Rough-in checklist, Lot 14

First time pulling a full rough-in on my own today and the foreman left me with three rules: read the NEC chapter we covered Monday before you cut anything, never run unprotected wire through PVC without a bushing, and assume every outlet near water is a GFCI until proven otherwise. The plans called for forty-two boxes across the ground floor, so I needed to be methodical.

Kitchen first. Every counter-top receptacle within six feet of the sink has to be GFCI per the current NEC cycle — the inspector last month flagged a contractor on the next street over for exactly this. I batched them onto a single circuit so a single GFCI device upstream covers the whole run. Saves wire, saves a fight with the inspector. Below the cabinets, the dishwasher leg drops down through PVC conduit instead of flex, because the homeowner wants the option to swap appliances without recutting drywall.

Bathroom rough-ins are simpler but unforgiving. Two GFCI receptacles per bath (one each side of the vanity), the exhaust fan on its own switch leg, and a separate GFCI feed for the whirlpool tub motor. The NEC requires the motor disconnect to be visible from the tub, which is the kind of detail you only learn by failing inspection once. The whirlpool feed runs in PVC under the slab — anything underground here has to be schedule 80 PVC, the gray stuff, not the thin white that plumbers use for drains.

End-of-day checklist

• All GFCI locations marked on the print in red.
• PVC stub-ups capped, no debris in the runs.
• NEC reference highlighted for any "see exception" callouts.
• Photo of every GFCI box for the foreman's folder.

Tomorrow we pull the home runs. If I'm honest, the part I'm most afraid of is mislabeling a GFCI circuit and tripping the wrong breaker when the homeowner is mid-shower three months from now. Read the NEC. Mark the print. Sleep.