Older home, built when code required a laughable 2 outlets per room or so, based on sq. footage. Now that’s no longer workable in this day and age and I have cord messes everywhere and cord covers and extra outlet strips. Which I don’t care for. So I want to add outlets.
There is room in the electrical box, but my electrician tells me that as it’s a block home, and plaster walls, the outlets, to be economical (read: cheap) to add, would be preferably on interior walls, to avoid conduit everywhere, and the expense of plaster repair, drilling, sealing etc. I have purchased commercial strips (if you’ve seen them, they’re around $50 each, and included extra breakers etc.)-my electrician says they’re a good idea.
So, does anyone have any ideas on adding outlets in the exterior walls?
you can get surface mount raceway in metal. you might see it used in commercial or office environments. you can find it in a few colors.
you bring a circuit up and start a run of receptacles.
Is the house raised or built on a slab? You can run wire from below the floor up a short raceway and a surface mounted metal outlet box. On interior walls you can mount an outlet on the opposite side of the wall also. I have a log cabin so I have similar problems running wiring, but doing it through the basement is easiest. I’ve also hidden raceways in the back of built-in bookshelves, and put up a board in one room that looks a decorative rail but is actually covering the wiring for the bathroom on the other side of the wall. Running wires for light switches is also a problem so I put in motion sensors by the front door and in the kitchen so I don’t have to run more wires to switch those.
What about putting a second distribution breaker box at a more central location.
Most likely, you have the line from the street coming in at one corner of the house. That means snaking lots of lines from here to there.
Have the electrician install one or two big ass 50 amp breakers and run high wattage lines to the secondary breaker box which would be on an interior wall.
Now you can have short feeder lines from the secondary to all of the interior wall locations and it will give you more options for the exterior walls. You can run the lines through the attic, the basement, through decorative molding or even floor mounted metal conduit.
Whoa. I don’t see any need at all for another breaker box.
As I understand it, the problem is that the outside wall is concrete block.
The cheap way is to use wiremold (the surface mount stuff that johnpost mentioned). Personally I think wiremold is a bit tacky and I wouldn’t want it in my house. That’s more of an IMHO though. If you do go wiremold I like TriPolar’s idea of coming up from the basement. Then you only have a short stub of wiremold between the floor and the outlet and don’t have long runs of the stuff all over the walls.
There are different types of concrete block but the most common type leaves hollow tubes vertically in the walls when it is all put together. This makes it easy to go vertically with the wiring and very difficult to go horizontally. What’s your attic like? It may be that the cheapest way (inside the walls) is to go across the attic to the outside wall and drop down from there. Alternately, if you aren’t on a slab, you might try going through the basement but that means breaking into the wall both on the first floor where you want the outlet as well as down in the basement where you want to fish the wire up through.
If you can come up through the basement, another option is floor receptacles. Instead of running raceways along the wall, just put the outlet in the floor near the wall, connected directly to wiring underneath. It looks better than raceway, though (IMHO) they should be placed as close to the wall as possible so as to avoid creating a tripping hazard.
Be aware that you must use special floor boxes and covers; you can’t put a wall cover in the floor!
I know this is an older thread, but if the OP says there are only 2 receptacles per room, it is quite likely he has knob and tube wiring. Many posters have suggested using wiremold or similar type raceways to add outlets from the existing ones. This is not allowed by many municipalities, while the concealed K&T may be allowed as is no extensions are allowed to be added to it. Even if the municipality is silent on the issue, it it not good practice. Therefore, he would have to run new circuits to additional outlets.
In my experience, old homes with only one or two outlets in each room also have half the house (many rooms) all on one 15 amp circuit. Fuses/circuit breakers tend to blow frequently! So no way should anyone tap onto an existing circuit/outlet to add more outlets.
Rather they should install an updated new higher amperage main circuit breaker panel (if not already done). And from that run entirely new circuits to new outlets. 20 amp circuits being a very good idea!
Just because you are using more devices doesn’t mean you are using more electricity as there has been a massive increase in efficiency: from the big, bulky CRT TV to a modern LCD TV, from incandescent lights to LEDs and CFLs, from your electricity guzzling refrigerator to your modern efficient one… It’s really only when you are talking about window air conditioners, heating type devices (portable electric heaters, toasters…) or heavy duty power tools than you need to be concerned about electrical capacity–not the electronic devices people have all over and want outlets to match.