Residential Wiring

[James L]

Even if every bedroom has its own 15a circuit, turning on the lights to vacuum is likely to trip a 15a breaker, but one 20a circuit can supply several bedrooms because you're only going to vacuum one room at a time.

I don't even consider things like that when I'm wiring a run-of-the-mill house. For all I care, they can use a bathroom receptacle if they want to vacuum the bedroom.

As much as I can, I wire the same way I did back in the late '90s. I'm not going to change everything I do just because 1 in 500 houses needs a little bit more

 

[LarryFine]

It's not just that. There's less light dimming when receptacle loads turn on, which to me represents both better customer-perceived and better actual system performance.

A single 20a receptacle circuit and a single 15a lighting circuit can serve the same three bedrooms and hallway that might require three or four 15a general-purpose circuits.

 

[ptonsparky]

Other than the original AFCIs, we haven't tripped a breaker in 14 years. None due to overload.

Granted, we don't have a young family.