The forming of the electrical network

Our electrician is down today to set up our electrical network. This was one of the biggest headache to us because we need to decide and get everything correct right now, else we will have to face ugly exposed trucking around the house. We spent a great deal of time planning and counting, making sure we have sufficient power points in every corners that is required.

This is our final electrical plan after much changes and planning. Pretty comprehensive uh. The different colors are coded according to where the switches are positioned, and that is the biggest hurdle in the whole electrical planning.

Prior to talking to my electricIan, we thought we could have our switches anywhere connected to any lighting. Boy were we WRONG. Here are the 3 tips that we have learnt from our experience.

1. When you first enter the bto, you will see many holes in the ceiling. Those are power points provided by hdb and are already wired inside the building structure, connected to their in built switches. Good thing is they are already well hidden, but bad thing is that the switch positions are pretty much fixed. So technically you can't really change the corridor light to be controlled by the entrance switch, unless your electricIan rewired it which means extra moneyyyy.

2. The beams are a pain. You can't remove them, you can't drill through them, so you have to work around them. Try not to think about wiring past them, as that means exposed trucking required, or routing via another room. Complicated and messy I feel.

3. There are such things as concealed wires. Meaning the wires are technically hidden in the walls. This however means you can never change the wire, so better get real good wires such as audio cables, or only do for those built in power points where you will never have to remove or change the cable. 

Ultimately, spend more time planning and discussing with your ID to get it right first time one time, so that the ugly exposed truckings can be avoided.