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Barnabas posted:So long story short -- found mold in our basement bathroom, tore it all out, rebuilt it from the ground up. Better, faster, stronger, more lights. Also a fan, which it didn't have previously (probably the main cause for the mold). No. That switch will make a dead short at the end of the line. You're going to need 14/3 to go from the first light through to the switch. 2011 code requires you to leave a neutral at the switch anyway, so that's good. From your j-box to the first light is 14/2, then from the lights to the switches it's 14/3. Connect the black to black in the cables, and black from the fixtures to the red. White goes to white. Leave a wire nut on the white inside your switch box. If you ever put in a motion sensor, timer, or light-up switch, you'll be VERY happy that neutral is already there.
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Mar 10, 2011 19:12
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The Extrapolator fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Mar 11, 2011 03:37
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 American jerry-rigging at its' finest.
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Mar 11, 2011 04:00
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The Extrapolator posted:Saw this video and couldn't think of a better place to repost it. L  Sorry, this is the "Don't burn your house down" thread, I think you want the other one...I must say, I did NOT see that last bit coming. The dogged stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me.
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Mar 11, 2011 04:22
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Nice video. We should have a do it yourself disaster thread for stuff like this. So if I come to this guys house to install say some lights and a few outlets would I have to take this thing apart? What if the owner didn't want me to? Would the inspector just check the work I did and not the owners work?
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Mar 11, 2011 05:34
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tworavens posted:Nice video. We should have a do it yourself disaster thread for stuff like this. Historically, the inspector would have a drat fit. However, this would never be a problem, because people like this never get permits nor call inspectors.
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Mar 11, 2011 07:18
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Historically, the inspector would have a drat fit. However, this would never be a problem, because people like this never get permits nor call inspectors. Yeah, but why would they? They just need a couple of outlets over here and they've got a supply over there so it's just a simple, safe run of wire. No reason to get a permit for a quick 15-minute job like that.
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Mar 11, 2011 15:20
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:No. That switch will make a dead short at the end of the line. You're going to need 14/3 to go from the first light through to the switch. 2011 code requires you to leave a neutral at the switch anyway, so that's good. From your j-box to the first light is 14/2, then from the lights to the switches it's 14/3. Connect the black to black in the cables, and black from the fixtures to the red. White goes to white. Leave a wire nut on the white inside your switch box. If you ever put in a motion sensor, timer, or light-up switch, you'll be VERY happy that neutral is already there. So the 14/2 black connects to the 14/3 black at the first fixture, and then continues uninterrupted all the way to the switch? The 14/2 white connects to the 14/3 white and the whites from each fixture, but is left unconnected at the switch? And the 14/3 red connects to the blacks on each fixture and to the switch? Just want to be clear.
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Mar 11, 2011 16:59
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tworavens posted:Nice video. We should have a do it yourself disaster thread for stuff like this.
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Mar 11, 2011 17:41
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Barnabas posted:So the 14/2 black connects to the 14/3 black at the first fixture, and then continues uninterrupted all the way to the switch?
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Mar 11, 2011 18:07
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Great. Thanks a lot!
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Mar 11, 2011 18:43
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Video is dead, it seems. Here goes nothing! 
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Mar 12, 2011 15:23
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Holy poo poo. I went to install a new circuit in the breaker box for the bathroom lights and fan. First thing I noticed is that all of the ground wires coming into the box are wrapped around a bolt in the metal side of the box. That seems... odd. But maybe it works. I am not an electrician. There's a heavier (16 or 20 gauge) ground wire coming out of the top of the box, so I followed that up to the ceiling where it connects with the cold water pipe. Ok, that's all good. Hold on, I don't recall any bridging wire when I shut off the water to do the plumbing a few days ago. I followed the cold water pipe into the cold room, where it's been cut and altered several times. It's currently joined with gear clamps to several feet of rubber hose which snakes down into the foundation. That seems very, very bad to me. I opened up the rest of the box to check where the ground wire originated, and it's joined in a T to two other heavy gauge white wires. One connects to the neutral bus and the other disappears into the ground outside along with two heavy gauge black wires. Does that wire going outside probably connect to a grounding pole? Or is it coming from the power company? Is my entire house ungrounded and my family's been living in a deathtrap for the last year?
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Mar 12, 2011 20:03
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You shouldn't see a grounding rod at all, other then the wiring going to it. So thats normal. I don't know about all of them being wrapped around a lug. I've never seen anything like that, but I don't have years of experience yet, I'm just a student. You should have a busbar with lugs to clamp the grounding conductors into. Electrically what your are describing is ok. Not great, just ok. Sounds like someone did it out of a Home Depot manual and didn't read the whole thing. Normally the box would have a UL listed busbar to terminate the grounding conductors. I don't think anything like that would ever pass inspection unless you could prove that it was how the manufacturer wanted you to install it. I would have an electrician come by to look it over, maybe drive another ground rod for you because usually you want two of them, at least six feet apart. He should be able to install a new busbar for you and get that sorted out. You might be able to do it yourself but its the kind of thing you can get messed up and not know it. tworavens fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Mar 13, 2011 |
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Mar 13, 2011 04:14
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So that white wire probably connects to a grounding rod? Because the cold water pipe doesn't have an uninterrupted run into the ground.
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Mar 13, 2011 04:23
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The pipe needs to be grounded for safety purposes no matter what. So that sounds fine. The wires running outside probably do connect to some sort of grounding electrode. It sounds okay to me. But I would get a busbar and reattach all those grounding conductors running into your box. You could call up your local inspection office and see if they have a record for the inspection of your house. If they have it then they will have verified that the ground and panel was made up correctly. An electrician can also verify it for you if you are concerned. Call around and ask if they can check an earth ground for you. It will probably cost you a few hundred dollars, but if there is a concern that the grounding system is screwed up you are better off spending the money. You could go outside and carefully dig around where the conductors that go into the ground, if you see that two of them attach to rods then you are golden. However even if you don't see they attach to rods it doesn't mean there isn't a ground. Whoever installed it could have used a variety of methods to bury the rods, used a single rod, or not used a rod at all. Hope this helps.
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Mar 13, 2011 23:18
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Hi all, I'm having a bugger of a time figuring out how to wire up my hallway light with 3 way switches so I can control it from either end of the hall. The wiring is all pre-existing but I don't actually know if it ever did work properly this way. I removed the switches to replace with the newer flat switches and stupidly didn't check beforehand or even note down what wires connected where. Anyway I've tried a few configurations and each time I can just get it to turn on the light when both switches are on, otherwise nothing. I thought I'd check here before bringing in an electrician to make sure I wasn't missing something simple, entirely plausible. The thing I find a little strange is how as it is currently wired it doesn't seem to correspond to any diagram I've been able to find either in books or on the web. Each switch only has a single 3-wire cable going in with R, B, W (and ground) and the light fixture only has 2 cables going in to it with the reds and blacks tied together and the whites connected to either terminal of the light. I'm wondering if there is some hidden electrical box with more connection because it doesn't make sense to me that each switch would just have one cable going in it and the ceiling box would just have the 2 cables. I did this crappy diagram:  (the black squares are the screw on wire connector things)
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Mar 14, 2011 01:12
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Take a look at this diagram, it sounds like your light is wired this way, only that the black wire and the taped white wires in the diagram were swapped. Look closer in the ceiling box, there should be a third cable. To clarify: 1. your black wire to either switch = taped white in picture 2. when installed your white wire to either switch was never taped to start with, this is used nowadays to show an electrician that the normally neutral wire was repurposed (and as of the 2011 codebook you can't repurpose the last neutral in a cable going to a switchbox). And those "wire connector things" are wire nuts.
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Mar 14, 2011 04:07
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Yah, I had seen that diagram, and I really tried hard to dig around in the ceiling box to see if there was a 3rd cable going in there but nothing. It's a bit of an older house so it has the paper-style covered wires, I trimmed off the excess brown paper to see if I could spot a hidden cable but nada. Might have to go up in the attic to see what is going on, exactly. Also, wire nuts! I knew it was something like that but for the life of me I couldn't remember..
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Mar 14, 2011 04:13
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Barnabas posted:There's a heavier (16 or 20 gauge) ground wire coming out of the top of the box, so I followed that up to the ceiling where it connects with the cold water pipe. Ok, that's all good. The ground should be connected to the cold water pipe within 5 feet of the pipe entry to the building, for exactly the reason you seem to be describing (someone replacing an upstream part of the pipe with non-metallic). Or maybe I'm just reading your description wrong.
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Mar 14, 2011 06:14
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Kind of an off topic question, but important to electricians and electrical engineers. Anyone here have some red-green color blindness? I do. Its not that I can't tell the difference. The only time I ever have any problems with it is occasionally with resistor color codes I mix up a red and a brown. I don't even have problems with telephone wires. I am worried that employers might not want to hire me based on my failure of a color blindness test. My last job I wasn't doing any electrical work, and they tested my color vision anyway. The lady doing the tests said it was okay 'as long as you don't want to be an electrician'. Do the corrective glasses for color blindness really work? Would that be acceptable to an employer?
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Mar 19, 2011 02:50
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tworavens posted:Kind of an off topic question, but important to electricians and electrical engineers. Anyone here have some red-green color blindness? I do. Its not that I can't tell the difference. The only time I ever have any problems with it is occasionally with resistor color codes I mix up a red and a brown. I don't even have problems with telephone wires. The problem with red/green is that red is a common "hot" wire color, and green is almost always a ground color. In more places green with a yellow stripe is used, so that may make it easier to differentiate ground from hot. (Sometimes you also have a safety ground and a separate isolated ground for sensitive devices.) If an electrician got the hot and ground reversed, it could do some nasty things like electrifying a metal chassis of a device. For the US, these are the common colors you need to differentiate between: Black/Red/Blue (three phase) Brown/Orange (or violet)/Yellow (also three phase) White/Grey (neutral) Black/red (hot) Green/Green-Yellow/bare copper (ground)
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Mar 20, 2011 04:29
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tworavens posted:Kind of an off topic question, but important to electricians and electrical engineers. Anyone here have some red-green color blindness? I do. Its not that I can't tell the difference. The only time I ever have any problems with it is occasionally with resistor color codes I mix up a red and a brown. I don't even have problems with telephone wires. It's a rare engineer that has to routinely read resistors. If we do, we're probably going to be using a tool to check it and make sure its resistance is what it's supposed to be.
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Mar 20, 2011 10:59
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There's a guy in our local who's straight colorblind. He's just not allowed to make up boxes anymore. He'd get brown and green confused. Or brown and gray. It just meant a breaker would pop as soon as power was turned on.
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Mar 20, 2011 16:55
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grover posted:It really depends what kind of electrical engineering you're doing. It's going to be less of a factor if you're doing semiconductors or circuit cards or even sitting in front of a PC doing CAD and calculations for power that if you're in the field troubleshooting color-coded control wiring, etc. Right, reading resistors is more of a hobbyist thing, searching through his parts bin to find the rating he needs for a prototype. Even then, you can always double check with a multimeter. Any pro engineer can always read the shipping label off the box of 50,000 in the warehouse. Besides, everything is going SMD now anyway, and those don't use color coding.
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Mar 21, 2011 23:45
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I'll ask this here instead of starting a new thread since this thread has slowed down a bit. I'm somewhat casually investigating a small solar setup to get myself started tinkering with the technology. It would obviously provide me some power but I'm more just interested in experimenting with it. When I say small I mean sub 1000w. What I'm having a hard time finding is a good selection of potential sources for the panels. I'm really surprised the number of places selling panels at $2 to $4 a watt. Best I've found so far is 45w panels for $61 a piece. $1.35/watt isn't bad at all, but I kindof feel like I'm just searching in a haystack. Where should I be looking to source a small number of panels at a sub $2/watt price?
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Mar 24, 2011 03:07
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You may want to look at http://www.siliconsolar.com/solar-cells-by-the-watt.html From what I gather getting scrap cells like this requires a bit of work, but it's basically the only way home solar becomes a reasonable proposition unless you hustle some free cells somehow.
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Mar 25, 2011 19:59
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Hmm..$0.50 a watt is a great price, but of course it requires quite a bit of labor and other materials to make an outdoor usable panel. Soldering the cells together isn't beyond my skill but I'm a bit worried about affordable crafting an enclosure to put them in thats weatherproof yet doesn't block the sunlight.
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Mar 25, 2011 21:11
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sixide posted:You may want to look at http://www.siliconsolar.com/solar-cells-by-the-watt.html 
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Mar 25, 2011 21:25
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Yeah its pretty tempting to try out. Ebay has some really nice prices (just below $1/watt) for blocks of undamaged or only slightly chipped cells. ~60w worth for $60 shipped in nice perfect shapes you can fit into a panel easily. Issue is that by the time I take the time to build them and make a nice enclosure I've spent more than $1.50/watt..which is about what I've found at this website (Individual panel price + approx shipping): http://www.sunelec.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=47&products_id=1504
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Mar 25, 2011 21:33
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We are currently turning the back of our garage into an office. Everything is semi-permanent because technically the home owners association won't allow us to build a room in the garage. Before the build out the garage had a single switch that toggled two florescent lights, one in the front and one in the back which is now a separate room. I've since removed the back light and plan to install a 3-spot halogen fixture (50W per bulb) in its place. What I would like to do is make it so that that light can be turned off locally without having to turn off the light in the front of the garage. Since it's semi-permanent I don't want to rewire that light to be on its own independent switch. I found a guide online that said you could basically install inline one of those pull chain switches on the fixture (drilling a hole in the fixture itself for the chain to hang through). I want to take it one step farther and make it dimable. There are the X10 solutions, but between the fixture dimmer, receiver, and remote (plus shipping) that's like $45 bucks which my wife would rather I not spend. So I was thinking since the ceiling is kind of low (you can reach up and touch the fixture) I'd look into buying a dimmer to mount within the fixture with the knob sticking out. At first I thought of just using a wall switch style dimmer, but that knob would be too big and look silly, plus I think the switch is too deep to fit within the fixture (the fixture is about 1" deep not counting the actual wiring box in the ceiling which is kind of full already). So I was thinking of getting one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Westek-6077B-Range-Replacement-Dimmer/dp/B000FPCEH2/ ...and wiring it into the fixture. Will that work do you think or is this a stupid idea and I'm just asking to burn my house down? fallenturtle fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Mar 26, 2011 |
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Mar 26, 2011 21:45
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That seems properly rated and halogen is easily dimmed. They're simple to install if you keep your wires straight. Should be an easy modification to the fixture. I'm assuming you mean installing this inside the fixture's housing somehow. What you linked is not designed to mount externally.
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Mar 27, 2011 19:09
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chedemefedeme posted:That seems properly rated and halogen is easily dimmed. They're simple to install if you keep your wires straight. Should be an easy modification to the fixture. Cool. Yea, my plan is for it to fit in the housing with a hole drilled in the housing to stick the post of the knob out of. Since there's a low ceiling I can touch the knob if I reach up.
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Mar 27, 2011 21:36
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fallenturtle posted:Since there's a low ceiling I can touch the knob if I reach up. Just take precaution to place it away from the bulbs, which often hang down in such fixtures. They can get hot. Also be sure with the fixture installed a tall person can't stick their head/hat up against the bulbs. You could be shocking someone's head or burning their hairs To make it a little safer there are a pretty good amount of LED bulbs designed to be easy drop in replacements for halogen fixtures.
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Mar 27, 2011 22:48
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chedemefedeme posted:I'll ask this here instead of starting a new thread since this thread has slowed down a bit. When I bought the panels for my install, they were the cheapest, though I was getting the pallet price (26 panels total) and they sometimes have a minimum order, in my case 2 because the panels came 2 to a box. If this is just to mess around with and won't be mounted on your house or anything, you can save a few dozen cents a watt by getting the non-UL listed ones. Don't even think of using these for a permanent installation though. ----------------------------------- I also had a question: I want to switch to more energy efficient lighting in my home. I already have CF bulbs on a lot of the lights, but I have a lot of dimmers I want to keep. What's the best type of energy efficient lights to use with dimmer switches? I have both standard bulbs and 3 of those can style recessed ceiling flood lights that I want to replace. I also don't want to have to wait for them to warm up and brighten if possible.
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Mar 28, 2011 18:11
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Go back a page or two and read my posts about LED lighting. Its slightly lower draw than CFLs, a clearer light (imo), instant on and finally becoming affordable. I use it in about 40% of the lighting in my house (the stuff we use about 80% of the time) and we love it.
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Mar 28, 2011 19:25
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I just saw your post at the top of the page a couple back. What do you think is better for the recessed can lights, the PAR30 or the E26? For reference, I think I have 75W incandescent bulbs in there right now.
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Mar 28, 2011 20:02
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chedemefedeme posted:Go back a page or two and read my posts about LED lighting. Its slightly lower draw than CFLs, a clearer light (imo), instant on and finally becoming affordable. I use it in about 40% of the lighting in my house (the stuff we use about 80% of the time) and we love it. Don't forget their lifetime. Some LEDs have lifetimes pushing 100,000 hours, almost as long as a permaprobation!
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Mar 29, 2011 03:36
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Hillridge posted:I just saw your post at the top of the page a couple back. What do you think is better for the recessed can lights, the PAR30 or the E26? For reference, I think I have 75W incandescent bulbs in there right now. I use the a19 LED from ecosmart in my cans http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202188260/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 Its a bit softer because its dimmer, but it appears brighter than most 40w bulbs because its a bit more directional than a normal 40w equiv cfl so my kitchen isn't too dark. I've put this bulb in my parent's kitchen recessed cans, however, and it is freaking awesome. Crisp, bright, instant on, and just a really impressive light. When they come down in price I'll probably replace my 40w A19s. http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...-1&ddkey=Search Those are really my two absolutely highest recommended LEDs on the market today. You can't beat them for price/lumen ratio and they're quality build. Also available in many home depot stores, some even with locally applied subsidies lowering prices even more on higher models.
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Mar 29, 2011 06:04
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I'm re-doing a bunch of stuff in our 50yr old home that was built by the wife's grandfather. In the basement, there is a connection (one switch, one temperature control) to a sauna heater that is outside the house in an attached sauna. My question; The sauna heater runs 220@30amps in a wet location (next to a shower). Should it be on a GFI circuit(breaker)? Currently, it's wired up like a welder (black, red, ground) to the switch that controls the power to the heater.
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