While finishing my basement, Can I place electrical boxes where I might want to place receptacles in the future ? Leave the cutout to the surface and "empty" conduit over to a live box. Then cover the opening with tape, mud and paint.
In the future, If I ever want to place a receptacle there, just break the tape with a utility knife and push wire back to the live box and terminate.
Is there anything wrong with this ?
I'd just cover the empty box with a decorative switch plate- get one with no holes in it.
As long as there are no electrical splices in those boxes, there's no electrical code issue that I'm aware of. I do see one other problem, though, and that's finding the boxes later if you decide you want them. Why not either (a) cover the boxes with blank cover plates instead of tape & mud, or (b) just put receptacles there to begin with? You can never have too many... and what you propose seems like a lot of unnecessary work for very little discernable benefit.
Nothing but the possibility of someone pushing something through the tape accidentally.
s
Like others said, mud it normally and put on a blank cover wall plate. You dont want to "bury" the box.
Our intention was to place receptacles along the walls 12" from the floor (like the rest of the house), then we talked about placing extra receptacles 46" high incase we wanted to place a counter there some day. But, if we did not install the counter, then the receptacles placed for counter use would be an eye-sore. I was considering leaving empty boxes behind the drywall as an alternative.
Thanks
As long as there is space behind the drywall, trivial to use old-work boxes later, connected to wire pushed up from the existing box below. Note that if you do add this counter later, and add cabinets below, you will need to have the old outlets move forward and be accessible in the cabinets, and not bury them. Or if you will be covering the lower part of the wall, you can just make whatever holes you want- leave slack on the feeds to the low outlets, and if and when you add the counter and high outlets, you can just move the wire. In a basement, you are probably feeding from the top of the wall anyway, so you can just disconnect the wire down below, and pull it back up through the hole you cut for the old-work box. If the wire is behind drywall, no need for conduit.
3 or 4 different ways to handle the problem, and none of them difficult. No need to bury an empty box with a fragile paper cover.-- aem sends...
What i would do then in this case is just set the boxes flush with the stud, and drywall right over them. Be sure to map them accurately, and you have a plan. Then if you need them, punch them out by rotozipping on the inside of them and trimming with a util knife as needed.
s
Assuming you're going to put the 12" high outlets in the same stud bays as the future 46" high ones, I'd just carefully plan the staple locations for the wires to the ones you put in -- in the future, you can simply cut a hole 46" high, cut the wire to the lower outlet and pull it into an "old work" box in the new hole. The bonus is that you'd be able to abandon and cover the lower outlets (if no energized wiring in them).
I definitely wouldn't just tape over a hole -- I guarantee the first person to innocently lean against that wall will put their elbow in
*just* the right place and poke through, leading to embarassment all around.Josh
Not a good idea - the box ears are to be on the outside of the drywall for a reason
box ears?
"New work" boxes don't *have* ears.
BZZZZZZ! Wrong! New metal boxes have ears that can set back for wall thickness or removed completely. Your standard plastic nail in box usually has no ears. Metal boxes for conduit usually have no ears, like the standard "handy box" or the standard 4" or 4 11/16" square boxes. Metal switch boxes for Romex are going to have removable ears unless ordered without. The metal octagon box won't have ears.
I used to work for an electrical supply house. I filled and shipped thousands of orders for electrical supplies. I didn't just push paper, I got my hands dirty handling tons of that stuff.
TDD
So, let's rephrase the problem the other poster pointed out with putting new in boxes now and going over them with drywall. When you later cut them out, the boxes will be set back ~1/2" from where they should be.
If it were me, I'd just plan on using old work boxes later on. IMO, a more useful thing to do rather than bury hidden boxes would be to leave a pull string in the wall going from where you would later need to pull romex to the location of the proposed outlet.
The sensible thing to do would be to go ahead and install the wiring and outlets and be done with it. The time to do the wiring is when you have open walls. The wiring and devices aren't that expensive and it's a lot easier and A LOT LESS EXPENSIVE to do it then. Of course, you may consider what your time is worth if you're doing it yourself. I can assure you that if you call in an electrician later, you'll spend a lot of money.
TDD
No its conduit. In fact new-home union electricians here insist that all drywall BE UP and house be lockable before they pull their wire. A properly done conduit rough-in can be wired just as easily with drywall up. But buried boxes are a huge big no-no with conduit rough in, the worker needs clear pulls from box to box with no "hidden" blockades. Best to use normal mudding plate and blank cover. But if OP insists on no wall plate then just leave off mud plate entirely because he will have a lot of patching to do later to slip a mud plate on anyway then remud (or use an over sized wall plate). Also the OP will be the only one who ever knows this box exists without a wall plate. If wire is pulled before burial, then I'd use a flat steel cover before drywalling over it.
Where are you that residential conceled wiring is done in conduit??? The only time conduit is uded in residential wiring here in Ontario is for exposed wiring, particularly unfinished basement and garage where wiring is exposed top possible damage, unfinished ceilings where someone may hang things on it, or in steel studs (occaisionally)
Chicago and the majority of its suburbs require steel conduit. Even if your town does not require conduit most homeowners here insist on it or the builders just use conduit anyway, its the norm, so few builders (even if they could) use romex.
Here in the South East the majority of homes are wired with Romex. Some high end homes may be wired in conduit but it's rare. Most commercial buildings in this area are wired with conduit or MC cable but if it has wooden studs, it could be wired with Romex depending on the municipality or inspection department. Some of the wiring I've seen in the backwoods where there is no such thing as an electrical inspector is downright scary but the power company won't hook up to something that is obviously dangerous.
TDD
Probably Chicago -- something about a big fire a few years back made them kinda paranoid...
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