Wiring is the cheapest thing to get right while the walls are open and the most expensive to fix afterwards. How to work out the load honestly, decide where points really go, and avoid the shortcuts that show up three summers later.
Most of the rewiring calls we take in Sasaram and Bikramganj are not about a wiring job that failed. They are about a wiring job that was planned for the house somebody had fifteen years ago, and then the family added two ACs, a geyser, a submersible pump, an inverter and a kitchen full of appliances to it.
Wiring is the one part of a house that is cheap to get right while the walls are open and painful to change afterwards. It is worth an afternoon of proper thought before the electrician starts chasing walls.
Work out the load honestly
The first question is not what you run today. It is what this house will be running in ten years.
Sit down with the plan and list, room by room, every fixed appliance the family will eventually own — not the ones you have. The honest list almost always includes more ACs than people admit to at planning time, a geyser, a pump, a washing machine, a fridge, a microwave, and at some point an inverter. A house planned for the current list is a house that gets rewired later.
Your electrician then turns that list into a load figure and a circuit layout. We will not print numbers here, because the correct sizing depends on the actual appliances, the distances involved and your sanctioned connection — anyone quoting one figure for "a three-bedroom house" is guessing.
The one thing not to economise on: the cable feeding the house, the earthing and the distribution board. Those three carry everything else, they are buried or fixed once, and replacing them later means breaking finished walls. Save money on fittings and fancy switch plates if you must. Do not save it here.
Separate circuits, and why they matter
The single biggest difference between good and bad wiring is how the house is split into circuits. A cheap job runs the whole floor off one or two circuits. A properly planned job separates them, so that:
- Heavy fixed loads — each AC, the geyser, the pump — sit on their own dedicated circuits.
- Lighting is separate from power sockets, so a socket fault does not leave the house dark.
- The kitchen has its own circuit, because it now carries more appliances than any other room.
- Whatever runs on the inverter is on its own clearly identified circuits.
- Outdoor points, the pump and the bore well are separated from indoor circuits.
The benefit is practical. When something faults, only that part of the house goes off, and finding it takes minutes instead of an evening. During Bihar's long summer cuts, a house wired this way runs the essentials on inverter without dragging everything else along.
Where points actually get needed
Walk the house in your head as a family, at different times of day, and mark the points. The ones people regret leaving out are almost always the same:
- Sockets behind where the bed will go, on both sides, for chargers and lamps.
- Kitchen sockets at working height, spread along the counter rather than gathered at one end.
- A point on every terrace and in the courtyard, in a proper weatherproof box, for pumps, festival lighting and Chhath preparations.
- Stair and passage lights on two-way switches at both ends.
- A point near the entrance for the inverter, the router and a charging shelf.
- Points for wall fans in rooms that will get hot, and for exhaust fans in kitchen and bathrooms.
- Somewhere sensible for the washing machine, with water and drainage already planned around it.
Extra points at wiring stage cost very little. Extension boards trailing across a floor cost a great deal, particularly in the monsoon when floors get wet.
Wire sizing, and what undersizing costs you
Every circuit needs a conductor sized for the current it will carry and the distance it has to travel. Undersized wire gets warm under load, and a conductor that runs warm year after year ages its own insulation until it fails somewhere inside a wall.
The less dramatic cost is voltage drop. Push a decent load down a thin wire over a long run and the voltage at the far end sags. Motors and compressors hate that, and our summer evening supply is often low already — an undersized run shortens the life of a pump or an AC compressor.
The sizing has to be worked out for your house: the load on that circuit, the length of the run and how the cable is installed. Insist the electrician can explain the choice for each circuit rather than using the same wire everywhere.
The distribution board and earthing
The board is where the house is protected. A well-built one has a main switch, an ELCB or RCCB for earth-leakage protection, and individual MCBs per circuit, each sized for the wire it protects — not a bigger one fitted because a smaller one kept tripping. It should be in a dry, accessible place, at a height an adult can reach and a child cannot, and every way should be labelled so that anyone can find the right switch in a power cut.
Earthing is decided at this stage too. The electrode, its location, the soil around it and the route of the earth conductor all matter, and once the floor is finished none of it is easy to revisit. Every socket, every metal-bodied appliance, the pump and the geyser must be connected to it.
Work at the meter and the incoming supply is for a licensed electrician, whoever does the rest of the house.
ACs, geysers and inverter wiring
An AC point is not a normal socket. It needs a dedicated circuit, appropriate protection, a proper earth and a position that suits where the indoor unit will actually be mounted — decide that now, not in April when the AC arrives. If a stabiliser will be used, leave room for it.
Geysers are similar: dedicated circuit, its own switch outside the bathroom, and a good earth, because a geyser is a metal tank full of water on a wall in a wet room.
Inverter wiring is worth planning properly rather than bolting on later. Decide in advance which lights, fans and sockets should stay alive during a cut, put them on their own circuits, and have the inverter feed those circuits from the board. The common alternative — one wire from the inverter feeding a few extension boards — is untidy, hard to fault-find and easy to overload.
Concealed or surface conduit
Concealed wiring looks better and is what nearly everyone chooses for a new house. Done properly, with conduit that pull-wires can actually be drawn through, it is perfectly serviceable. Done badly, with wires cemented straight into a chase, it cannot be replaced at all without breaking the wall.
Surface conduit is honest, cheap, and easy to alter or extend. It makes good sense in an older house being partially rewired, in outbuildings, and on damp outside walls where burying wire in a wall that seeps every monsoon is asking for trouble.
Whichever you choose, keep a marked drawing of where the runs go. The person who has to drill a hole for a shelf in eight years will thank you for it.
Before the work starts
Agree the point-by-point layout in writing, and agree who supplies the material. Ask what is included and what is not — our electrical work is described on the services page and current charges are on the rate list, with GST extra, spare parts billed at actual cost after we tell you, and a bill for every job.
We take wiring and rewiring work in Sasaram, Bikramganj, Dehri-on-Sone, Nokha, Mohania and Daudnagar, and the rest of the list is on the service areas page. Call +91 96315 11974 between 8:00 AM and 6:30 PM to arrange a site visit.
Frequently asked questions
There is no standard number, because it depends on how the room will be used and where the furniture will sit. Plan by walking through a normal day as a family and marking what gets plugged in where. Sockets on both sides of a bed, several spread along the kitchen counter and a weatherproof point on the terrace are the ones people most often regret leaving out.
It looks better and suits a new house, provided the conduit is laid so wires can actually be pulled and replaced later. Wires cemented straight into a chase cannot be changed without breaking the wall. Surface conduit is cheaper and easy to alter, which makes it sensible for partial rewiring, outbuildings and damp outside walls.
Yes. Heavy fixed loads should each have a dedicated circuit with its own protection and a proper earth, sized for that appliance and the length of the run. Sharing an AC or geyser with general sockets overloads the circuit, causes nuisance tripping and is the usual reason a socket or switch starts burning a few summers later.
Usually yes, but how neatly depends on how the house is wired now. If lights and sockets are already split into circuits at the board, the chosen circuits can be fed from the inverter cleanly. If everything runs off one or two circuits, some rewiring is needed. An electrician should see the board before quoting anything.
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