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BonerGhost posted:I can second the hell out of the cold water bidet. There is nothing more refreshing than a cool spray of water on your b hole the morning after spicy wings night. Thirded. But also of note, usually the water in the feeder hose has been sitting and is a nice comfortable room temperature when you go to use it. At least living alone it is.
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Aug 5, 2021 04:09
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Doorbell wire is doorbell wire, right? I want to add a Nest Hello to our new home, but the current transformer is 12V, so I'm going to upgrade it to 16V. It would be easy enough to replace the chime (and the wires to it), but the run to the doorbell would be more difficult to sort. I'm assuming it's 20/2 wire, and if it isn't then I'll just deal with it and run new 18/2 everywhere. Also, the only electrical concern with the house is that most of the receptacles/plates/boxes are in various states of old or hosed, so I'm just going to replace all of them. My plan was:
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Aug 5, 2021 16:05
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umbrage posted:That's good enough for daily living, right? Is there anywhere I should consider AFCI receptacles? AFCI should be at the panel, so it protects all the wiring on the circuit. AFCI receptacles are a bit of a joke, because they only protect downstream on the circuit. Modern NEC pretty much steers you towards just doing it at the breaker. The CAFCI/GFCI dual function breakers are usually the same cost or maybe a few bucks more than one of those functions alone. Those are generally the way to go if you want the biggest safety bang for your buck.
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Aug 5, 2021 18:38
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Are there (physical)size restrictions on AFCI breakers? Here's a close up of a section of our our panel. The electrical inspector mentioned that we may not be able to fit a breaker to replace just the thin 15A breakers but the terminology he used was over my head and he recommended doing the outlets. Can I just go to home Depot and find an AFCI breaker to fit in the place of the existing? I'm assuming they're standardized sizes unless I'm missing another spec that might stop us.
PageMaster fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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Aug 6, 2021 00:13
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PageMaster posted:Are there (physical)size restrictions on AFCI breakers? Here's a close up of a section of our our panel. The electrical inspector mentioned that we may not be able to fit a breaker to replace just the thin 15A breakers but the terminology he used was over my head and he recommended doing the outlets. Can I just go to home Depot and find an AFCI breaker to fit in the place of the existing? I'm assuming they're standardized sizes unless I'm missing another spec that might stop us. See how that colorful breaker is twice as thick as the rest of them? About the size of one knockout, the plain metal "blank" shown at the bottom? That is the "standard" size breaker. The rest are compact/thin breakers. You likely can only get one in the regular size, but that doesn't explain why they can't just move you to a new knockout at the bottom.
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Aug 6, 2021 00:39
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Oh wow so it is a size thing. Unfortunately the bottom expansion is the last available and I have two bedrooms and a kitchen I need to swap out. Is there a specific format for these types of breakers? I just googled' thin AFCI breaker' and found things like this
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Aug 6, 2021 01:09
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If it's compatible with your panel, sure. But please don't buy safety critical components from a company that loving sucks at keeping counterfeits out of the supply chain.
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Aug 6, 2021 01:16
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Thanks, I just wanted to see if they existed and there was a specific nomenclature for a compact one. I found them at home Depot as well, but some are plug-on neutral, and some have a coiled white wire; what's the difference? Edit: nevermind, the compact ones are still larger than the ones in my panel, so outlets it is! Or at least the first outlet in the bedroom circuit. PageMaster fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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Aug 6, 2021 01:44
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Little something different for the thread. I remember this dude from years ago when he made a video after he acquired a 20,000 watt light bulb, and lit it up. He's still making vids and this one is making the rounds, he broke a fuse now. 5000 Amps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mGhhdPgXG8
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Aug 7, 2021 02:57
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-KID_u9ZX4 If we're posting crazy current videos, here's one from 1959 where they give it the beans. Oh, actually, I mean a man named Beans has some switches that can deliver 5kA into things.
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Aug 7, 2021 18:45
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I redid a friends outdoor patio electrical setup for him yesterday. It's not totally to code but I can at least sleep at night that his children aren't going to kill themselves with it. We also didn't finish because we couldn't find anymore 1/2" conduit at any nearby hardware store. Everything you see is from the one 10' stick I had in my garage. The setup has some string lights, some low voltage landscape lighting run off of a transformer, and a TV on a wall that's not pictured. Before: 3/4" plumbing PVC running out of the ground and straight up the wall that contains a mixture of high and low voltage wiring that itself is spliced together pieces of extension cords, landscape lighting cord, and a few short pieces of actual 14 gauge wiring.  It's all powered off of an extension cord that was cut apart. The plug plugs into the outlet on the wall, so it also robs him of an outlet for his back yard. My favorite part is that I guess they didn't have a tee so they just cut a piece of the pipe off and stuck the plug through.  Here's the landscape light controller. This powers some 12v lights along the edge of the patio. The low voltage wire for that goes through the same conduit as the high voltage stuff and plunges into the ground and presumably comes up somewhere under all the stone. They needlessly spliced some of the low voltage wires together with those automotive wire taps. They also used these in some sections for high voltage stuff too.  Sort of a j box? It's just a weatherproof outlet cover bolted to the wall. It has actual wire nuts! But you can see this is a mix of some actual 14 gauge wiring, some landscape light wiring, the spliced in cord from the landscape lighting transformer, and a spliced extension cord. This is all running 120v AC  On the side of the outlet box you can see a little elbow dangling, this is where the landscape lighting wire goes through the wall and into the house to a switch. 4 wires go in, and only 2 are used for the switch. The other two are nutted together inside the wall?  It's impressive how lovely the switch installation in the house is. Those sheetrock anchors weren't doing jack and my friend had the switch taped to the wall.  After I spent a few hours on it: 1/2" PVC electrical conduit everywhere except the stub out from the ground. The PVC out of the ground only contains low voltage wiring now and runs up and under the transformer. We plugged the end of the conduit with some silicone so water won't intrude. I wasn't really worried about it since it's directly under the transformer, but my friend insisted and since it's low voltage, heat is not really a concern. All the wiring was replaced with 14 gauge THHN wiring rated for wet locations. I tapped into the existing outdoor outlet for power using a bump out with conduit connectors on it, and put a GFCI outlet in and a nicer weatherproof box on to cover it. My original plan was to put in switched outlets and fix the cut cords on the lighting transformer and string lights, but my friend really wanted them hardwired like they were, so I used conduit cable clamps to connect them to the junction box securely.   What's left to do is redoing all the wiring that goes off the right and over to the TV, it's more cut up and spliced together extension cords running through 3/4" plumbing PVC.
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Aug 7, 2021 20:47
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vibur posted:Our main bathroom has what is basically a closet for the toilet. In that closet was a blank face GFCI outlet. I asked an electrician that was here doing other work about it and he said it's providing GFCI for the circuit the jacuzzi tub is on (which we'll likely never use). Just to confirm - was that electrician guessing, or did he take off the faceplate at all? If he took off the faceplate and still said that... never hire him again, and hire someone else to inspect all the work he did.
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Aug 8, 2021 00:24
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I need some assistance. I have these older 4 foot fluorescent light fixtures that I would much rather have LEDs in. They are in these god awful ugly boxes. On 2 of them, the ballasts are going so they flicker periodically and one of them has a starter that doesn't always fire up. Instead of just replacing the ballasts and starters part by part, I kinda want to just replace either the whole kit and use LED bulbs or if there is a whole kit and enclosure that I could use, that would be good too. Amazon has a million but I don't trust them for anything involving wiring. If anyone can point me to either a whole fixture or kit to replace mine, I'd appreciate it.
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Aug 8, 2021 17:12
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If they're on standard boxes then you can do whatever you want. I got some kind of led lights from home depot with integrate diffuser. They're all just hard wired and turn on with light switch. At least from home depot it's unlikely to immediately burn your house down. It's daytime in there when I turn them on, it's great.
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Aug 8, 2021 17:21
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something like this would be fine, I am assuming?
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Aug 8, 2021 18:43
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I put three of those in the unfinished part of my basement last year. They've been great.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:41
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 [img-thisisfine] Shamelessly stolen from Reddit, thankfully this isn’t in my house.
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Aug 8, 2021 20:25
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KKKLIP ART posted:I need some assistance. I have these older 4 foot fluorescent light fixtures that I would much rather have LEDs in. They are in these god awful ugly boxes. On 2 of them, the ballasts are going so they flicker periodically and one of them has a starter that doesn't always fire up. Instead of just replacing the ballasts and starters part by part, I kinda want to just replace either the whole kit and use LED bulbs or if there is a whole kit and enclosure that I could use, that would be good too. Amazon has a million but I don't trust them for anything involving wiring. If anyone can point me to either a whole fixture or kit to replace mine, I'd appreciate it. Feit makes replacement LED tubes if you feel like bypassing the ballast and starter, or what I did in my basement was five of the Home Depot commercial electric brand LED bar units and they work perfectly, it’s bright as day now.
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Aug 8, 2021 20:35
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corgski posted:Feit makes replacement LED tubes if you feel like bypassing the ballast and starter, or what I did in my basement was five of the Home Depot commercial electric brand LED bar units and they work perfectly, it’s bright as day now. This is what I did too. I had to halve how many tubes I was using because it was too bright. Removing the ballast is quite simple, you just take it out and wire what was once the output to what was once the input.
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Aug 8, 2021 22:22
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Actually when they come back in stock, I think I might get some of these. They are type a/b, they can be wired either single ended or double ended, so seems pretty easy. Bypassing the ballast just seems like a no brainer at this point.
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Aug 9, 2021 00:07
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KKKLIP ART posted:I need some assistance. I have these older 4 foot fluorescent light fixtures that I would much rather have LEDs in. They are in these god awful ugly boxes. On 2 of them, the ballasts are going so they flicker periodically and one of them has a starter that doesn't always fire up. Instead of just replacing the ballasts and starters part by part, I kinda want to just replace either the whole kit and use LED bulbs or if there is a whole kit and enclosure that I could use, that would be good too. Amazon has a million but I don't trust them for anything involving wiring. If anyone can point me to either a whole fixture or kit to replace mine, I'd appreciate it. I've had great results with the LED tubes that are sold variously as "Direct Wire" or "Ballast Bypass", you just snap the fluorescent fixture open, splice the ballast out the circuit to put straight 120v on the socket pins and never have to think about them again, plus much less hassle than replacing the entire fixture and the tubes are like, $8-9 per. E: shoulda scrolled down farther but man, just go ahead and pick up the GE model from lowes/home depot for 10% of that price while you wait for the fancy bulbs to come back in stock, they'll swap right in when you've already done the wiring and maybe the cheap ones will be good enough that you keep them! Double edit oh poo poo didn't see that was a 20 pack now I want some shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 03:44
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shame on an IGA posted:I've had great results with the LED tubes that are sold variously as "Direct Wire" or "Ballast Bypass", you just snap the fluorescent fixture open, splice the ballast out the circuit to put straight 120v on the socket pins and never have to think about them again, plus much less hassle than replacing the entire fixture and the tubes are like, $8-9 per. I'm also looking to do this. Would you typically need any additional materials (wire, wire nuts etc) or is there typically sufficient wire and connectors already in the fixture. I realize that I could probably just take it apart and look but it's getting dark and 
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Aug 9, 2021 04:26
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gwrtheyrn posted:I'm also looking to do this. Would you typically need any additional materials (wire, wire nuts etc) or is there typically sufficient wire and connectors already in the fixture. I realize that I could probably just take it apart and look but it's getting dark and The ballasts are nutted in (at least they were in my old 4' ones). You nut the supply straight to the lampholders for the led lamps I used and there was plenty of wire up in there...
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Aug 9, 2021 04:36
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gwrtheyrn posted:I'm also looking to do this. Would you typically need any additional materials (wire, wire nuts etc) or is there typically sufficient wire and connectors already in the fixture. I realize that I could probably just take it apart and look but it's getting dark and There was plenty of wire, I only needed twisty wire hats.
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Aug 9, 2021 13:10
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Honestly, the replacement tubes are Ok and do a nice wash. I put some 2'x2' panel lights in the garage/workshop and those things are the bomb. I won't be doing the fluorescent / faux fluorescent strips again. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pixi-2-ft-x-2-ft-Edge-Lit-LED-Flat-Light-Luminaire/627005044
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Aug 9, 2021 16:16
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An idle thought I keep having, with now even lights containing circuits that drop the voltage, how much stuff is left in homes that's actually using 120v vs some kind of low voltage. Every house is full of a million devices that are converting 120v AC into low voltage DC. Could we ever reach a point where houses and plugs are primarily some lower voltage standard, with a few standard 120v AC outlets for things like vacuums and kitchen appliances?
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Aug 9, 2021 17:17
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FISHMANPET posted:An idle thought I keep having, with now even lights containing circuits that drop the voltage, how much stuff is left in homes that's actually using 120v vs some kind of low voltage. Every house is full of a million devices that are converting 120v AC into low voltage DC. Could we ever reach a point where houses and plugs are primarily some lower voltage standard, with a few standard 120v AC outlets for things like vacuums and kitchen appliances? Problem #1 is that low voltage DC sucks to run long distances. Problem #2 through 10 all involve inertia/code/safety/standardization.
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Aug 9, 2021 17:22
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Motronic posted:Problem #1 is that low voltage DC sucks to run long distances. Problem #2 through 10 all involve inertia/code/safety/standardization. Yeah. Plus you always have to round up with power usage because you can always run less with more but not more with less. So as long as there's anything that needs high voltage, why bother putting in a second redundant low voltage system? Plus then you're relying on manufacturers to support both standards and why would they want that? The closest we'll probably get to a low voltage system is everything low voltage using a USB standard with outlets that have built in USB/USBC-PD plug.
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Aug 9, 2021 17:28
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Yeah, and taking into account that different electronics need specifically different voltages (5v vs 12v vs whatever) and at this point those little tiny transformers to convert high voltage AC to low voltage DC are pretty cheap, there wouldn't be any kind of big efficiency gain that would outweigh the enormous amount of intertia around 120v AC. It seems like it is happening a little, like with some lighting systems for under cabinets, where you've got a single powered driver that runs low voltage to all the lights in the system. E: Just idle thoughts I had while looking at my two LED retrofit can lights, where 120v AC runs to one, which contains an LED driver/transformer, then more feet of 120v AC to the second one, which then drives a second LED driver/transformer. Could probably get away with just a single driver/transformer, but the complexity for future me in dealing with a non-standard configuration would be an enormous pain. FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 17:30
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FISHMANPET posted:An idle thought I keep having, with now even lights containing circuits that drop the voltage, how much stuff is left in homes that's actually using 120v vs some kind of low voltage. Every house is full of a million devices that are converting 120v AC into low voltage DC. Could we ever reach a point where houses and plugs are primarily some lower voltage standard, with a few standard 120v AC outlets for things like vacuums and kitchen appliances? In addition to the issue of the wire size needed to push the amps at lower voltage Motronic mentioned, you'd never get any agreement on what voltage to use. For my networking hardware (switches, router, IoT crap, etc.), I actually hacked a system that uses a single old computer (ATX) power supply for everything. This results in less clutter and more efficiency than a zillion wall warts, and even basic computer power supplies are much better regulated and have smoother/more accurate voltage delivery than the 75 cent wall wart included with the device. #1 cause of failure for this stuff is garbage power from a POS wall wart. When I had Verizon FIOS TV, I used one of their routers as a MOCA bridge. Unlike everything else that used either 12v or 5v, it required 7.5 volts. I had to use a DC/DC voltage regulator to step the voltage down to what it needed. I probably could've used +5 (-) and +12 (+) to get me close enough, but I didn't want to piss off the power supply or fry the router.
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Aug 9, 2021 17:39
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FISHMANPET posted:E: Just idle thoughts I had while looking at my two LED retrofit can lights, where 120v AC runs to one, which contains an LED driver/transformer, then more feet of 120v AC to the second one, which then drives a second LED driver/transformer. Could probably get away with just a single driver/transformer, but the complexity for future me in dealing with a non-standard configuration would be an enormous pain. The cans I used in my bar reno had drivers that you wire into 120v and then low voltage cabling to the fixture itself. They had an option for a multi-unit driver but in a reno there's not really a great place to put something like that. So yeah, it's kind of a thing in specific applications, just not really a whole-house thing. Also, we're long past the bad old days of lossy transformers that stay on all the time to convert 120v AC to <whatever> low voltage DC. Also, just to hammer on how much running low volt DC sucks and how expensive it can be, I've done a lot of this in data centers. You're talking about two Edit to correct overstatement. I checked an old MOP and was kinda off there. The reason it was two cables per terminal is that there wasn't space in the rack to make the turns/wire management required with a single larger conductor. Motronic fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 17:51
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How low are we talking here, though? USB PD 3.0 can run up to 48V (at 50 amps!), which I'm pretty sure is the same voltage that the POTS phone system uses... I think that runs pretty long distances. If we can use that same technology to get 48V to outlets, then we're going to see a whole lot of very small all-in-one chips that scale that voltage down to 36V or 28V or 20V or 12V or 5V depending on what the USB device. If I can get 240W DC, I could even power a refrigerator. It infuriates me every time I think about the fact that my solar panels are converting DC to AC (and heat), which is sent through the house to hundreds of voltage rectifiers that convert it right back to DC (and heat, and sometimes RF, and sometimes audio). And the inverter uses a lot of that electricity to heat itself up, so I can't put in on the side of the house with the fuse box. e: it appears the phone line runs about 105 volts from the central office. cruft fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 18:58
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In addition to being basically line voltage, POTS is hilariously low amperages too. Like, on stages the device commonly used to make phones ring on command (even old ones with fully mechanical ringers) runs off of a single 9v battery with a transformer to step it up to to 90v. Residential low voltage power distribution really just isn't feasible on the scale of an entire house. It's more resource and energy efficient to run higher AC voltages and convert it where it's needed. That's why even phantom power systems like PoE run at 48v and are still extremely limited in what they can actually power.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:12
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cruft posted:e: it appears the phone line runs about 105 volts from the central office. POTS is -48V, same thing I was dealing with in data centers. It is VERY low amperage. What you looked up is probably a fairly high guess at ring voltage. Things only get worse distribution wise as the voltage drops. This is why major transmission lines are 115k volt, Neighborhood distribution to feed 240v transformers are more like 15k volts, etc.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:22
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Man. There's just got to be some efficiency to be gained here. I mean the friggin' space station doesn't convert to AC and then back to DC to deal with line losses, and if anybody cares about efficiency it'd be those people.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:49
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If you want to reinvent the wheel nothing’s stopping you but physics and economics.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:54
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You could run a 48VDC bus through your house and avoid some conversion losses but its going to be a lot of effort.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:54
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cruft posted:Man. There's just got to be some efficiency to be gained here. I mean the friggin' space station doesn't convert to AC and then back to DC to deal with line losses, and if anybody cares about efficiency it'd be those people. That's not even close to a reasonable comparison. Like, in so so many ways, starting with the level of efficiency required there is much different, there are basically zero cost constraints, and everything is custom made so standardization literally doesn't matter unless they've defined the standard for themselves/the consortium.
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Aug 9, 2021 19:56
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I'm starting to get big "why can't my refrigerator and dehumidifier tap coolant from the 3 ton HVAC compressor that's just sitting outside" vibes from this discussion
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Aug 9, 2021 19:57
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shame on an IGA posted:I'm starting to get big "why can't my refrigerator and dehumidifier tap coolant from the 3 ton HVAC compressor that's just sitting outside" vibes from this discussion I mean, that's also a thing. Coolant loops that are centrally generated absolutely exist in facilities. Many large building have this for AC, and it's the same loop that is switched over to heat for the winter. Many data centers have this type of thing all year around. There is a scale at which it makes sense. Your home is not that scale.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:03
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