Without an electrical plan, it will be difficult to even offer an allowance.

Our last home was drawn by the builder's draftsman. He included an electrical plan.

Our current home also had an electrical plan.

Standard home plans by an architect include an electrical plans.

In my practice, I always included a schematic "utility plan" that showed locations of power, lighting, signal/TV/internet, HVAC, major plumbing, etc. The respective subcontractors were responsible for the bidding, design and installation of their systems to achieve the items designated in the plan.

Specific fixtures and fittings may or may have been called out, depending on the desire of the owner.

We used a residential designer and he also included the electrical plan as part of construction drwaings. Make sure you have this before you have a contract signed or you may find a lot of chage orders later on.

Inspite of having a electrical plan and reviewing it before we missed a few and some of them resulted in a chnage order. Change orders are always expensive so better to have it now

good luck with your project

This post was edited by Renovator8 on Sun, Mar 23, 14 at 11:53

Thank you very much for the replies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like in a fixed price contract, you would choose all lighting fixtures beforehand?

I'm not sure what the name of the contract is that I'm looking for. I think I would prefer to have some basics spelled out beforehand, with room for flexibility during the build without incurring multiple change orders and driving up the cost. For example, I think I would like to have an allowance for lighting fixtures so that I don't have to choose them all before signing the contract.

And what about an area like the kitchen? It's my understanding that we'll meet with the kitchen designer and lay out everything during the build. How are you supposed to plan outlet locations and lighting before you design the kitchen layout. I guess many people do the entire kitchen design before bidding?

good luck with your project

This post was edited by Renovator8 on Sun, Mar 23, 14 at 11:54

My kitchen designer put together an electrical scheme as an optional fee. I only changed the recessed lighting plan, after visiting a local lighting store. Having the plan before demo began was well worth it; no 'on the fly' decisions while GC standing there taping foot waiting for an answer.

My recollection is that whether the electric plan is included in a designer's plans is very regional. It certainly isn't the norm here.

Electrical design has a relatively small impact on total cost of the house. And upgrades can be charged fairly easily and fairly.

For example - can lights $80 each, an extra outlet $50 or whatever. So there isn't any great urgency to spell out everything before bid. Is it better to spell everything out - sure. But there are already too many decisions to make and most have a lot more to do with bottom line than the electrical plan.

Now you can have 10 $1000 chandeliers or 2 $200 ones and sure that is a big difference. But that is more of a lighting fixture choice issue. 10 chandeliers would certainly not be the norm....

Rough electrical runs $4 a sqft in my part of the world and even with a lot of add ons, it would be hard to get past $5. So you are looking at less than 1% of total cost as far as variability. And you save nothing by specing out an outlet in your master closet at design stage vs later (I guess depending on how your contract is set up).

Thanks again for all of the responses. We are going to have a lighting supply company draw up the electrical design. If we end up using them for our supplies during the build the design will be free. If not, they only want $250.

We aren't going to specify fixtures at this time. An allowance will be included for that. We'll certainly take a look around to make sure the allowance is sufficient before signing a contract.