Video: Considering Electrical With Remodeling

SAN FRANCISCO — Host, Sarah Rutan: When planning to remodel your home, it’s wise to hire an electrical contractor early in the process. Today we’re in San Francisco with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Miro Bokaric of BV Electric to learn why.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Miro Bokaric: The main point, main tip, for kitchen remodel in this case is that get your electrician on early stage, before you even thinking about remodeling. Because you’re going to have an idea what’s going to be your budget, how much electrical is needed, but the main important part is that electrician will be able to understand what exactly you want, where you want the under cabinet lights, overhead lights, or any kind of recessed lights in the kitchen. So in this case we have under cabinets through the cabinet lights and above the cabinet lights because the customer himself wanted the non-recessed lights. And he wanted – they wanted more lighting through original LED lighting through the ceiling, but not using recessed lights for some reason. And in that case, the best thing is that you prepare the wiring and set up the wires to certain locations through the blueprint or plans and make sure the height for each cabinets and location and lower cabinets and upper cabinets the difference.

And set up the electrical wiring from switch boxes which they are on the opposite side of the kitchen, as you enter to the kitchen, so again, focus to electrical is that electrical kitchen, electrical wiring, has to be minimum seven to eight circuits. They all have to be arc fault breakers, and certain breakers are bigger amperage, smaller amperage – depends on what you are using for. For electrical, for example for lighting, you have to have a minimum 15 amp, 120 volt. For the oven stove, that’s like a 30 amp to 50 amp to 240 volt. And certain outlets, for example, in this case there’s no receptacles on the wall, but they are on the bottom of the cabinets, and they are required to be set up for your usage, and there’s certain code requirements as well. So focus the electrician to come to your place before you even start your kitchen remodel. If you have an idea that in a year or something you will plan to do some major innovation, focus to the idea that an electrician should be there.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.