If you were to walk into a newly constructed building about the same time as a commercial electrician, you would see a lot of strange things. For one, not all of the walls and vertical support beams would be present and/or covered. For another, the electrical wiring would be hanging all over the place like some futuristic scene of a bomb-decimated zone. If it is actually your new company building through which you are walking, you might think something is very wrong with this scene. Rest assured, this is a perfectly normal commercial electrical installation. Here is how your commercial electrician typically manages it.

​Yards and Yards of Wiring Everywhere

Yes, there is wiring everywhere, but your electrician knows exactly what all of the wiring is for, and why it seems to be dangling from everything. You see, the electrician has to run electrical wiring through all the ceilings and floors in the building, from the top of the building to the first floor. If there is a basement, then the wiring is run all the way down past the first floor into the basement. To do that, the wiring is yards and yards long, sometimes miles long if the building is an especially tall one. This is done for every single kind of wiring needed in the building, and for every kind of wiring needed on specific floors. Until the wiring is connected to switches, outlets, lighting, and all things else that need electricity, all of the wiring is draped over the ceiling frames and around support poles.

​Securing the Wiring from the Top Down

As each type of wiring is connected to a power source (i.e., the electrical boxes), the electrician secures the wiring to the ceiling framework above or inside one of the open vertical posts. There are little plastic clips he/she uses to "cable" wiring together and hold it in place so that it cannot slip down farther or fall down from above. This is done from the top floor down so that there is consistently enough wire and enough length for all of the wiring to reach the power sources. 

Hiding the Wiring

Finally, when everything is effectively connected and "live," the wiring and cables can be hidden from view. In the ceiling, the drop-down tiles hide the wiring. In the vertical support posts, the posts gain their full three-dimensional shape and are fully constructed to hide internal components.