It seems like it has taken a very long time to get the circuit breaker box wired up. Without much experience at this, every step is a decision followed by a need to buy something new followed by another decision.
But after several weeks, we’ve gotten the main circuit breaker box in the first house installed, along with the wiring for each circuit out from the circuit breaker to the first junction point of each.
Here is a picture of the outside:
And here it is with the cover open:
The loose wire with the red tape on the lower right side is the only piece still left to do. We decided to add a circuit for an air conditioner now even though we’re not likely to install the air-conditioning for at least another year. So we hadn’t picked up the extra breaker yet, but we bought it after taking this picture and it should be installed tomorrow.
It isn’t the most beautifully wired circuit breaker box I’ve seen on the net, but it is on the clean end of the spectrum. And color coded. And we’ve labeled every single wire going out with a label maker (as well as the other end of those wires too), so that gives me a bit more confidence we’ll know what is what if we have to fix something later.
I realized that it is much easier to add a circuit to an existing box because all of the tough wiring and design decisions have already been made. You just need to follow the existing logic. When you begin from scratch, it is difficult to know where to begin because there is nothing there to fit into.
But I think we mostly have a handle on it now, and I’m hoping that things will start to speed up with the installation soon.