Plan In Advance
With the Internet, it is easy to see a very wide variety of fixtures. Print out pictures of what you want before looking for a builder so that you can include specific brands and models. Write down the web site for each fixture so that you can find it again.
Models come and go, so if it is something you absolutely love, you could order it yourself right away and put in your specs that you will provide the fixture.
Wiring
After the studs are up and the roof is on, the electrician will be the next person out. We were asked to make spur-of-the-moment decisions about things we hadn't even considered yet:
Post Lights:
We have posts at the street end of the driveway with lights on them, but had not discussed if we wanted the lights controlled by light sensor, motion detector, timer, or light switch in the house. We decided to use light sensors, but the drawback is that the lights are on all night every night and even all day when overcast.
A better alternative for post lights might have been to have them controlled by an inside light switch. Update: With extremely low wattage florescent bulbs in the posts, it doesn't really matter if the lights are on all the time because they use so little energy and last so long.
An advantage to using post lights on a switch is that you can also put a plug on the post for plugging in leaf blowers, edgers, holiday lights, etc. If the lights are on a sensor, a separate line would have to run for the plug (unless the sensor is out at the post as well).
Outer Garage Lights:
At the front of the garage, we chose the same kind of canned lights we are using inside.
When the electrician first asked us if we wanted to control those lights from a switch at the front door of the house, we said no, because we would be coming in the side door, where we come in from the detached garage.
We quickly re-thought that decision and had those lights switched at the front door when we realized that most of the time we would be using those lights would be when company was coming or going (via the front door, usually).
We also added some lights controlled by a motion detector so that the lights would come on automatically when someone drives or walks up. With all the bugs out here, we don't want to have to leave lights like these on any longer than necessary, plus they come on automatically and light up the driveway when nobody is present to turn on the switch inside.
At Judy's house, instead of decorative lights on the garage, we had two floodlights with a motion detector between them at each corner of the front of the garage. On one corner, one of the two lights points at the driveway and the other, at the front porch, so if someone drives up, their way is lit all the way to the door. (See her floor plan.)
On the other corner, one of the two lights, again, points at the driveway, and the other points to the yard to the side of the house. The directions which came with the lights said not to put to sets of motion detector lights on the same circuit. We're not sure why they say this, because these front garage lights are on the same switch and work fine.
Judy also has the option of turning the lights on manually from the switch, but they will time out and turn off after a few minutes (whatever interval you set them for). The right side of Judy's garage has a "people" door to the side yard. Another set of motion-detector lights are above that door.
Two more sets are in the back yard, one at each end of her patio. By putting the lights off the end of the patio, it will help keep bugs away from people sitting on the patio. On each of those two sets of lights, one flood is pointed at the patio and the other, into the woods behind her house. Although there is a motion detector on each set, it is disabled so that the lights can be turned on from the switch without their timing out.
Street Lights: Part of your monthly utility bill is a charge for street lights. You will probably have one very near your house when it is completed (if there isn't already one there). Since the street lights come on automatically when it gets dark and since the chances are good one will be near enough to your driveway to light it up, you may not actually need outer garage lights at all (although you may want them for cosmetic reasons). The same applies to post lights at the end of the driveway, though the posts are mainly decorative.
Our garage is not near the street, so while the street light illuminates the street end of our driveway, it doesn't help out around the garage, which is why we put the motion lights in. Judy has a very short driveway, but they did not put a street light next to her house, so she still needs the outside lights.
Landscape Lights:
An alternative to having bug-attracting floodlights on the front of the garage is to put low-voltage lights along the side of the driveway with a switch by the front door for turning them on/off.
If you are going to have landscape lighting, you will probably want an inside light switch for them as well. If you might want to hang lights around the edge of your roof at Christmas, you might want to get some electrical outlets put under the eaves to plug the lights into, and also make those plugs switch controlled from inside. These are examples of things that if you don't ask for, you are not going to get, even though they are not high-cost items.
You have probably seen solar-powered landscape lights. These are okay for marking the edges of a driveway, but they do not put out much light. The are not adequate for accent lighting of a tree or wall, for example.
Deck And Porch Lights:
In locating lights for the deck, we again tried to keep the lights as far as possible from the seating areas to reduce the number of bugs. We put floodlights under the eaves of roof over the 20' high ceiling, however, we later found out that the bugs don't stay up there; they are attracted by the high lights, and then come down to the deck.
It wasn't easy to figure a way to light up the front porch without having the lights there attracting bugs. As soon as a front porch light is turned on, bugs swarm to it, then as soon as the front door is opened, the bugs are inside.
A possible solution might have been to mount some floodlights on trees in the front yard and point them at the front porch, but we didn't think of this in time. A compromise between lights by the door versus lights on trees would have been to put lights on the front of the front porch posts. This would have moved the bug collection point back several feet.
We tried using yellow "bug light" bulbs, but have seen bugs swarming around them. Bugs may be first attracted to lights in the house and then by the heat of the yellow bulbs, but the bottom line is that the yellow bulbs are not effective.
On Judy's house, we put the floodlights away from her front door and off her patio, as described above under Garage Lights.
The house still has a standard porch light in case she is not as bug-a-phobic as I am.
Location Of Switches/Plugs
- Light and fan switches for a room should be located by every doorway into a room unless you want to have to walk across the room in the dark.
- Doors should not block the switches when open. We read an article once about builders putting light switches in all kinds of inaccessible or inappropriate places, so don't just assume they will put them in the correct locations.
- Switches (and wall sockets, for that matter) should be put where they will not be blocked by furniture such as large book cases, china cabinets, etc.
- Wired switches cannot go where pocket doors recess into walls.
Another alternative would be wireless wall switches which look just like regular switches but work by radio waves. Since they require no wires to run through the walls, they will not interfere with pocket doors and could be place right next to the opening.
Because of the double pocket doors into our living room, pictured left, the LR light switches had to be located well away from the door opening, requiring us to stretch behind the TV to use them. In hind sight, we actually would have been better off putting the switches at location "x1", "x2", or "x3". While it may seem odd to have the switches outside the room, it would actually be easier to get to them in one of those other places as we enter or leave the room.
Check the blueprints carefully for the location of light switches.
In Judy's house, the light switches for the kitchen and laundry room were put on the kitchen side of the wall where cabinets were designated to go, so that side of the cabinet was moved over, reducing the size of the cabinets. Had the switches been located on the other side of the wall (the laundry room side of the door), the cabinet size would not have been affected, but I didn't catch this in time. (It's hard to think of everything, which is why you should not expect perfection from a general contractor, either.)
Floor Outlets:
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With a plan like the one at left, electricians will put electric and phone outlets around the walls, and if you want a lamp or phone on the black table (with the "x") by the sofa, you will have to run wires across the floor, which would be unsightly and also run the risk of people tripping on them.
In Judy's house, we specified both phone and electric outlets on the floor under the sofa. If you don't specify this, you probably won't get it. |
The Order Of Switches:
One thing the blueprints usually do not show is the order of switches when you have several grouped together. You could hope that the electrician would choose a logical order for them, but you could be wrong.
Our house has several places with from 4 to 7 light switches in a row, and they were apparently wired in random order and sometimes upside-down. For example, there is a group of four switches on a wall where the breakfast room is on the right and the den is on the left, yet the order of the switches are reversed -- breakfast room switches on the left and den on the right.
There are 5 switches by the front door, and again, the order is random. The only way to be certain of avoiding this problem is to specify the order of the switches in the contract. Specifying the order of light switches may sound obsessive, but after four+ years in this house, I still cannot tell you which light switch by our front door controls which lights. I finally put labels on the switches, but you have to have the lights on to read them!!
There are 3 switches in a row going into the garage, and the LAST one turns on the garage lights. Anyone visiting (and sometimes we) will turn on other lights outside the garage before getting the inside light to come on and not even be aware they have done it, then those lights get left on. The logical location for the switch for the lights in the room you are entering is FIRST.
Dishwasher Switch:
One last item about switches -- in Houston, the dishwasher was always on a switch. In this house, it was not on a switch. Sure enough, the first time I leaned over the counter and brushed up against the dishwasher, it came on. We had the builder ask the electrician to put in a switch for it.
Hot Water Dispenser Plug:
If you plan on having a hot water dispenser mounted on your sink with its tank under the sink, you will need an electrical outlet to plug it into. Since the dishwasher should be next to the sink, it can use the same outlet.
