Apartment wiring and a calculated breaker panel

Sockets and switches are placed along with the furniture, and the breaker panel is built from circuits calculated for your apartment.

minimum sockets along a living room's perimeter (Russian code SP 256)
1 per 3 m
RCD or RCBO for the bathroom, kitchen and appliances
30 mA
modules in the enclosure, sized by calculation
12-54

How it works

Wiring usually comes up once the walls are plastered and a socket has ended up behind the wardrobe. In Uyut3D electrical points are placed after the furniture, when it is already known where the bed head is, where the TV goes and what stands against each wall. From those points the app groups circuits, picks breakers and cable, and shows what size of panel you will need.

  1. Furnish the rooms

    By hand or with auto-furnishing. Wiring goes in last, once the furniture has its final places.

  2. Points place themselves

    A switch by the door on the handle side, sockets along the walls, by the bed and under the TV, the panel in the hallway.

  3. The panel is calculated

    Points are grouped into circuits, each gets a breaker, protection and cable, and the enclosure is sized to fit.

  4. Flip a breaker

    Click a breaker in the panel. Turn off the bedroom lighting circuit and the bedroom goes dark.

Sockets go where you will use them

Russian code SP 256 asks for at least one socket per started 3 m of a living room's perimeter and one per 10 m² of hallway. A 3 x 4 m room with a 14 m perimeter gets five. The code doesn't say where they go, so the app spreads them across different walls and stops at six per room.

A socket won't end up behind a wardrobe or a sofa, because it is placed after the furniture. Behind the fridge, the washer and the TV it is left on purpose, since the appliance plugs into it. An ordinary socket stays at least 0.6 m from the sink, bath and toilet. Closer to water only a splash-proof one with a lid goes in.

Socket circuits are always 16 A

To estimate the load on the apartment's supply, each socket counts as 300 W. Yet any of them may get a 2 kW kettle, so a socket circuit never drops below a 16 A breaker on 2.5 mm² cable, and lighting runs on 10 A with 1.5 mm². Cable is sized to the breaker because the breaker is there to protect the wire. Put 25 A on a thin cable and the wire overheats before the breaker trips.

A socket circuit holds no more than 8 points or 3.5 kW. The washer, dryer, dishwasher, oven, hob, water heater and air conditioner each get a dedicated line.

Water and the kitchen go through 30 mA protection

Bathroom and laundry sockets form their own circuit behind a 30 mA RCD, a device that cuts the line when current leaks where it shouldn't, say through a wet hand. Kitchen sockets go through an RCD too.

Every dedicated appliance line, from the washer to the oven, gets an RCBO. That is an RCD and a breaker in one housing, and it takes two modules in the panel instead of three for a separate pair.

The enclosure leaves room to grow

Devices go in the order an installer would fit them: main breaker, voltage relay (it disconnects the apartment on a mains surge), RCDs, circuit breakers. Panel size is counted in modules, each a 17.5 mm slot on the rail. The enclosure comes from the 12, 24, 36 and 54 module range with 20 % spare. If the devices take 25 modules, 30 are needed with the spare, so the app picks a 36-module box. A panel filled to the brim has no room for the water heater you add next year. If the circuits don't fit into 54 modules, the app tells you a second panel is needed.

You can override the calculation

Three-phase supply, an extra appliance or your own circuit grouping can be set in the Electrics panel, and current, cable and modules are recalculated by the same rules. Cable length is estimated along the route from the panel to every point.

The result is an estimate for budgeting and for a concrete talk with an electrician, and the panel sheet says so. A design for sign-off comes from a qualified electrical design firm.

Who it's for

Before renovation

Bring the electrician a plan of points and a list of circuits instead of explaining where the bed will be.

Designers

Show a client why the hallway panel has 36 modules and why the washer has its own line.

Budgeting

Estimate the number of points and metres of cable before the first invoice arrives.

Common questions

Under Russian code SP 256, at least one per started 3 m of perimeter in a living room, four in a kitchen and one per 10 m² in a hallway. Uyut3D places sockets to that minimum, capped at six per room.

Russian codes don't set a height, and the old 1 m rule from earlier editions of the wiring code was dropped. The editor places points the way electricians usually do and doesn't flag other heights as errors. For people with limited mobility, SP 59 keeps controls between 0.8 and 1.1 m.

Use it as a guide for budgeting and talking to an electrician. Ratings, cable sizes and the enclosure follow the rules, but a design for sign-off should come from a qualified firm that checks your supply and the building's wiring.

Its circuit loses power, so the room lights or the appliances plugged into its sockets go off. The main breaker cuts the whole apartment while the circuit switches stay where they were, as in a real panel.

Size the panel for your floor plan

Upload or draw a plan, furnish the rooms and open the Electrics panel.

More features

All features

One-click auto-furnishing

Press "Furnish" and an empty floor plan turns into a furnished flat where doors open and chairs slide out from the table.

Your own 3D models and textures

Upload a supplier's furniture as .glb and photos of your tiles, wallpaper or flooring. They join the catalogue next to everything else.