Well, she thinks she wants a recepticle in the living room floor. Anyone have any pros or cons, other than the dust/fur/mop-moisture/tripping problems I'm looking at? It's a slab of concrete over which we'll install tile. Tom Someday, it'll all be over....
When I built my house a few years ago I installed a few electrical boxes in the basement floor with conduit up the wall; it all worked fine. You need a special "box" with the correct connectors to conduit, it is sort of like working with pvc pipes. It is well worth it to have those outlets! This is my shop area in the basement, 18x30. Oh, pull extra wire so you never run out.
Mike Coonrod
Tom wrote:
Lot of work to do properly and a lot of concrete cutting for a channel to run the wire to the outlet
John
no that just about covers all the problems. maybe you can place it under a piece of furniture? What on earth would it be used for? A shop or commercial space I understand but a living room?
BRuce
Tom wrote:
BRuce wrote:>no that just about covers all the problems. maybe you can place it
We've recently removed a half-wall in the living room. The floorspace is huge, and our furniture arrangement is not all that near the existing outlets on the remaining walls. I might just make the cords to the floor lamps longer, and tape over the trip points in the trafficways. Tom Someday, it'll all be over....
! =-----
Same here ... very handy with lamps, couches and tables in the middle of a room. No problems if they're done correctly and you use the correct receptacle covers.
I recall something about the electrical codes prohibiting them in at least some cases. You may want to check it out.
You can also cover them with a carefully cut scrap of carpet if they're not being used. We have cut berber and the outlet is almost invisible with the path in place. (Turns out we didn't properly envision the furniture layout when we told the builder where to put the outlet. D'OH!!)
|Well, she thinks she wants a recepticle in the living room floor. Anyone have |any pros or cons, other than the dust/fur/mop-moisture/tripping problems I'm |looking at? It's a slab of concrete over which we'll install tile. Tom |Someday, it'll all be over....
I've got two in my living room, but they were put in the slab when it was placed.
You're going to have to do some concrete cutting and that ain't easy.
You can do this. Several of the suppliers, Hubbell, Leviton, etc. have NEC blessed flat conductors that are glued to the concrete and feed into a floor mounted box. Carpet is placed over it with no bumps. The box can be on top of the floor or can be set into the floor so the plate is flush with the surface. They're not free but are affordable. I had some installed in my conference room not long ago.
RB
Tom wrote:
Yup - exactly what they said.
The builder suggested to my wife and I and we looked like him like he was crazy. Then he explained why it was a good idea. We have 3 of them in the LR. Great Idea.
So, you always want your lamps in the same place? Forever?
George wrote:>So, you always want your lamps in the same place? Forever?
Well, the layout/orientation of a room usually dictates where you'll likely place stuff. Wanna watch t.v. without seeing the light from a window reflecting off the screen? How about reading a book with the same window at your back? Forever's not so long...Tom Someday, it'll all be over....
When I built my shop, I wanted to put some outlets in the floor so that I wouldn't have cords running to machines like the table saw. I was afraid that if I had an outlet in the floor, it would fill with sawdust and that just seemed to have more issues than I wanted to think about. My shop is upstairs, over the garage. What I did was to mount boxes on the ceiling of the garage, with the outlets facing down, and cut holes in the floor through which I pass the cord, then plug in from downstairs. I get little piles of sawdust on the cars under the holes, but other than that - it works fine.
Had a long discussion with the electrical inspector, he thought that it might not be allowed to pass the cables through the floor without a conduit, but as he put it, you could just unplug the saw, and I could inspect, then you could plug it back in after I left. When I asked if he would like me to do this, he just said not to bother, that he didn't see anything wrong with my solution, and a lot which was right.
The garage/shop is a timber frame building, so there were many items on the building inspectors list which were NA.
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