Shared Knowledge

 

“Map Your Electrical Home”

 

12 September 2005

 

 

 

 

So you need to reset a circuit breaker or replace a blown fuse or want to turn off electricity to a specific room or area. What do you do? You go to the circuit breaker or fuse panel in your home, open it and begin reading the glued on table of breaker or fuse to room or appliance guide. This is totally wrong for the homeowner. If I am the electrician, which wired the house, I don’t care, which breaker controls what as long as I breaker all rooms, etc. But if you are going in your car to a place you have never been before, you do not look at some table where the house number is beside directions how to get there, you look at a map. Why should it not be the same for your home’s electrical system? A map, which shows all switches and outlets by floor and which breaker controls each.

 

Although it is some work initially, it will pay off for years and years to come if you take the time to actually make a map of your electrical home. Personally, I think that when a new house is built, it ought to be required of the electricians that they supply floor plan maps of all outlets and switches and which breaker controls each.

 

As an example of a home electrical map, below you will fine a map I made of one of the floors of my home. This particular map is only for switches and I have another map for outlets. You can draw the floor plan by hand or use a computer like I did but either way, with a floor plan and all switches clearly marked as to their location, you can then go to the circuit breaker panel and flip off the breakers or remove the fuse you think controls lighting in a specific room and then go and see what lights it does actually control. Certainly it is easier if 2 people are involved and if you live in a large house or the electrical panel is deep within the basement, a cheap set of walkie talkies might be in order but the job can be done by one person.

 

So you find out, which breaker controls each and every switch and mark your map. In my case, I have 2 circuit breaker panels and thus had to identify which panel as well as breaker. Once you have the map complete, you go back and check it over for any and all errors. Then, you move on to the next floor of your home and then the next until you have a map for all floor switches and all floor outlets. Finally, you take all these maps to some office supply store or otherwise have them laminated so they will be waterproof, you punch a hole in the corner of all maps and then hang them by some chain or string right near your circuit breaker or fuse box. Then the next time you need to reset a breaker or replace a fuse, you simply look on the map as to the circuit breaker to reset or the fuse to replace. So much better than trying to find a specific area reading that silly pasted on breaker table inside the breaker box.