Discover the significance of electrical riser drawings as a schematic representation of a building's electrical system organization. Learn about its components, including utility transformers, switchboards, and power distribution to different units in a building.
Key Insights
- The electrical riser drawing provides a diagrammatic overview of the electrical system in a building, starting from the utility transformers at the bottom and working its way up to the top.
- The drawing outlines the power distribution from transformers to various units such as the fire pump controller, building switchboard, and potential retail spaces. It includes amperage demand for each system and highlights the direct power supply to emergency systems like the fire pump.
- Information about specific components like panel boxes and transformers can be found in the drawing, which is vital for electricians and electrical engineers to ensure adequate electricity provision and load distribution throughout the building.
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Let's study the electrical riser drawing. This drawing is a schematic representation of how the electrical system is organized in the building. Information starts at the bottom and works its way up to the top.
So let's start at the very bottom. You can see that we have utility transformers and power comes out of the transformers. From one transformer it goes directly over to the fire pump controller and then to the fire pump.
From the same transformer it goes over to the switchboard for the building. There is a separate transformer that will eventually serve the retail units in the building. Now you can see that they say stub out for the retail space.
When the building initially receives a Certificate of Occupancy, the retail spaces are not yet part of the scope for the Certificate of Occupancy for the building itself. So subsequent tenant improvement drawings would be created for those retail spaces and once those drawings are approved and construction begins, then they would tap on from here. Going back to the fire pump controller, it makes common sense that we want to make sure that in the event of an emergency that the fire pump system always gets direct power from the transformer.
Let's go over to the switchboard and you can see that we have different diagrams that take us different places. You can see the amperages that's being demanded off of each of these systems and let's just follow this one up. We have a transformer and two other devices which service panels KP1 and KP2.
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I have a panel, a transformer, and then I have my actual panel boxes. And you'll notice that the panel boxes are labeled like 1L1. We will find detailed information about these panels in the panel schedule.
So again we're typically seeing that there's a panel that goes to a transformer that goes to the actual panels that are servicing specific areas of the building. So again this logic follows throughout the entire drawing where we have service centers that then distribute the load and ultimately they go to the panel boxes. At the very top of the drawing we have our riser notes and we also have the keynotes such as this one that is reflected inside the hexagon.
To electricians and electrical engineers this drawing is one of the backbones because when they do their calculations they need to make sure that everything will work and this is how they take the load and distribute it to make sure that the building is adequately being provided electricity.
