What to expect?

baum

Well i have my electrical rough-in tomorrow morning. What should i expect for the inspector to look for?

I believe i got everything already. pig-tails and splicing. wire secured within 12" of boxes. secured well within the the required of 4.5' (im at like every 1-2'). wire to the panel (not connected), clamps on wire into box.

The only thing i dont know about is i have an existing circuit that i am changing (adding 3 cans and removing 1 keyless) i have my wires next to the boxes, but i need the circuits still going for power into the basement. I dont know how he will like this one.

Anything else i should do ahead of time (tonight) so i can make sure to pass on the frist shot?

THanks

adpanko

Where you drilled through studs to run wires through them, the edge of the hole closest to the inside of the room needs to be at least 1.25" (maybe a littler more, 1.5" maybe???) from the edge of the stud. If it is not, you need to have metal nail plates on the studs.

As for securing the wires going into a box, I thought it needed to secured within 8", not 12", but I could be wrong. But that's an easy fix. If it is indeed 8", I'm sure the inspector would likely just tell you to add a closer staple.

I'm not a professional electrician, but I'd say I'm plenty advanced enough as an experienced DIY'er. In my experience with electrical inspectors (in both the towns I've lived in), when they see that a homeowner was doing the work, if it doesn't all look clean and done right, they will scrutinized everything in fine detail. But if everything looks up to snuff overall, they give you much more benefit of the doubt and aren't as in depth with their review. In my opinion, once you walk into a roughed-in room, you can tell within 15 seconds just from a quick overall visual inspection if the wiring was done by a complete hack that doesn't know what he's doing, or if the person knows what they're doing and did it all properly.

adpanko

But anyway, as for what to expect, I guess it all depends on the individual inspector. The first time I ever had an inspection of my own work, I gutted and rewired a bedroom. I was nervous as hell about what to expect. But the inspect was there for literally two minutes. He walked in the room, looked around, tugged on the wires coming out of one of the outlet boxes, tugged on a wire I had running up (and stapled to) a stud, and that was it. He said it looked real clean, signed off on my approval sticker, and that was it.

This supports my theory that if you did all the research as to what you have to do, and actually do it, it shows right off the bat when an inspector walks in, so they automatically have some confidence in what you did and things go well.

J. V.

Sounds like your fine to me. Worse case scenario is he wants you to change something or do something different. He's got to come back anyway. Just make sure he can see everything. Good Luck.