Jul 24 2008

Planning for Electrical Outlets in Your Log Home

Published by laura at 2:47 pm under Building A Log Home

This week we’re working on the interior wall of our log home build and I thought it would be a great time to show you how we pulled this off.

Use a router to create the space required for your electrical outlets and you won't need to show unsightly junction boxes mounted to your walls.

Log homes are not like traditional framed houses in that there is little room for adding outlets, wires and switches (running inside the walls) once the house is built. You can’t just knock out a square of drywall and run wires down 2×4s when your walls are 6 inches of wood.

In the photo below, Eric is using my router (that I used to use in preparation of custom country signs) without the safety guard to create perfectly measured, rectangular cut-outs for the outlets.

Working on creating the finished outlet hole in the log wall.

At half the depth, here is the first pass of the clothes dryer outlet. Eric will need to make one more pass to make this outlet deep enough to hold the junction box in our main floor laundry room.

The finished product!

Once the hole has been completed, we must also make space for the electrical wire to pass through the log wall and into the basement (where the breaker box will be installed).

Using a 24 inch drill bit, Eric creates a channel for electrical wires through the interior log wall and into the basement.

The log containing the outlet for our dryer will be on the second log, so we must also measure and drill into the first log laid to ensure the electrical wiring passes through the logs smoothly. I think one of the nicest parts of this entire procedure is that the chance of a fire in our log home as a result of mice running through the walls and chewing on wire are slim to none!

The first log only has a channel to hold the wire. It is the second log that will hold the outlet.