The best electrical plan is often the last thing on your mind when you imagine living in your new home. With all the excitement of choosing the ideal floor plan and thinking about the layout of your rooms, planning your electrical system may be overwhelming at the beginning. Not to mention it seems like a complex task, which requires a lot of forward-thinking.
To further help you out, we have listed the tips on how to tackle the confusing electrical plans you receive for your new home. Here are some of our best tips on how to understand your electrical plans to optimise your new home:
Visualise your new home design
When it comes to planning your electrical points, furniture placement is extremely important. You can start by visualising the rooms you currently live in. Do you wish you had a PowerPoint closer to your bedside table? Or extra points in the kitchen? A great place to start is to imagine the changes you would make to make your current home smarter.
By utilising available tools online, you can choose floor plans based on your preferences. From there you can try to imagine where your larger items will be positioned throughout the rooms, paying particular attention to beds, televisions, phones and current or future sound systems. Think about the placement of the points. Would it be a low lying for a bedside table, or are you wall mounting your TV? When you’re making changes to your floorplan, try to visualise how you would like to arrange your room so that you won’t need to make changes throughout the process.
Plan ahead
Foresight is priceless. Initially, planning for future electrical additions may seem inapplicable and costly. However, by considering any additions at the beginning, you save yourself a mountain of avoidable hassles down the track. Think about your garage and your arsenal of power tools waiting to be used. Consider your outdoor areas and what their main function will be. Are you an entertainer? Allowing sockets for the outdoor fridge and sound systems can make all the difference. The day you pick up your keys, your house is ready for action! Planning would help you understand your consumption and your electricity tariff in Singapore.
The first room that is planned is usually the kitchen, due to the long delivery times for many of its features.
Cooking islands, for example with an open plan kitchen adjacent to the living room, place very specific requirements on lighting planning, and connections for ovens, microwave, extractor fans or freezer and refrigerator. Electrical planning is often carried out in a dimensioned plan when ordering a new kitchen, to ensure the correct implementation.
Remember to consider your numerous other electric kitchen utensils, such as toasters, coffee machines, steamers, blenders etc. Depending on the size of the kitchen, six to fifteen sockets can easily be installed. You may also want to take a telephone connection or, for example, a flush-mounted radio, into account in the electrical plan of the kitchen.
Budget appropriately
Don’t get stung with hidden costs. A typical new home design comes with one double power point and one light fixture per room. It also has one television, one phone, and one internet point in the house. After your careful planning, you should be able to determine whether or not this is adequate for you and your family. Do you want TVs in multiple rooms? What about your outdoor entertainment area? Have a look at the electrical sheet and commit to appropriate lighting and any optional extras guilt-free, knowing that you are establishing a smart basis for your home design.
Ask the experts
Not everyone is expected to be an electrician. If you’re struggling to understand the details of the electrical requirements for your new home design, don’t be afraid to get some advice from people who may know better, for example, your electricity supplier in Singapore. Also, if you know of an electrician, consider asking for their advice. How many power points are typical? What are the costs involved in adding in points later? Is this feasible?
Planning makes all the difference
Whether it is a brand new building or a refurbishment, it‘s important to plan the electrical installations to the individual habits and requirements of the respective occupants. Asking some simple questions at the beginning avoids any overloading of circuits with multiple high-performance electrical appliances, or increased use of connector strips.
