How Electrical Wiring is Classified

If you plan on doing some electrical wiring, the size of the wire to use is going to become an issue. Here is a quick guide on how the wire is classified.

The American Wire Gauge (AWG), also known as the “Brown and Sharpe” wire gauge system is a standard used in the United States and other countries to denote the diameter of nonferrous electrically conducting wire. There are 40 different wire sizes in the AWG system.

As the number of the gauge size increases, the diameter of the wire decreases. This tends to cause confusion when the system is not understood. The reason for the backwards method of denoting the size is that it is based on the number of times the wire must be drawn through drawing dies to produce the smaller size. Thus a 22 gauge wire needs to be drawn through the die more times than a 0 gauge wire. Steel wire uses a completely different measuring system and should not be confused with electrically conducting wire gauges using AWG.

The larger size gauges are denoting by the use of zeros. 0000 wire is normally denoted as 4/0 wire. 4/0 wire has a diameter of 0.58 inches. The smallest size is 40 gauge which has a diameter of 0.0032 inches. It takes six size increases to double the diameter of the wire. Although the ratio is not exact, it is close. The 40 gauge diameter of 0.0032 inches increases to 0.0063 inches in 36 gauge wire.

Each AWG gauge size can be rated for a maximum number of amps of load that it can safely carry. This is called the ampicity of the wire. It is depended on several variable factors such as the type of insulation, ambient conditions where the wire is being used, and the length of the wire run. Proper wire sizing is of utmost importance. An overload of the wire’s ampicity would cause the generation of heat. Although copper or aluminum wire would take a large amount of heat before melting, the wire insulation would melt much quicker. This would increase the possibility of arching and a subsequent wire hazard.

In other parts of the world, the metric system is used and the AWG gauge system is not used. The metric wire measuring system uses the cross sectional area expressed in square millimeters. The cross sectional area is used rather than diameter because it is a better reflection of the load carrying capacity of the wire. The metric system and the AWG system do not match up exactly. This difference is more pronounced in certain size ranges and leads to problems when the wiring is a mix of AWG and metric sized wires.

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Structured Wiring Hits Home

Right up there with all the buzz about green homes is structured wiring, now entering the main stream must-have for technology based homebuyers. Structured wiring has long been a part of outfitting commerical building projects with intergrated systems for data, security, and entertainment. Now, with design advances and lower costs homeowners can add heating, cooling, and lighting controls to these intergrated systems. No longer Jetson-cute, these systems are energy and time-savers for homeowners.

Driving the early demand were needs by homeowners to network computer and media equipment. Structured wiring is easy to picture. Coaxial TV cable (RG-6), Category 5E voice and data lines, distributed radio, remote camera security are wired through out a home into multi-outlet boxes called in the trade, home network centers. The beauty of the system allows one point of origin for connecting all the computers in a home to DSL.

With the addition of a control panel, you can pre-set furnace and air-conditioning, lighting to auto-off/on, deliver audio rooom-by-room, and raise and lower window shades, all by programming your control center. Some systems also allow you to call your home telephone and enter prompts to do it remote.

Structured wiring can be added to an existing home or specified to a new one. The system costs roughly $1,500 in new construction and double in a retro fit. It is placed like traditional electrical wiring, but special technicians should be used to lay out blueprints and plan for future upgrades. Energy costs saved can help offset intial structured wiring costs. But, in my view, one filled with multiple modems, cables, phone lines, thermostats, and surge protectors, I'm way past ready for structured wiring.

Mark Nash is the author of "Fundamentals of Marketing for the Real Estate Professional", "Starting & Succeeding in Real Estate", "Reaching Out: The Financial Power of Niche Marketing", and "1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home". Mark is a contributing writer for: Realtor (R) Magazine Online, Broker Agent News, Real Estate Executive Magazine, Principal Broker, and Realty Times. His tried and true real estate tips has been featured on Business Week, CBS The Early Show, CNN, HGTVpro.com, The New York Times, and USA Today. Purchase his books at http://www.1001RealEstateTips.com.

Low Voltage System Wiring

Low voltage systems include but are not limited to: access control, security, CCTV, burglary, fire, PA, intercom, nurse call, network, phone, data, and other local and remote notification systems. While progress has been made in wireless technologies, the primary, and most secure, and reliable installations, if not the most economical, are hard wired systems.

For commercial and industrial low voltage installations, the field wiring, device mounting, and panel installations are a major portion of the installation. While these tasks are required to be completed in accordance with customer specifications, local building, fire, electrical, and other codes, they are typically pretty standard and require little technical knowledge of the specific system terminations, power, testing and operation.

Most commercial and industrial low voltage system dealers, vendors and integrators have invested substantially in training their technicians on the technical aspects of installing, maintaining and operating the systems they promote. Depending on the work schedule, including service calls and maintenance contracts, using technicians for the basic wiring tasks may not be the best scheduling, financial and customer relations option. Unless business is in a slow period, and technicians need to be gainfully employed rather than not working, keep them scheduled on tasks that require their technical abilities and challenges their abilities.

The options for completing the routine wire and field device installation and mounting include hiring skilled but non-technical employees, using electrical contractors, hiring from a temp agency or finding a sub-contractor that knows and understands low voltage systems that can be trusted to install the systems when and the way you want them installed.

As low voltage system technician, project manager, project engineer and finally area manager, I know the importance of the installation of the basics and how it can and will have an impact on the system operation. While hiring general skilled labor for the basic is a good option because it affords the opportunity to control the entire installation, this option drives up the overall cost of labor that can’t be recovered when business is slow and these employees have limited project tasks.

Temporary agencies can provide the help required when business is brisk, but this is a crap shoot. You can provide the required abilities you are looking for, but what you get may or may not be able or willing to provide the services you need to accomplish the installation.

Electrical contractors have the knowledge, experience; know the codes, and wiring methods. They can provide the services you need but they may or may not be reasonably priced, provide their best people for your projects, or be able to meet your schedule.

The last and best alternative is to sub-contract with a company that has experience with low voltage systems, knows the requirements of customer satisfaction, building codes, installation methods, understands the relationship you have with your customers and the only cost is for actual services performed and has no additional costs when business is slow. This solution provides the best options of the electrical contractor, temporary agency, and non-technical employees.

While these companies are hard to find, very few exist, one that should be looked at for measuring your local companies is CCW Services. This company provides low voltage services in and around Ohio, and can be reached at:

http://ccwservices.com

20 years experience with low voltage system design, integration, installation and subcontracting prior to starting a new wire and cable venture.

Structured Wiring-Technology Backbone

Today's new homes are much more technologically advanced than in the past. One of the biggest advances lately is the use of "structured wiring" in homes. Structured wiring consists of installing a bundled wire package that typically contains two RG6 and two Cat5e or Cat6 cables. The cables are bundled together into one larger plastic sheath to make it much easier to install as one unit. Some of the new structured wire bundles even include fiber optic cables as well.

Each room of the house will have a home run structure wire group run to a central location (basement, utility room, closet, etc.) The beauty of this system is you can run almost any technology over this system. The new wiring becomes the backbone of your electronic components. Some homeowners may not use all of the wires in the beginning, however as new products and technology develop the structured wiring will allow simple upgrades in the future.

In my new house we are currently using the structured wiring in the following way. Each room has a outlet with 4 ports, two RG6, one telephone and one Cat5e. In this configuration we run two telephone lines to each room, one cable TV line and one Cat5e line that has Internet and network signals. The second RG6 cable is inactive for the time being. In the utility room in the basement the Internet service is over the cable service. A cable modem is installed next to the structured wiring panel and then it is connected to a simple network router. The network router is then connected back to the structured wiring panel and distributed to each room.

The structured wiring method will allow us to add many features in the future as we need them. We could add video cameras, who house audio, play DVDs in one room and watch them in another or create a simple home network. The possibilities are endless and as more electronic components are created with IP addresses and ports it will become much easier to integrate all of our favorite electronics into a smart home feature.

If you're interested in this new technology ask your electrician for more information. If you're interested in installing it yourself, read How Do I Install Structured Wiring http://www.hometech.com/acrobat/structured.pdf

Todd Fratzel, P.E. is a building superintendent for a construction firm in New Hampshire. In addition to supervising the construction of new homes Todd is a registered professional engineer in the New Hampshire and Massachusetts and has an extensive back ground in building structures. For additional articles like this one see his blog at http://homeconstructionimprovement.blogspot.com