Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Used 1993, 1996, and 1999 versions of this book., September 12, 2002
I have wired four new homes and remodeled one using the concepts in this book. The homes ranged from 3200 to 5000 square feet in size. The 5000 sq/ft house used 400 amp service for the main panels. I am a do it yourself homeowner. I am a firmware engineer by trade so I don't wire for a living. This book was magnificent in helping me understand how to put the entire picture together for a large complicated home. These homes included security systems, phone systems, home audio systems, internet wiring, and of course power and lighting everywhere that I needed it. I learned so much from this book and the way that it walks through each room in the house. I recommend following it all of the way through on your own house plans. What it lacks I was able to find by looking at homes being constructed in the area. Things like how high up do I put the outlets and switches comes to mind. The code changes every three years and so does this book. I got most of my knowledge from the 1993 book. I used the 1996 and 1999 books on the later homes but the basics were already there. All code changes are very well covered in the latest edition and nothing is dropped from edition to edition that I know of. I am very impressed with Mullin's style and thought that I could show some of my gratitude back for the help that he gave me to do this over and over again. I have recommended this book to many friends who have also wired their own homes. If I needed to I would buy it again but I have decided to live in one of my houses for a while. What I believe this book has that others do not is a grasp of the whole picture. I was able to do the entire project each time with this book. I installed the service conductors from the transformer to the house. I built up the main breaker panels and subpanels. I performed the load calculations to make sure that all circuits were properly balanced. I don't think that many of the other wiring books cover all of these things. You can perform the entire wiring of your residential home by yourself with the knowledge that you can glean from this book and a few questions asked of your local inspectors and examining the work of electricians wiring in your area. Make sure that you follow the code and not the local electricians though because I do not know how some of them pass inspections with some of the work that they do. Good luck on your project.
Thanks Ray for a great book.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding resource for an electrical Do-It-Yourselfer, February 11, 1998
By A Customer
In preparing to upgrade my home's service and install extensive wiring in my newly-built garage, I picked up this book, among others, to help in planning and code compliance. This book was the single most valuable of all my electrical references. It contains a substantial amount of detail about a broad variety of residential wiring scenarios, but is laid out in such a way that it is very easy to read and follow. It makes a logical progression from simple situations to more complex issues such as voltage drop calculations and service-entrance planning, and each section builds on knowledge from previous sections. Each section has classroom-style knowledge review questions to aid you in apprehending the key information from that section. The book also contains a number of useful tables reprinted from the 1996 National Electric Code, and makes a handy reference even after the big project is done. Using this book, it was very easy to write up a detailed, meticulously code-compliant work plan that truly knocked the city inspector's socks off. In my view, this book is an essential purchase for anyone planning to do their own electrical work.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly organized and not on point, February 27, 2007
I spent quite a bit of time researching to find a good book on residential wiring for a rewire project I was looking to tackle in my early 1900 house. In the end, I purchased three books:
1. Electrical Wiring Residential - by Mullin
2. Wiring a House (for Pros by Pros) - by Cauldwell
3. Complete Guide to Home Wiring (Black and Decker)
Unfortunately I have to say that I found this (Mullin's book) to not be user friendly. While I think there is a wealth of information within the book, it is not organized in a very logical manner and tends to be filled with pages of details that aren't that meaningful for most readers.
For example, Chapter two spends quite a bit of time discussing electrical symbols commonly found on an electrical plan [how many people really need to know this?]. Then, intermixed in Chapter two is information of the number of wires in a box, selecting the right size box, etc. [important info for most people doing a wiring job]. Further, the specific NEC code is typically co-mingled with other [often not important] information throughout chapters, making it very hard to easily find code requirements on a specific topic. Point being, the book isn't logically organized, basically to the point of being distracting.
My recommendation to the author would be to have chapters laid out in a more logic manner (i.e. a chapter on a specific topic, e.g. a chapter on wire, a chapter on boxes, a chapter on lighting, a chapter on recetacles, etc.) and to have a consistent approach to where the code requirements would be found in each chapter (e.g. at the end of the chapter), so it is is always easy for the reader to find.
As side note, this book does not have any information on old wire and minimal information on doing a rewire project. Further, it does little to provide meaningful and helpful/practical hints.
I personally preferred Cauldwell's Wiring a House (for Pros by Pros). In my opinion, Cauldwell's book focuses more on giving the information you will TRULY need to know to get a job done. I got much more out of the approximate 200 pages in Cauldwell's book than the 700 pages in Mullin's book. Cauldwell's book is better organized, more on point, and written in far clearer language. Further, while Cauldwell's book respects and presents the code, he takes it further by providing best practices ("above code") and also provides many helpful/practical hints.
To the extent you want a book that has every detail on the topic of residential electrical (such as a several paragraph explanation of why code uses the term "Luminaire" rather than "Light Fixture"), then this is a book for you. If you want a book that gives the information you need to get the majority of residential jobs done AND delivers this information in a manner that is concise and easy to understand... then I recommend a different book, such as Cauldwell's book noted above.
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