How to conduct wiring in the floor?

We weigh "FOR" and "AGAINST"

First let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of installing wiring inside the floor.

Among the advantages of this type of wiring are:

• Safety of electrical wiring. If you decide to mount electricity under the floor covering, there is unlikely to happen a situation where by inattention you accidentally drive a nail into the cable or by perforating the live conductors.
• Cost-effective. The controversial issue is the high expense of money for the installation of electrical wiring in the floor, and, conversely, the benefit of this idea. To the pluses can be attributed significant savings in the cable, tk.it will not extend along the perimeter of the room( on walls from one to another), but under the screed, along the shortest path to the outlets and switches, as shown in the photo.
• Ease of electrical work. Except for pouring screed, you do not have to do anything complicated. All you need is to pass the cable into the corrugation or pipe, securely fix the wiring on the floor and pull all the ends to the "electrical points" for connection.

With regard to cons, the negative sides of wiring under the floor are:

• The difficulty of repairing and replacing the wiring. If suddenly there is an open circuit( because of the rodent or bad twisting of the wires), it will not be possible to find the problem area. All you can do is pull out the cable and replace it with a new one, and then, if before that the installation was done correctly.
• Increased costs for the purchase of corrugations and repair of the floor covering( if suddenly the concrete screed has to be broken for access to the damaged area).

As you can see, there are both positive and negative sides of the cable laying under the floor covering, so you need to seriously weigh all the pros and cons before you conduct wiring under the floor.

Where should I use it?

There are two situations where it is advisable to perform wiring in the floor. First - if you bought an apartment in a new building. Very often, developers are renting dwellings without repair, in which all wiring is diluted in the corrugations on the floor, as in the photo below.

In order not to perform time-consuming strobing of walls, you can simply fill the screed and pull out the cable to connect to all outlets and switches. This solution has a very significant advantage - you can hide the cable and bring it to the right place without disturbing the integrity of the walls.

The second situation is more urgent. When installing electrical wiring in a wooden house, you have to choose: either to make retro wiring, the cost of which is an order of magnitude higher. Or carry out wiring in a special cable channels, not very well complementing the interior of wooden private houses. So, the wiring in the floor allows "to kill two birds with one stone": hide the cable under a wooden floor covering and at the same time conduct electricity in all the necessary areas of rooms.

Installation rules

So, we came to the most important part of the article, in which we will tell you how to conduct the electrical wiring in the floor. To make electricity in a private house or apartment safe, consider the following standards and recommendations for electrical work:

1. The cable must be protected by corrugation when mounting the track under a concrete screed and a steel pipe or metal hose when wiring the electrical network under the wooden floor. You can mount the wiring under the floor without corrugation, but only take into account one unpleasant moment - you can not replace the wiring in the house without completely destroying the floor covering.
2. There should not be any twisting in the floor. All electrical connections must be in the junction boxes above the floor covering. If you can not comply with this rule, make a floor box with an inspection cover in the floor. This place must be marked on the diagram so that in the future you can quickly find this electrical node.
3. When laying the wire in the floor, the corrugation should be filled no more than 40%.
4. The maximum length of one route( for example, when mounting from an apartment cover to a socket in a back room) should not exceed 20 meters. To solve this problem, install the transit boxes in the floor.
5. Do not create more than two cable turns if they are at right angles( and steeper, of course).
6. If you decide to conduct wiring in a wooden floor, you do not need to do it right on the lags. It is better to create special technical holes through which the corrugation is passed, as shown in the photo.
7. When installing electrical wiring under a wooden floor covering, be sure to treat wood with flame retardant.
8. Do not make a ramified route from the shield. In this case, it will be more problematic to replace the damaged portion of the cable.
9. The thickness of the screed above the corrugation should be at least 30 mm.
10. Try not to overlay traces on each other( intersection), becausein this case it is necessary to increase the thickness of the concrete screed under the wiring in the floor.

Given these rules and regulations, you can easily make a safe wiring under the floor covering. The procedure can be different: either you will first create a network of pipes, which then pass the cable, or you will immediately perform the installation of traces with the cable inside. The main thing is to take into account the important point - before you fill the concrete screed or fill the boards with lags, check the ready-made electrical network with a multimeter for a short circuit and an open circuit. If you did everything correctly, you can proceed to laying the floor covering and connecting the sockets, switches, lamps.

That's all I wanted to tell you about how to make wiring in the floor with your own hands. As you can see, there are a lot of serious moments that need to be considered so that the wiring is safe and convenient to operate. Therefore, before installation, once again think about whether you need to do this layout, or still better to conduct the cable on the ceiling and walls!

Related materials:

• Typical wiring diagram in a 3-room apartment
• How to calculate the cable quantity per house
• How to conduct wiring in

pipes