mantel then the outlet can come in handy for other things such as decorations, etc.

Additional outlet for freezer in the garage - I would certainly consider this if the outlet "Was Not" on a GFCI or AFCI outlet. Naturally it should be marked as such and either secured or have its own breaker to prevent its use unless a fixed appliance was plugged into it.

As for the double flood lights and extra exterior lighting, why not have several electrical outlet boxes prewired and capped on the exterior of the home for future use? Obviously these should be on a GFCI breaker. They can be left capped until you decide later what to use them for, i.e. extra outlets, additional decorative lights in the garden, a torch light near the front sidewalk, etc. Having that done now prevents excessive costs for cutting exterior brick/stone, etc.

[FarNorthDallas]

Oh, I would totally go for that garage outlet. You may not get a freezer, but you may get a 2nd refrigerator.

[usc619]

Originally Posted by FarNorthDallas

Oh, I would totally go for that garage outlet. You may not get a freezer, but you may get a 2nd refrigerator.

I'd also try a get an outlet mounted somewhere in the garage w/ coxal cable drop for a TV hookup....nothing like having a TV setup while working in the garage during the summers

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

The garage outlet makes sense in terms of re-sale. You might not ever sell, but your heirs might. Lots of people have freezers or use the garage as workshop.

[MurphyPl1]

How far along are you on the build? (I'm assuming not too far if your talking about adding electrical outlets.)

If you can get pictures of the wiring before they put the sheetrock up, for spots you might want to add later it can be helpful. We've took some pics and know just where the wiring is for some additional outlets we wanted. Finding the wiring is the hardest part of going in later, so we've saved ourselves that headache.