- Initial inspection after purchase
- New building
- Old housing
- What else is important to know?
Initial inspection after purchase of
If you just bought a house or an apartment, first of all you need to check the status of the wiring, becauseeven the slightest malfunction may subsequently lead to electric shock or fire. In the new and old houses, the revision technology will be different, so let's look at both ways separately. Immediately, we draw your attention to the fact that before checking the wiring, you must necessarily turn off the electricity in the shield. Work under tension, especially inexperienced electricians, is strictly prohibited!
New building
Check the wiring in a new building after installation, most often after the purchase, before major repairs - finishing the walls and arranging furniture. The importance of this event is that if you do not inspect the cable line from the very beginning, in the future it will be much more difficult to check the wiring under the suspended ceiling or behind the drywall sheets.
The first thing you need to do is calculate the total power of electrical appliances that you will use, based on which you calculate the cable cross section for power and compare this value with the cross section of the conductor already laid in the walls. If the cross-section is not sufficient, be sure to replace the electrician, but experience shows that such problems do not arise in new buildings.
The next step is to check the status of the hidden wiring. The insulation must not be damaged, and all wiring connections must necessarily be made using terminal blocks or other connectors( eg PPE caps), but not by twisting. It is also important to determine the cable cross-section and check the outlet ratings. The female connector must be connected to the outlet with a cross-section of at least 2.5 mm2, at the same time the rating of the outlets must be at least 16A.
If all of the above requirements are met, the last thing to do is to check the wiring in the apartment for a load. In other words, you need to check the correct assembly of the switchboard yourself. When connecting all the equipment and turning on all the lamps in the rooms, the machines should not work. If the circuit breaker is knocked out, then the wiring is not capable of withstanding the load from the connected electrical appliances, as a result of which it will be necessary to replace the automatics, divide the electricians into groups, etc. If the machines in the switchboard do not turn off after the load is turned on, then the home wiring is correct. It does not hurt to additionally check the reliability of the connection of automata in the shield, as well as the reconciliation of the ratings with the load that comes to them.
Old housing
It is more difficult to check the condition of the wiring in the old house or apartment, especially if you just bought a house and have no idea how the wiring for the electricians was done in the rooms. So, the audit of the electrical network must be performed according to the following procedure:
- Find all junction boxes by the rooms. Opening the lid, you can understand what cable the hidden wiring of the electrician is made: aluminum or copper, and also what section of wires. Also you should immediately check the insulation condition - if the wiring is old, even the slightest bend of the cable will cause the insulation layer to start to crack or crack. Such electrical wiring needs to be changed unconditionally. It is equally important to inspect all wiring connections immediately - there should be no damage or twisting, especially aluminum with copper. If necessary, you must immediately connect the wires with terminal blocks instead of twists. About how to find the junction box in the wall of the apartment building, we described in detail in the relevant article.
- Check the sockets and light switches. In the sockets it is necessary to inspect the integrity of the wires, insulation, and determine the nominal value for which they are calculated. If three-wire wiring is connected to the sockets, it is necessary to determine where the phase is, where zero and where the ground is. To do this, you need a multimeter or indicator screwdriver, and the technology for determining the phase and zero we provided in the relevant article. After you determine where the grounding conductor is, check the grounding in the outlet. We also talked about this in detail. Another very important point - if the socket is installed in a metal pad, it is better to replace it with a more modern, plastic one. As for the light switches, they must be disassembled and make sure that the phase conductor is on the break, and not zero. If before that, the electrician has failed to break zero, you will have to re-connect the connection.this option is unsafe - even when replacing a light bulb in a chandelier, you may be electrocuted.
- Inspect the opening plate. It should be equipped with modern machines, not plugs, which were used in the distant past. Be sure to check that the wiring in the bathroom has been installed RCD, which protects against electricity damage in the breakdown of insulation and leakage current. Also check the quality of all connections and the cross section of the input cable. If the cross-section is insufficient, replace the cable with a more suitable one.
- When all the most important nodes are analyzed, it remains to check the old wiring for load, as we described above. Experience shows that in old private houses and apartments without replacement, electricians can not do, but for a while you can wait( for example, before repair), just do not include many powerful electrical appliances at once.
You should also talk about a special device with which you can check the correctness of the wiring - mega-meters:
That's the whole technology of checking old and new home wiring. As you can see, making an audit is not very difficult, but the time will be enough for this! We draw your attention to the fact that in your home or apartment you need to check the condition of the wiring about once a year. All that is required of you is to tighten the cords at the terminals of the wires, and also visually to see if there is burnt insulation.
What else is important to know?
Sometimes it's not enough just to check the electrician and replace all the nonconforming wiring elements yourself. Sometimes, for example, after flooding an apartment, you need to perform a network check for a short circuit. To do this, it is best to use a special tester - a multimeter. How to find a short circuit, we described in sufficient detail in the relevant article.
I would also like to separately note that during the revision of the electrical wiring you need to pay attention to the convenience of locating outlets and switches, because after the repair they will not be completely rearranged. It seems to be a simple moment, but many miss it.
That's all I wanted to tell you about how to check the wiring in the apartment and the house with your own hands. We hope that the provided methodology was clear and useful for you. Do not forget to rate the article and share information with your friends!
