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When wiring a room, it is customary to provide a central hub near the door, where all the wire joints occur.

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Which is nice, but is still a nest of snakes to find out which is which in case of a problem. What I would immagine to be a cleaner solution, is a box with cover. When opened, it reveals joints, labels and ratings. An awesomely drawn sketch:

enter image description here

I am asking for either references to an existing device to facilite such setup, or reasons why that is a silly idea.

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  • I doubt most people would want to have an 'unnecessary' blank cover plate in every room.
    – brhans
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 13:21
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    In what country is this customary? This is nothing I've ever heard of. If wired with due care and diligence, you shouldn't have to worry about a problem. If a problem does occur (everyone is human, except for those androids), it's not 'that' hard to track down.
    – Connor Bredin
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 14:46
  • Also, the picture you posted is of a media location? IE: Power and what looks like some RG6 for a cable box. I would not be happy if I had to run every circuit in a room through a common junction point first, as it would likely add a lot of time and material to wiring a house. Just in the off chance that there may be a problem down the road.
    – Connor Bredin
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 14:53
  • @ConnorBredin, it's only about high voltage wires, as they naturally enter at a certain spot of the room. The picture is purely illustrative, from an image search.
    – user6459
    Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 14:47

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For what it's worth, in the United States, there are a couple problems with that method.

  • We have rules on "box fill" or how many wires are allowed in a box. You have to run the proper numbers, but for a wild guess that's in the neighborhood, think 2 cubic inches per wire. You might want to consider 120mm boxes since they allow about 40% more splices, but they're harder to get covers for.

enter image description here

  • You can't mix high-voltage and low-voltage in the same electrical box or conduit. For instance you see two boxes there, one's for high voltage, the other for low. If you distribute that around the room, you'll need 2 boxes everywhere.

  • It is illegal to cover up a junction box with construction work. Your tenant can park furniture in front of it. But if you need a screwdriver or wrecking bar to get to the box cover - nope! When you have a blank junction box like this, it tempts the homeowner to want to cover it up.

  • The ugly aesthetics of a blank cover can be solved by putting a receptacle there. For some reason, blank covers offend, but receptacles are dismissed as a necessity.

  • You probably need a receptacle there anyway, since you must have them at certain intervals. It's about the war on extension cords; presuming living-space appliances have 6' cords and kitchen appliances have 2' cords. Many houses are grandfathered; this only applies to new builds and projects large enough to qualify as a "remodel". I have only spent 2 years of my life in such houses.

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  • Never mind that if you're putting a box by the door, it's likely to have at least one of the room's light switches in it! Not that that couldn't be a central junction point for the room wiring, though -- just use a big four-square (or bigger: five-square boxes are a thing now, even) with a single gang mudring slapped on.
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 23:37
  • Five-squares are wonderful, they allow 1" conduit too. Humbug, light switches that switch outlets. That is only an excuse for builders to omit a proper room light. In practice, if you force random citizens to homebrew room lighting design... you get utter stupidity, secret tricks, and lights that don't work for guests and first responders.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 0:31
  • I agree that light switches that switch receptacles are a "humbug" indeed! Doesn't mean that you can't make that first switch box be a central routing point anyway, though, especially if you subscribe to the circuit-per-room way of arranging your lighting+receptacle circuits.
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Dec 6, 2016 at 0:40

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