Advice on dividing new construction residential power & lighting circuits

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Youall's wisdom and humor is greatly appreciated.

Youall's wisdom and humor is greatly appreciated.

I've run the spares and EMT to second floor as well. Total common sense and a little forethought can't be bad. I still favor separation of lights and receptacles, based on 30 yrs as a handyman, and having to follow up on "expert", carefully budgeted wiring jobs. No fuses on Sunday? What happened to "if your ox falls in a pit" on sabbath clause?
 
With AFCI's, and the resulting nuisance trips, we run a 15amp AFCI for each bedroom for lights and receptacles, one or two for living rooms depending on load. Isolating the rooms makes troubleshooting easier. Hallways, entrances, etc are picked up by the nearest circuit. And for all those that believe receptacles should be on 20amp circuits: I've never had a call back for tripping circuits due to overload. 14 gauge is much easier to pull through studs and wire up. We're required to make up all boxes with pigtails for devices on rough in, so we use back stabbing (i.e,: no connections through devices). We use wagos almost exclusively for connections.

Bath heaters get dedicated circuits as has been pointed out. Bath receptacles are dedicated 20amp. Lighting is caught by closest 15amp circuit.

Here in CA, folks seem to think portable space heaters are the greatest thing since sliced bread. The dedicated circuit per bedroom eliminates problems created by space heaters as well.
 
electricguy61 said:
Here in CA, folks seem to think portable space heaters are the greatest thing since sliced bread. The dedicated circuit per bedroom eliminates problems created by space heaters as well.
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Mild climates will always have the space heater issue to deal with. Here where it goes from one temperature extreme to the other, we have central heating and cooling so I don't take space heating into consideration when planning circuitry. The only place I ever worry about people using space heaters is ghetto rental property where they as well as window a/c's are 99% guaranteed.
 
peter d said:
Mild climates will always have the space heater issue to deal with. Here where it goes from one temperature extreme to the other, we have central heating and cooling so I don't take space heating into consideration when planning circuitry. The only place I ever worry about people using space heaters is ghetto rental property where they as well as window a/c's are 99% guaranteed.
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We have central heating w/ natural gas here as well, but folks have the mistaken impression space heating is cheaper to operate.

But, as mentioned, I have many reasons for just having a dedicated 15amp circuit per room.
 
electricguy61 said:
We have central heating w/ natural gas here as well, but folks have the mistaken impression space heating is cheaper to operate.

But, as mentioned, I have many reasons for just having a dedicated 15amp circuit per room.
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Ahh, I thought those wall furnaces were common where you live. I guess that is more LA and inland California.
 
I heard somewhere, maybe on here, that we get caught up in running circuits that are easily labeled, such as "master bedroom" "living room" etc. In reality it would be much quicker and easier to wire the house in sections and not worry that three receptacles in the bedroom and two in the living room are on the same circuit.

For instance say the panel is in the corner of the house. One home run would go to the first receptacle to the right, the next home run would to the first receptacle on the left. You work your way out from there. After you've fed a number of outlets you feel comfortable on each of those circuits you run home runs to the next outlet past the last outlet from the first circuits. You do this for all the outlets not including the required outlets in the kitchen, laundry, bathroom, hvac, etc.

Maybe not easier at first as you get used to not roughing in one room then moving to the next, but if you just see the outlets in space as opposed to which room they're facing you'll get the hang of it. Same way as how you can make up the boxes as you see them rather than having to make up the boxes in one room then going to the next room.

It was an interesting thought, but I don't do a lot of whole-house new construction so I haven't been able to try it out.
 
I'll add that that method was more viable before arc-faults and tougher when arc-faults were only required in the bedrooms which is still true for a lot of you. Now that just about everything is on arc-faults it's becoming viable again.
 
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