I'm about to rough in a train room in the basement, about 12' x 20'. There currently is a single light bulb in the room that turns on with three other lights and is in the same circuit as a few other outlets, sump pump outlet, water softener outlet and another switched light. In short that circuit is pretty full. When I wired the rest of the basement, I tore out wiring for a "shop" the previous owner had in the basement. It's now just a single wire hanging from the ceiling back to a 20 amp breaker. I'll have power needs for lighting (undecided), DCC, computer, radio and ???. I can add another circuit if I need to. Now the question. How would you wire this room? I would like a master on/off switch for the outlets. Looking for ideas. Thanks in advance.
Run another line, you can never have enough power! biggrin: Seriously though, I'd leave the 20 amp in the ceiling to power all of your lighting and put a switch leg in. Run another dedicated line to power the layout, computer, radio and whatever else you want to put on it. 15 Amp should be fine for that.It's obviously so much easier to do in rough stage that you may as well. All this being said, I have one dedicated line I ran to my train room (extra bedroom) that runs everything just fine. It's 20 amps.
Sounds like good advice from JVolz. And his NAME sounds so much like the guy who invented "volts," I would think he may be an authority!
I'd recommend a separate switch for the layout lighting too.. depending on how you plan on lighting it.. so you can turn off the room lights and leave the layout lighting on.
Myself I would use the existing 20 amp line and wire all the layout lights and power boxes to it. 20 amps should be fine for this. Also I would wire a switch right beside the door to turn everything off when you leave the room. That way you wont leave something like soldering iron in a live outlet.....Mike
If you're going to put outlets on a switch consider wiring them half-and-half, i.e. some are switch controlled and some are constant. Probably the best way to do this is to get the four-receptacle boxes, but even if you just use the standard two-receptacle plates, most outlets have a little metal strip on the side that you can pop off and wire them separately. I wired the upstairs of my uncle's house like this about 10 years ago. In the kids' bedrooms, every outlet was split with the top receptacle switch-controlled and the bottom receptacle always-on.
