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Motronic posted:
I want PoE everywhere. Data and 15/30/60 W+ power steps…  Or you know, as you said, I don’t think we need to have separate 15/20 A circuits for ~200 W of LED fixtures.
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Dec 19, 2021 19:13
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I'm rewiring my house and putting all the ceiling fixtures on a single 20-amp breaker and even with generous assumptions like having all my lightbulbs being bright-as-gently caress incandescent lights with multiple per fixture on all the time, it's still hard to pull that many watts.
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Dec 19, 2021 19:46
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Alarbus posted:That's pretty much it, though you'll want to drill a hole through your wall. Great, thank you! And yeah, I expect it'll need to be GFCI, good point. The discussion on sizing appropriately is fair. The charger's max capacity is 220V/50A, which is why that's what I was considering. Realistically, I only need 120V/15A for my actual driving...but since I'd be installing a new circuit for this charger anyway, it made sense in my mind to do 220V. But if I dropped it from 50A to 30A, I could use 10AWG copper instead of 6AWG, which would be considerably nicer to work with. I need to route the wire run, though...if I can do it as a straight shot, then I feel like there's not much penalty to using the 6AWG. Are there any boxes that allow conduit to come in the front? My gut instinct is no, because how would you open the box to do maintenance, but if there were, then that'd save me a 90 between the breaker panel and the box.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:04
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movax posted:I want PoE everywhere. Data and 15/30/60 W+ power steps… USB C with PD4.0 will deliver up to 240W at 5V, 9V, 15V, 20V, 28V, 36V, and 48V.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:37
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cruft posted:USB C with PD4.0 will deliver up to 240W at 5V, 9V, 15V, 20V, 28V, 36V, and 48V. * requires extremely expensive cabling that can't reasonably have ends put on it in a structural wiring situation. As opposed to a box of cat5e.
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Dec 19, 2021 21:01
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 Steel siding. Thanks, PO.
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Dec 19, 2021 22:55
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Motronic posted:I'm pissed off every time I have to deal with 12 wire on a lighting circuit these days. I'm ready for an "LED only" 20/22 wire and 5 amp breaker standard. Big same. I have three different sprinkler timers and each one is on its own dedicated 15A breaker for reasons. I'd drop each all the way to 1A given the choice. The PO had two of them on dedicated 20A breakers before... which were on a tandem Siemens breaker not rated to fit my Eaton panel.
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Dec 19, 2021 23:23
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What's the biggest reason normal 12/14 ga wire sucks to work with compared to a lighter wire like 20/22? I know nothing about wiring. Just less flexible and more frustrating to splice/terminate are the main disadvantages I am guessing?
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Dec 20, 2021 00:04
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Inner Light posted:What's the biggest reason normal 12/14 ga wire sucks to work with compared to a lighter wire like 20/22? I know nothing about wiring. Just less flexible and more frustrating to splice/terminate are the main disadvantages I am guessing? If it is solid it just sucks to bend in general
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Dec 20, 2021 00:06
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 It's Sunday, we have a sitter for reasons, I'll run to lowesdepot and grab a pair of can lights to replace the ones over our sink we hate. It's never been all that up to code but that's future someone's problem. Maybe I'll improve that while I'm at it. Who needs clamps anyway. I don't know where my volt pen is, I don't feel like cutting the breaker, but it's 3 14/2's this is easy. Turn the light off and it's dead, touch em together and see if they spark. Never do this. NOPE mystery wire coming in from behind! Left and right are the lights. Top and rear are ???. Top white is in the whites, black is capped, ground is pinched between the box and the cover. Rear has black in the blacks, ground in the grounds, white is capped. Now I get to go find or buy a voltage detector. I am unwilling to open the walls personally so if it escalates I'm calling someone. Place your bets, convoluted switch loop or return path through ground? 
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Dec 20, 2021 00:17
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 Well one more trip and the plot thickens. That black wire is hot when the main ceiling light is on. Box is dead if the ceiling light is off. The can lights still work separately from the ceiling light and does make other wires hot.
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Dec 20, 2021 01:27
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So much of that picture offends me. The use of a handibox, no connectors except the one for emt, and all that damned romex jacket inside the box. I gonna guess the pair with the white capped is the switch leg, thats why its black wire connected to the two pairs that go to the can lights and the N is capped because....its picking up a N from the ceiling light for some reason? Its very strange indeed. Maybe the white wire is damaged at the switch or something so another path to N was needed? What are you trying to do here? Just figure out what's going on? Rufio fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 02:01
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Rufio posted:So much of that picture offends me. The use of a handibox, no connectors except the one for emt, and all that damned romex jacket inside the box. What you're just going to skip unprotected nm in your offense?  It's so dumb. I am half venting half hoping to figure it out. I need to kill the breaker though and I don't have time to do that.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:27
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H110Hawk posted:What you're just going to skip unprotected nm in your offense? Yeah I couldn't tell what kind of space this j box was in so I was gonna give the unprotected Romex a pass lol. Maybe you've got a very clean attic or crawl space. Also duh just short out those wires to kill the breaker, bingo bongo done.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:47
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I am so bad at using a conduit bender. Even the tips in the Ugly’s apps weren’t enough to help me not overthink how to simply get the little 10 / 22 degree bends for box offsets. What the hell is the trick to just get simple, perfect offset bends on EMT? The Milwaukee M12 EKO tool is sweet though — borrowed it over the weekend. Perfect 3/4” KOs every time in like 30 seconds.
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Dec 20, 2021 09:13
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movax posted:I am so bad at using a conduit bender. Even the tips in the Ugly’s apps weren’t enough to help me not overthink how to simply get the little 10 / 22 degree bends for box offsets. What the hell is the trick to just get simple, perfect offset bends on EMT? for offsets like that i cant really think about it in degrees, its just you give it a little pressure one way and then give it the same little pressure the other way a few inches down it helps to mark the opposite sides of the conduit with a pencil or sharpie to make sure you make the bends exactly opposite each other and get it nice and square, until you get a feel for it or you can just see it without making the marks this explanation probably doesnt make any sense but i hope it helps, just get some conduit and play with it and get a feel for it. box offsets are really tiny. you can check larger offsets or bends with a level or protractor and do some math or break out the Uglys but the tiny ones are actually more difficult to get perfect and its kind of a practice and muscle memory thing. or get one of those box offset tools like you said, they're really nice, but you can do the same thing with a regular bender once you know how it feels my boss always told new apprentices to take home some conduit scraps that were already headed for the trash and play with them to learn how to do this Mimesweeper fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 12:05
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KKKLIP ART posted:If it is solid it just sucks to bend in general This, which gets ever more painful in a box with lots of junctions and trying to cram a smart switch or GFCI receptacle in. poo poo, I put in a combo AFCI/GFCI receptacle in an outdoor weatherproof box the other day that's a single receptacle on a dedicated breaker. Nothing else in the box and it was still a pain in the rear end. I dropped a bunch of the PO-added outdoor circuits at my place from 20A to 15A just so I could use 14 gauge wire whenever possible. Only one of them needed to be on a 20A breaker since it was powering a ton of 300W halogen lights - and now it's down to 150W total of LEDs.
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Dec 20, 2021 16:42
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I put a light on a 20amp/12 gauge circuit, and I was cursing that inflexible wiring the entire time. It was still probably easier than finding a nearby 15 amp circuit (this was all in the unfinished basement) to power the light (and a lot less wire) but boy did it suck.
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Dec 20, 2021 17:49
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We have a room in our new house that is a converted garage. My gf plugged in a little electric fireplace thing today, and lost power to all the outlets in the room. No breakers were tripped. When I got home from work, I reset the GFI in the master bath, which fixed every outlet in the room other than the one the fireplace had been plugged into. I couldn't find my multimeter, so I just swapped a new outlet in, to see if maybe the old outlet had failed. Still no power. I found my multimeter, and I've got 120v from hot to ground, but nothing from hot to neutral. This is on the wires themselves, not the outlet, for what it's worth. This outlet also appears to be the last device in it's circuit, as there's no wires coming off of it. As near as I can tell, every other light and outlet in the house is working fine, but I'll have to do a more exhaustive check tomorrow (it's late). Thoughts? It's a bad neutral, right? Does that make sense as a result of a GFI blowing? Or did that cause the GFI to blow? Assuming all lights and outlets in the house have power, I'll crawl up into the attic. I believe I saw a junction box directly above this outlet in the attic last time I was up there, and the Romex is coming in from the top of the box, so fingers crossed maybe the neutral just came loose in there?
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Dec 21, 2021 05:18
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Slugworth posted:We have a room in our new house that is a converted garage. My gf plugged in a little electric fireplace thing today, and lost power to all the outlets in the room. No breakers were tripped. When I got home from work, I reset the GFI in the master bath, which fixed every outlet in the room other than the one the fireplace had been plugged into. It’s probably a bad neutral where it connects to an outlet (or other device) upstream of the failed outlet. Make a note of everything on that circuit. Since other things in the room seem to be working and on the same circuit, you can probably confine your investigation to that room and to its shared walls. Don’t neglect lights, and do look on the exterior walls. Now, with an understanding what’s on the circuit, you can make some guesses about what route the wires take. If you find that in fact something other than that one outlet has failed, start with the failure closest to the master bath. What’s the nearest working thing on that circuit? It could be on the other side of the wall. Flip the breaker, unscrew the cover plate, and you are liable to find some obvious overheating on one of the wires. If nothing is obviously wrong, consider reattaching the wires anyway, and doing it right (no backstabbing). Otherwise, move on to the next suspect. Have some extra outlets and switches on hand. They’re cheap and you may as well replace anything old or loose or suspect while you’re in there. Advanced technique: before cutting the power and removing cover plates, put a lamp in the bad outlet and start rapping on the suspected upstream “good” ones. Sometimes that will momentarily make the connection and reveal the fault.
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Dec 21, 2021 07:25
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I'll start pulling stuff apart after work, thanks. Out of curiosity, it sounds like this happened right as she was turning up the heat on the electric fireplace. Does that make any kind of sense, or is it just coincidental timing? Essentially, I wanna make sure that thing is safe to continue using.
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Dec 21, 2021 12:51
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Sure. The electric fireplace was the proximate cause of failure. Space heaters stress residential circuits more than anything else, but a circuit in good condition should either be able to take it, or else the breaker would open because you tried to have two space heaters on the same circuit. The electric fireplace is a heavy load that dealt the final blow to the connection, but it had to be a weak connection for that to happen.
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Dec 21, 2021 13:10
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Platystemon posted:but it had to be a weak connection for that to happen. I'm voting for "backstabbed outlet".
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Dec 21, 2021 15:58
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Motronic posted:I'm voting for "backstabbed outlet".
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Dec 21, 2021 17:43
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Neighborhood lost power earlier. It's back now but two self-test GFCIs are flashing red, indicating a problem. I replaced one of them with a brand new one, still flashing red. Could this maybe be an undervoltage situation? E: power still off and on, apparently. The GFCIs in question look dead now. I'm going with brownout. drat it. EE: GFCIs are just fine, needed a more assertive button press. But they really were flashing red non stop earlier. Reports are coming in that in fact less than 120V was being sent out. cruft fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 16:26
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Am I a dumbass or is there a reason why the Raco 862 is so expensive / out of stock everywhere? I just need a simple 1-gang Decora compatible metal cover for some single-gang handy boxes in my garage. Where else should I look? This feels like it should cost $0.50.
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Dec 22, 2021 22:13
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movax posted:Am I a dumbass or is there a reason why the Raco 862 is so expensive / out of stock everywhere? I just need a simple 1-gang Decora compatible metal cover for some single-gang handy boxes in my garage. Where else should I look? This feels like it should cost $0.50. that's incredibly weird, huh. i can't begin to guess why this is out of stock with no real equivalents but i checked my 100 mile radius and there is nothing! slap on some Standards and wait i guess? unless you want to cut your own rectangle out of the 1 gang blank covers...
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Dec 23, 2021 00:05
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lots of stuff is out of stock and expensive and hard to get cause the whole world is currently falling apart from a hell virus, ops
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Dec 23, 2021 01:03
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Mimesweeper posted:lots of stuff is out of stock and expensive and hard to get cause the whole world is currently falling apart from a hell virus, ops Oh, 100% -- just very confused why there still appear to be 10000s of the 2-gang covers, but for some reason the 1 gang is just completely gone. I don't think it's a weird application at all! Maybe I should put the square boxes on the wall, but I feel like that'll look weird. e: the switches will be a Caseta and a Pico remote, so I do need Decora-style faceplates, unfortunately. movax fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 01:12
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movax posted:Oh, 100% -- just very confused why there still appear to be 10000s of the 2-gang covers, but for some reason the 1 gang is just completely gone. I don't think it's a weird application at all! you could always go to a 4x4 box and get a mulberry cover, there's plenty of those around. it is several dollars to the install instead of the 80 cents these plates normally are but hey, it'll be more space to work with the wire?
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Dec 23, 2021 02:14
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movax posted:Am I a dumbass or is there a reason why the Raco 862 is so expensive / out of stock everywhere? I just need a simple 1-gang Decora compatible metal cover for some single-gang handy boxes in my garage. Where else should I look? This feels like it should cost $0.50.
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Dec 23, 2021 03:47
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Slugworth posted:Have you checked an actual electric supply house in your area? Most are open to the public and have a staggeringly complete selection of stuff. Platt and Stoneway did have a few listed online — bit pricier but gently caress it, it’s just two plates. Maybe I can just will call it so I don’t have to pay shipping.
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Dec 23, 2021 04:39
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Motronic posted:I'm voting for "backstabbed outlet". No backstabbed outlets in this room! Every other outlet in the house, yes. But!! The rear end in a top hat that did the reno literally did not leave enough wire in any of the outlet boxes to pull the outlets out. Like, even a millimeter. I honestly can't even figure how he installed them. So, this thread is ok with wago lever connectors to fix poo poo like this, right? Because I still want to replace all these old, painted over outlets.
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Dec 24, 2021 15:59
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Slugworth posted:Resolution to this: It was a loose connection in a junction box in the attic. Whoever wired this garage reno left about 2 inches of 12g wire in that box, so the connections are all under undue amounts of tension from wires being bent like crazy to make the connection. I threw a new wirenut on for now, but I wanna throw some pigtails in there to make things less dumb. sucks! you can add another junction box in the attic to get proper length for better splices but there's really nothing to be done about short wires in the outlet boxes. wagos if you can, but in-line splice connectors might be easier
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Dec 24, 2021 16:13
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GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! Wago is gonna start offering in-line splice lever nuts next month. https://www.wago.com/global/installation-terminal-blocks-and-connectors/inline-splicing-connector-with-lever/p/221-2401 indeed the lever actuator has become so popular they're backporting it into their industrial lines 
shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Dec 24, 2021 |
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Dec 24, 2021 16:31
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I’m the Mountain Dew terminals.
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Dec 24, 2021 16:46
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Platystemon posted:I’m the Mountain Dew terminals. The Mountain Dew Baja Blast terminal is only UL rated for Taco Bell installations.
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Dec 24, 2021 17:14
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Slugworth posted:So, this thread is ok with wago lever connectors to fix poo poo like this, right? Because I still want to replace all these old, painted over outlets. Sounds like the perfect job for wagos. I use them all the time on wires that are too short in boxes to make pigtails/extensions. I've got one on the ground conductor of just about every box I've opened in this house because it's 60s wiring with grounded boxes that expect self-grounding switches and outlets. They left enough of the ground conductors connected to the boxes to get a wago on there so that's been by fix/upgrade as I change out switches and outlets.
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Dec 24, 2021 17:43
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Slugworth posted:Resolution to this: It was a loose connection in a junction box in the attic. Whoever wired this garage reno left about 2 inches of 12g wire in that box, so the connections are all under undue amounts of tension from wires being bent like crazy to make the connection. I threw a new wirenut on for now, but I wanna throw some pigtails in there to make things less dumb. Are any of your boxes clamped? Did this dipshit like install things by pulling out slack as they went so save a whole dollar on wire across the entire house?
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Dec 24, 2021 18:02
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Just run the free pile of 10 AWG THHN you had everywhere, I said. WAGO makes nuts that are 10-24, I said, this is a good idea. Outlets take 10-14, so this is perfect! they (WAGO) are bigger than the 12-24 ones and I’m an idiot because fitting all this poo poo into single handy boxes now is a PITA
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Dec 24, 2021 21:23
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