Has anyone had much rewiring done in their apartments? If so, how, and about how much money? Assorted things I’d like to have done, and I have no idea how feasible these are:
One wall (tiled) of our kitchen has no electrical outlets. I’d like to put one there. The other face of that wall, in our second bedroom, does have an electrical outlet. At the moment I’m using an extension cord that runs under the kitchen door from the living room.
I’d like to move a couple of light switches. Right now they’re kind of in the middle of walls and are preventing me from installing shelving. I’d prefer the switches to be shifted about 30cm, but I have a sneaking suspicion that’d involve a jackhammer.
I’d like to rewire the switches. One switch controls two lights, and that’s good - I want another different switch on the opposite side of the room, which currently only controls one light of those lights, to also control both.
What kind of work would these entail? This is in a typical Taiwanese taller apartment building - these walls are painted concrete, except for that tiled wall in the kitchen.
I’m writing this as a literature major who usually has trouble getting batteries aligned correctly, so please try your best to make things as simple as possible. Thanks for any tips or experiences you can share!
possible, have to measure carefully then drill a hole in the kitchen that connects to the space in the wall where the bedroom plug is. It could be tricky, but probably OK. will probably also involve a small jack hammer to make space for the connection box behind the face plate on the wall.
don’t even think about it, unless you don’t mind jackhammers. you would have to cut a hole in the wall to reroute the wire (unless you didn’t mind a length of conduit (external pipe) stretching across to the new light switch. That would be much easier, but rather cha bu duo. But Hey, when in taiwan…
could be tricky, unless there exists in the interior pipe that the wire runs in some way of getting access to the power line for that extra light, or some string to pull an additional wire through to the light.
And after all that, just remember that, as a literature major, you know as much about electrics as most Taiwanese electricians anyway, so why not try it yourself?
FWIW, in a high-rise building, the interior dividing walls are usually made of a sigle layer of red bricks or cinderblocks held together with mortar.
When the paint or tiles are removed, It may look like the walls are made of concrete, but actually it’s just a skimcoat of cement. It’ll crack and fall off with few hammer blows.
It’s a lot easier to drill and chisel brickwork compared to reinforced concrete, so moving the light switches a short distance will be easy.
As for your complex light control, you’d need to a run wiring right across a room, which would be a lot of mess. If you want more flexble control of your lighting, you can replace the standard wall switches with remote control units. A master wall switch then controls one or more slave switches, and some systems have a handset so you can control everything from an armchair. You can buy basic wireless wallswitch replacement kits in hardware stores.
I live in a crumbling gongwu and I have discussed similar projects with my trusty handyman -meaning rewiring the whole place before I come home one day to BBQ pets.
Has anyone had much rewiring done in their apartments? If so, how, and about how much money? Assorted things I’d like to have done, and I have no idea how feasible these are:
1)This one is easy as pie. An extra outlet will be set outside in less than 5 minutes. You want it inside the wall,you say? That takes a bit longer. He just pulls a line from another wire, no biggie. .
Probably, or some fancy outside wiring -which doesn’t have to be unsightly, can be out of sight.
Switches are easy to install, like changing to dimmers. y dream is a clapper.
If you have to do the whole rewiring, it takes about 3 days -which is why I haven’t done it yet- and at least a 2 man job -yes, they say they will open the walls, but will fix he holes -they say.
Being a linguistics major, and having a trustworthy repairman, I stay away from any home repairs. However, since I come from a line of professional or semi professional electricians and carpenters, I concur: if you try it, what’s there to lose? BTW, how much is your insurance?
Interesting. I thought that these were only used in the fancy 豪宅, I didn’t know that the average Joe could install one in his place. I’d love to have one for the bedroom. Do you know how much these systems cost?
These aren’t luxury home automation packages, they are china-made DIY stuff.
From memory the drop-in replacements were somewhere between NT$500 and 1000 per wall switch (for ceiling lamps) or wall socket (for floor lamps).
There are also drop in systems for ceiling fans (light control + 3 fan speeds). I put one in my bathroom ceiling crawlspace when I got fed up with the extractor fan turning off with the light (seriously, what imbecile thought up that?)
The fake B&Qs and big hardware stores sell some basic kit, but there’s a better range in dedicated electronics shops. Or you can check online shops.