Electrical Wiring Residential: Based on the 2005 National Electric Code

I have recently completed rewiring a cabin and a old house in the Twin Cities area. My projects were probably a little more complex than some as they involved installing new service entrances and new panels. More importantly they involved getting an electrical permit, which meant visits from the local electrical inspector. For this reason I did a lot of reading. One of the books I read was the this book. I really liked it because of the detailed code information many books left out or assumed you already knew. Written as a textbook for students in the electrical trade it covers things like outlet spacing, number of circuits required in a kitchen, size of conductors for service entrances, box fill violations ect. The great thing about Mullin's approach is he covers a house room by room with what the code requires with references. The actual National Electrical Code is not well organized and you would spend a lot of time trying to find what you need. By applying Mullin's book to my work, all of my projects passed inspection the first time around! I agree with other reviewers that it does not cover some wiring skills things like fishing wires through old houses or how to wire an outlet or switch. For this reason, I have three other suggestions: "Wiring a House" by Rex Cauldwell. This was a good book for learning how to plan out the wiring for my projects, it has excellent photographs and how to information. I especially like his "above code" suggestions for making your wiring more useful and safer. Another suggestion is the Black and Decker Wiring book, it is very good at showing the basics of wiring and has good color photographs. I think it is much better than the Home Depot book. There is also a handy little book (and cheap!) called "Step by Step Guidebook on Home Wiring Diagrams" by Ray McReynolds. It is a small orange book I found at Home Depot and have seen at other home improvement stores. This book is not flashy and is easily overlooked or dismissed, it just has black and white drawings of wiring diagrams for just about every wiring situation a homeowner could get into, like three way and 4 way switches, outlets, lights ect. This book also shows different ways to wire all these devices, such as when the power comes in at the switch or comes in at the light ect. The bottom line, if you are doing any complex wiring in your home and want to be code compliant this is a good book for you. If you are just looking for how to wire switches and outlets, buy the Black and Decker book and the little home wiring diagram book. Happy Wiring!

I have wired four new homes and remodeled one using the concepts in this book. The homes ranged from 3200 to 5000 square feet in size. The 5000 sq/ft house used 400 amp service for the main panels. I am a do it yourself homeowner. I am a firmware engineer by trade so I don't wire for a living. This book was magnificent in helping me understand how to put the entire picture together for a large complicated home. These homes included security systems, phone systems, home audio systems, internet wiring, and of course power and lighting everywhere that I needed it. I learned so much from this book and the way that it walks through each room in the house. I recommend following it all of the way through on your own house plans. What it lacks I was able to find by looking at homes being constructed in the area. Things like how high up do I put the outlets and switches comes to mind. The code changes every three years and so does this book. I got most of my knowledge from the 1993 book. I used the 1996 and 1999 books on the later homes but the basics were already there. All code changes are very well covered in the latest edition and nothing is dropped from edition to edition that I know of. I am very impressed with Mullin's style and thought that I could show some of my gratitude back for the help that he gave me to do this over and over again. I have recommended this book to many friends who have also wired their own homes. If I needed to I would buy it again but I have decided to live in one of my houses for a while. What I believe this book has that others do not is a grasp of the whole picture. I was able to do the entire project each time with this book. I installed the service conductors from the transformer to the house. I built up the main breaker panels and subpanels. I performed the load calculations to make sure that all circuits were properly balanced. I don't think that many of the other wiring books cover all of these things. You can perform the entire wiring of your residential home by yourself with the knowledge that you can glean from this book and a few questions asked of your local inspectors and examining the work of electricians wiring in your area. Make sure that you follow the code and not the local electricians though because I do not know how some of them pass inspections with some of the work that they do. Good luck on your project.Thanks Ray for a great book.

This book is well worth its price. I am currently in the process of preparing a set of plans to get my building permit and start a major remodeling project. This book comes with a complete set of architectural plans at 1/4"=1' scale for a residence. The electrical floor plan is very complete and also provides a detailed panel schedule. The book goes through the wiring of each room for the example residence. NEC code issues are discussed as they arise in the planning of the wiring for each room. The text provides the details needed to perform the actual wiring task also. The book also suggests lighting suggestions for kitchen and bathroom and even includes several photos of lighting fixtures. Very impressive!

This book thoroughly covers all phases of residential wiring. It covers residential blueprints, specifications, planning the job, temporary service, service sizing, box sizing, conductor sizing, complete rough-in, trim out and more. It explains relevant sections of the NEC in detail. Excellent book.

In preparing to upgrade my home's service and install extensive wiring in my newly-built garage, I picked up this book, among others, to help in planning and code compliance. This book was the single most valuable of all my electrical references. It contains a substantial amount of detail about a broad variety of residential wiring scenarios, but is laid out in such a way that it is very easy to read and follow. It makes a logical progression from simple situations to more complex issues such as voltage drop calculations and service-entrance planning, and each section builds on knowledge from previous sections. Each section has classroom-style knowledge review questions to aid you in apprehending the key information from that section. The book also contains a number of useful tables reprinted from the 1996 National Electric Code, and makes a handy reference even after the big project is done. Using this book, it was very easy to write up a detailed, meticulously code-compliant work plan that truly knocked the city inspector's socks off. In my view, this book is an essential purchase for anyone planning to do their own electrical work.