Are you meeting with your electrician soon? Here are some useful tips no one thinks of telling you- hold on to them and use them next time you are building or renovating:

1. How many lights are there in your home? If your house is big enough, it can be quite exhausting to go through every room turning out all the lights every time you leave the house. Instead, you can ask your electrician to install a circuit breaker next to the electric box at the entrance of your house that connects to all the light fuses. This way, you can turn off all the lights in the house just by flipping one switch.
2. Height of electrical sockets in the kitchen: In my opinion, the ideal height for electrical sockets over the counter in the kitchen is 110 cm from the floor, or about 20 cm above the countertop. At this height, your appliances will mostly block the sockets and you also won't see the electrical cords. If the sockets are placed lower, it is more difficult to plug in devices and if they are placed higher, the sockets will be more visible. In certain cases we will deviate from this rule. For example, when the wall tiles do not cover all of the wall space between the countertop and the cabinets, I will prefer to put the outlets above the tiles.
3. Although I already suggested in my previous blog that you have an electric socket installed underneath the kitchen sink, I am going to say it again: Even if you don’t plan on buying a dishwasher, there are other appliances you might buy in the future such as a water purifier, garbage disposal, faucet for boiling water – or some other device that hasn’t even been invented yet! – that runs on electricity. It would be a pity to break tiles or your marble countertop to install one at a later time!
4. When you're planning the location of light switches in each room, take a virtual tour of your future house. What looks convenient on paper is not always what makes sense in practice.
5. Here in Israel, we experience numerous power outages (remember the recent snow storm?). Make sure to have electrical sockets available for emergency lights for each area of your house, especially places you'll need to access during a power outage.And another two pointers just for fun:
6. Unless instructed otherwise, most electricians will automatically install all the electrical sockets around the house at 80 cm above the floor. Therefore, make a point of instructing your electrician to install sockets only 30-60 cm from the floor in the living room area and hallways. This is much more aesthetically pleasing to the eye and wires are much less noticeable.
7. The more modern light switches (such as Gewiss and Bticino) enable you to incorporate a number of switches in one box. Although they are more aesthetic, make sure this is actually more convenient for you before you ask your electrician to install one box for all the switches. It's very confusing and annoying to have to turn on and off each switch until you find the one you’re looking for. It's often times better to separate them into two switch boxes so it’s easier to remember which switch goes with each device. Try to imit to 3-4 switches per frame.

Derorit

Creating spaces people want to live in