What Electrical Upgrades to Consider When Building Your New Home!

If you are building a house in the Greater Des Moines area, at some point, the builder is probably going to ask you, "Hey, do you have any changes that you would like to make to the electrical?". 

Sometimes they do a plan walkthrough where you have a meeting and they show you the blueprint and where they have all of the outlets and the lights and all of those things. And sometimes they just make the plan and then they invite you over when it's time to install the electrical. And then you tour the house. No electrical has been added and you walk through the house and say, "Yep, there's going to be an outlet here, here, here, and here".

Electrical Upgrades to Consider when Building a House


Garage Outlets

Common upgrades we see buyers do when building a house would be a lot of extra outlets in the garage. The garage is a really common place to get extra outlets. And if you have power tools or I don't know,- big garage needs, you might need to have a special 220 outlet instead of a 110 outlet. I'm not an electrician. So I don't exactly speak the lingo, but I know that that costs extra.

Cabinet Lighting

A lot of people opt for under cabinet lighting. That's a nice thing to add if you have the budget for it. And it certainly gives you great ambiance when you're living in your home, so you get to enjoy it. Plus it adds a little bit of value later on.


Special Outlets

When you go to sell your house, you might have a deep freezer or a hot tub or a sauna. Something that requires one of those special outlets, whether it's a 220 or a 20 volt. Those are the things that you want to consider. If you already own it, where you're going to put it in your new house and have an outlet there for you.

Work Out Area

If you're planning a workout area in your basement do you need any outlets specifically for a treadmill, elliptical, or another workout machine? 

Christmas Light Package

The Christmas light package is generally where you have one outlet in a soffit, which would be like the roof that hangs over the side of the house behind the gutters. So you'd have an outlet in the soffit and there would be a switch maybe in your mudroom or inside the garage. The location of this switch could be different in every house. Regardless, you would have the ability to flip the switch from inside the house and it turns the Christmas the lights on because it powers that exterior soffit outlet.

Heated Driveway

I asked my Facebook friends, if they wish that they had anything about their electrical setup, thinking their feedback might be really good for buyers who are going through the building process. Some of the answers had an imaginary, endless budget where they wished that they had a heated driveway. I'm going to guess that a heated driveway costs a lot of money. The alternative to a heated driveway would be to find a house with a south-facing driveway. So then if there's snow or ice, the sun will work on melting your driveway off for you throughout the day. Or you could clean the driveway early in the day after the weather has happened and then it's much easier for the sun to melt off.

Radiant Floor Heat

Somebody else said they would love to have radiant floor heat in their house. And I agree, anytime I step on a bathroom tile floor that is warm, I just love that. Somebody else said I'd heat all of the floors in my house. My parents have radiant floor heat in their basement. They never really use their basement and maybe once a year they turn the basement floor heat on. Doesn't really seem worth it, does it? 

So, you know, it's a nice thing to have, but also how much are you actually going to use it?

Consider the investment to add your electrical upgrade - and how often you'll use it. I assume it's expensive to add radiant floor heat. No matter the expense, you'll want to consider the VALUE you'll get from the upgrade. 

Bluetooth Speakers in the Shower

One of my favorite suggestions that somebody had was to add speakers in the shower. Like built-in Bluetooth speakers. So you can listen to your podcast or you can listen to your Netflix, whatever you're doing, you can listen to it in the shower. The quality is likely better than the little Bluetooth speakers you can carry into the shower too. 

In general, everybody who commented on my post wanted more outlets and they wanted more outlets where it made sense.

Ethernet Connection in Every Bedroom

I know an ethernet is not really an outlet, but somebody said I'd like to have an ethernet in every room. And I just recently sold a brand new construction house with ethernet outlets in every bedroom. That's rare - I don't often see that many ethernet outlets in a house without the buyers specifically adding them.

My buyers LOVED it.

They both work from home and they would be using two of their four bedrooms as home offices. They each need an office because they don't work together, they need private space to work and of course for zoom calls. Now they won't have to sacrifice their internet speed.

Hardwired internet through the ethernet cable is going to be more reliable and perhaps quicker than wifi. And obviously buyers are looking for that kind of upgrade as well. In this example, it was a great addition by the builder. 

Outlet(s) in the Pantry

A lot of my Facebook friends voted for outlets in the pantry. Not just ONE outlet - but multiple. If you have a walk-in pantry, think about the appliances that you don't often use that are kind of big and bulky to carry from out of your pantry, into the kitchen. Maybe a crockpot, if you wanted to just set something aside to cook. Or if your counters get really busy during holiday dinners, it might be nice to have one of your sides cooking in the pantry in a Crockpot. Then there's that big mixer - those KitchenAid mixers are heavy! I keep mine in the corner of my countertop. That'd be nice if I had some space in a walk-in pantry and a plugin that I never had to move it. Although then that might spray food all over your pantry, if you get one of those wicked mixes. Pros and cons, pros and cons to all of those things! 

Walk-in Closet

Others wish they had more outlets in their walk-in closet. Usually your walk-in closet is just a closet. A lot of times there's not even a register for air conditioning or heat. (I would actually suggest getting a register for air and heat in there because, well, I think it's nice to have airflow in the closet, especially if it's a big closet.) Imagine if you have a big walk-in closet and you're getting ready for work, you might need to iron your shirt. You might need to steam it. Having an outlet in your closet is really useful. I have some other clients who charge their phones in their closets. So like that's the charging station and it keeps the phones away from them while they sleep. They have a very distraction-free life.

Under the Bathroom Sink

Another friend had recently added an outlet under the bathroom sink so they could put their blow dryer away without unplugging it. Now, of course, if you're going to have an outlet near water, you're going to want to make sure that it's GFCI protected. And I'm sure that this one was. She thought it was amazing that she could just put her power tools under the sink without having to unplug them.

Nightstand Height Outlets

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of things plugged in near my nightstand. I've got my phone/iWatch charger, a nightstand lamp, and an alarm clock. And then we have an external camera that's right outside our bedroom tied to the security system. (It looks over the backyard so we can see the critters crossing our patio!) Anyway, that's plugged into an outlet inside of our bedroom.


So outlet space is at a premium. 

Usually, you only have one outlet that has two plugins in it. And so I have the security camera plugged into one, and then I've got a power strip plugged into the other. Consider placing your outlets at nightstand height, but maybe even make them a quad outlet so you have more options. 

Fireplace Mantle Outlet

Someone else suggested a fireplace mantle outlet. Now you might be thinking there's usually already one there for the TV. She's not talking about the TV. She wants an outlet underneath the mantle so she can decorate for holidays, or have something plugged in under the mantle that is not related to the TV. It's nice to not have a cord hanging down in front of the fireplace. 

Outside Lights

Don't forget the outside lights. I can tell you from personal experience that one exterior outlet on your back patio or your back deck is not going to be enough because of course you have your party/twinkle/fun lights that you're going to put up. And then we have a water feature that needs to be plugged in. And then you might want to plug in a radio. (Although why do I have a radio that has a plugin? I don't know. I do.) 

I just know that having one outlet is not enough for all of the things that we want to plug in. Entertaining people with an outdoor dinner could be tricky if you want to use Crockpots or food warmers.

Another thought - wouldn't it be nice if you had an outlet on each side of the house? I did a final walkthrough recently and there was just one outlet outside and it was next to the air conditioner. Maybe I'm not remembering that correctly, but regardless there were not enough exterior outlets. Maybe you don't want to have a weed-eater that runs on gas. Maybe you need a weed eater that runs on electricity. Having more outlets everywhere on the exterior would be found valuable by most people. 

Porch Lights

I know we talked about the Christmas package where you have the light in a closet inside, and it turns on the one outlet in the soffit area for your Christmas lights. But what if you wanted to decorate your porch? Is there an outlet on your porch or in the soffit on your porch so that you can have twinkle lights there or a lit-up tree? Something that requires electricity would be nice to have somewhere to plug it in and maybe having outlets in the soffit that are not necessarily tied to the Christmas package might be a nice addition.


Outlet Halfway Down the Driveway

Another suggestion was from a man who likes to clean his cars in his driveway. He thought it would be great if there was an outlet halfway down his driveway, so that he didn't have to have extension cords running from the house out to the driveway while he cleaned his car. That might be nice during the holidays, if you want to put lit up trees in your yard.

USB Outlets

You may also want to consider adapting to the times. We are living in a smart world. Does it make sense for you to invest in smart outlets or smart lights or wifi-compatible things? I'm not entirely sure what all of those options are because I live in a dumb house. It was built in 1987 and it's not that smart, but we have adapters for things to make them smart. I can tell you, I do wish our house had USB outlets.

Remember, that house I told you about that had ethernet outlets in all of the bedrooms? They also had USB outlets in the kitchen. A regular outlet that had two plug-ins and it also had two USB plug-ins. So how awesome is that? Where you can charge your phone using a USB cord instead of using an outlet for your charger. 

If you were to add ALL of these things - your electrical budget is going to be over the top.

Choose wisely between what you'll NEED and what you'll WANT. No matter what you decide on today, guaranteed that in the future, you're going to wish you had something else. 

You might even regret one of the options that you choose and/or didn't do. You can always add electrical upgrades in the future. It might not be so easy to add more outlets in finished rooms. But, you can throw enough money at any problem and solve it. So if you find yourself wanting to make an upgrade after your house is built, or you live in an old "dumb" house like me, we have a list of electrician vendors that we'd be happy to share with you and you can call them and see if there is a way to get the electrical upgrade that you're looking for done.

If you'd like a copy of that list, let us know, and we'll be happy to email it over to you!

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