As I was leveling the bay, it occurred to me that before I put down the OSB subfloor, I needed to run the conduit for the electrical box. In Chicago we have to run EMT conduit for all electrical. No Romex wire, no BX armored cable, just hard pipe conduit. Looking at the, er, generous amount of framing I used when we installed the windows, there was no way to run the conduit sideways. The window itself meant I couldn’t go up, and the masonry below made it difficult to go down, but still less difficult than the other options. Regardless, resolving this now, before I put down the subfloor, would be vastly easier than doing so afterward.
Electrical box in bay
Dean came over Saturday and we figured out how to run the conduit with the least damage to framing, brick, subfloor, and spray foam. The box is mounted in the center of the window and the conduit goes straight down before bending at an angle to the left. The shim I put down on top of the brick needed to be cut at an angle so the conduit could pass through, directly beneath the subfloor. Dean notched out the sole plate while I chiseled out a narrow channel in the brick behind the front joist with my rotary hammer and drilled a hole through the joist in the center of the bay.
Conduit bending around brick
With some careful bending (followed by some not so careful bending) we managed to get the first piece through the joist and the second piece around the channel and up into the wall next to the front door. That meant we could put down the OSB in the bay, which required just a little bit of notching on the underside to fit around the conduit where it curved up into the wall. Now when it comes time to do the rest of the electrical we won’t have to worry about how to put this in without damaging the brand new subfloor.
March 4, 2014 at 12:40 pm
Matt, it looks like the electrical box and conduit may sit towards the cold side of the insulation you have planned. Unless you also insulate the building from the outside, the electrical boxes will all turn into cold and drafty points and you may end up getting condensation accumulating in the EMT. Moving the electrical stuff towards the warm side of the insulation will help with preventing those problems… see also: http://delafleur.com/blog/?p=3379
March 4, 2014 at 12:53 pm
The box is at the front of the wall, so there will be a couple inches of spray foam behind it. We also have 2″ of polyiso on the outside.