Now that the basement is cemented, the well is drilled and the gas line is buried underground
you can begin to allow more of the sub contractors to start working in the house. Generally
the plumber will start running the gas lines inside the house and also hook up the gas line
outside the house so that you can schedule the gas company to come out and hook up the gas
line to the main supply pipe at the road. The gas company will pressure test the line
on your property before they hook the line up to the main line. They want to make sure that
there are no leaks between the main line and the house. The plumber generally will finish any
water lines that they did not finish earlier and hook them up to the water supply coming either
from a well if you have a well or a city water supply.
Now that the basement floor is cemented, the furnace can be installed and hooked up to the
heating ducts that may or may not have already been installed. Furnace location is important
both for how the furnace heats the house and also for the future if you decide you want to
finish off your basement. Depending on where you locate the furnace and how large of an area you
will be heating, you may want to consider two furnaces. We went with the main furnace in the
basement to heat the basement and first floor and a secondary unit in the attic to heat the second
floor.
Generally the electrican is usually the last sub contractor of this group to start as it is
generally thought that waste pipes and heating ducts are harder to curve over and around
obstructions, where as electrical, phone and cable wire can be snaked in between pipes and walls
a little bit easier.
Make sure that you "over" wire the house as you can always leave outlets unused, but it will be
hard to put in extra outlets later on when the drywall is on the walls. Also, don't limit the
phone and cable to the traditional places(i.e-kitchen, bedrooms, etc) as you may find yourself wishing
later on that you could plug a phone or fax machine into a place in the house that you had not counted
on using before. This is also when you need to decide what type of outlets you will have on the
outside of the house, do you want electric, phone and cable? If you are going to run your own
wire, make sure that you secure the wire to the wall every few feet to make sure that the wire doesn't
come loose during the remainder of the building process. Don't worry about hooking all of the wires
up to the panel box or the punch down block at this time. If you have live wires throughout the house
and one of the drywallers cut a wire by accident, not only will the wire be damaged, but the worker
could be hurt. Label all of the wires that are by the panel and punchdown block so you know which
wire goes to which rooms when you hook everything up.