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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I want to install a new circuit in my garage to power an electric (heat pump) water heater, since my utility provides a nice big incentive for doing so that basically makes the heater itself free. All of the existing circuits in the garage are in EMT conduit that is strapped to the wall, over the drywall. So I'm thinking that I'd use 3/4" EMT, which should be big enough for the 4x 8AWG wires needed to power a 30A/220V outlet. I'd prefer not to use MC conduit, mostly for aesthetic's sake. you only need #10 for 30A which would fit in 1/2" but the 3/4" will serve you better for any additional future circuits and make this easier to pull. as far as the conduit run goes, you can only have 360° of bends between pull points but you'll want one before that anyway. to get over the existing conduit, you'd need to do a "saddle bend". or buy one, they can be tricky.
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Jun 9, 2023 11:30
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Extant Artiodactyl posted:you only need #10 for 30A which would fit in 1/2" but the 3/4" will serve you better for any additional future circuits and make this easier to pull. as far as the conduit run goes, you can only have 360° of bends between pull points but you'll want one before that anyway. to get over the existing conduit, you'd need to do a "saddle bend". or buy one, they can be tricky. Thank you! I'm planning to put a break in the run to make the pull simpler, even though it'll only have 270 + the saddle for the entire run. And I'm purposefully oversizing the conduit a bit, because the last time I ran conduit, I chose the smallest legal size for the size and quantity of conductors I was using, and pulling the wires was a pain, even with copious amounts of lubrication. It sounds like you said I can buy a prefabricated saddle bend. Do you know where I could find one? When I search online, all I can find are guides on how to make them myself. And that sounds like a little more than I want to deal with for my first EMT run. (the previously-mentioned run was rigid conduit and done entirely with prefabricated turns).
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Jun 9, 2023 18:49
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Friend posted:My house has a very old alarm system (installed in 1990, upgraded in 1999 according to the notes in the master control box), the remnants of which are just the control box in a closet and the siren. Today I learned the siren is still hooked up, because all of a sudden there was a nuclear meltdown klaxon going off in my hall for about ten seconds. Thankfully I was already sitting on the toilet. I know this is a pretty old post, but for anyone that needs to shut down an alarm system - if you open the control panel box (usually a ~12x12 metal box, usually with a cheap lock on it), you'll find a circuit board or two, a battery, a bunch of wires if it wasn't a wireless system, and you'll find AC power wires (the AC wires are 24V, the battery is 12VDC). Snip one AC wire and make sure it can't touch anything, remove the red wire from the battery within a couple of seconds, boom, it's completely off. A lot of systems try to dial out when power is lost, so if there's still some kind of monitoring on it, you might get a silent alarm if you don't get both disconnected fairly quickly (a lot will also set off the siren if you try to unplug the phone line, and usually kill your landline as soon as you unplug the alarm connection to it - if you still have a landline or DSL). If there's a cellular communicator on it (it'll be outside of the box, with an antenna and a couple of lights), try to find out the company handling that, so you can let them know you're shutting it down - they may send someone out if the signal disappears. Go look for a random transformer plugged in somewhere afterwards - in my part of the country, they're either right by the main panel, near the garage door opener, or near the furnace (up until the early 90s, gas furnaces were allowed to have a cord and plug here). Unplug it, snip the 2 wires coming out of it, toss it in the garbage. There's a decent chance it's attached to the outlet with the faceplate screw. It will NOT be your doorbell transformer (which may be nearby - those usually have 2 exposed terminals screws and don't plug in) If you still have a contract (ADT is infamous for auto renewing 3 year contracts, BTW), you should call your alarm company first and make sure you won't be breaking the contract - it may be worth waiting until the contract expires, but make sure they know you do NOT want to renew it, and they may be willing to send someone out to shut the system down (or at least reconfigure it into a local only setup - if it's still on a phone line or cellular connection, they can probably do it remotely). They likely won't want the equipment back (it's worth a few hundred bucks brand new, at most - Brinks used to come yank everything out or remotely disable the system entirely before they went bankrupt since their equipment was proprietary to them, the current "Brinks" is just part of ADT) unless it's some high end system with a touch screen. You'll also want to make sure you have stand alone smoke detectors - if the house was built with the alarm, it may only have smoke detectors that were tied into the alarm (my father's house is like this - mix of smoke and heat detectors from the mid 80s, no standalone detectors, and I've been trying for years to get him to at least put up battery smokes since the alarm hasn't worked in over 20 years). Powerful Two-Hander posted:Is it an old smoke detector or a modern heat detector? I don't know when the smoke ones stopped being fitted or the types available but bugs getting between the source/sensor could set them off, though iirc for less than 10 seconds (I remember more like a chirping noise). Depends on the size of the bug I guess. FWIW, I have 2022 smoke alarms in my apartment, and an insect issue. They absolutely do go apeshit when a bug gets in them for a solid 30 seconds, though they're the cheap ionization style detectors (I rent, so it's not up to me - I have separate battery powered photoelectrics that I put up that haven't had any issues). Maintenance kept replacing them until they took one down and some dead bugs fell out - that's when we realized "well gently caress, that's why they go apeshit at 3am". You only see heat detectors in proper fire alarm applications here, not your typical household smoke detector. Skunkduster posted:What would happen if you were doing this and the power came back on? You've probably severely injured (if not killed) at least one lineman if you didn't shut off your main breaker, and your generator explodes; anything connected to power at the time in your home goes out in a blaze of glory. Probably blew up some stuff in neighbor's homes as well, at least those on the same transformer. Hope you have at least a few million in liability insurance on your homeowners insurance, since you've just destroyed transformers, probably burned a house or two down, killed a person, destroyed anything electrical on the same transformer, etc etc etc. Obviously worst case, but even best case will be very expensive (and your insurance will drop you in a nanosecond over it). At one point I was easily able to find a video on Youtube of a generator not perfectly synced trying to connect to the grid. It was.... smoky. Very, very smoky and explody; it wasn't a large one, but not a small one (probably about the size of what you'd find in a small community hospital). It absolutely destroyed the generator and engine, lots of external viewing ports were installed in everything spinning. It was a test to see/show what would happen, not an actual connection attempt, so nobody was hurt. This is why you never, ever, ever connect a generator without a transfer switch of some kind, even if it's just a piece of metal that forces the main breaker off when you turn on the breaker the generator is connected to (and this is why you have a dedicated generator input + breaker). Every transformer before the fuse/cutout/recloser/whatever that tripped also works in reverse, so you might be feeding as much as 13.2kV into a line that an unsuspecting lineman thinks is dead. Yes, they should be making sure the line is dead, but they may be trusting dispatch when they say "yeah, recloser and breakers are locked out, it's dead", and your generator probably isn't feeding much current, but it's still absolutely enough to kill someone dead. Motronic is definitely the one to listen to on anything like this - he has more experience with this kind of stuff than pretty much anybody else on SA. randomidiot fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 04:01
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hello wiring thread, crossposting my investigation into a 0-voltage outlet here from another thread. i am dumb at house electric stuff so please go easy on me 🥺 TLDR: 240V 4-prong dryer outlet & 120V 3-prong washer outlet, on different breakers at the panel but physically very close to each other (2 feet apart), are both exactly 0V at the outlet but appear to have correct voltage at their respective breakers with my multimeter. trying to figure out if maybe the outlet[s] are the issue, the breakers are the issue, or the current is interrupted somewhere along the path from breaker to outlet (which i estimate to be 20 - 30 feet). my latest post in DIY thread if you want to see more details: Soap Scum posted:this is the conclusion i'm coming to as well. unfortunately there are no other outlets on either circuit at all, as far as i know, so i don't think i can pinpoint it much beyond the outlet =/ thanks in advance if anyone has some investigation/repair methods or tips!!
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Jun 10, 2023 04:37
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Soap Scum posted:hello wiring thread, crossposting my investigation into a 0-voltage outlet here from another thread. i am dumb at house electric stuff so please go easy on me 🥺 A break in the wire along the run is very unlikely unless there is physical damage from something. If you have a multimeter and are measuring 0v from Black to Red on the 240v outlet, try Black to White and Red to White. That should return 120v. Also try Black to Ground and Red to Ground. That should also return 120v. If one side, either Black or Red, doesn't return 120v on either the White(Neutral) or Ground wire, that leg is the issue. If the individual hot legs both return 120v on neutral and ground, but 0v across each other, that means your double pole breaker is installed on a place in the panel that doesn't support it, and both poles are on the same leg and there's no difference in voltage between the two. e: just read your posts in the other thread. I agree it could be a loose wire on the outlets, but I doubt the outlets themselves are faulty. They're pretty basic things and if they're not obviously deformed or melted, they're usually good. When you're testing with a multimeter, make sure you're touching the probe to the copper wires, and not the screw or plug terminals. e2: the orange stuff around the wire isn't tape, it's part of the romex jacket. Modern coloring is Orange indicates a 10-gauge wire, yellow is 12-gauge, and white is 14-gauge. 10-gauge is correct for a 30-amp receptacle/breaker in this case. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 04:49
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SpartanIvy posted:Did anything around your house change before these outlets stopped working? Did the breakers trip? Did you move breakers around in the panel by any chance? first of all thank you for digging into this and for a super quick and thorough reply. the suggestion at the end that it may be in an incompatible spot on the break is very interesting and hadn't been mentioned by anyone before (including the electrician) and definitely something i'll keep in mind and hopefully be able to check if needed. at the moment i'm attempting to somehow test the wires at the outlet site to hopefully determine if there's a break between them and the breaker. i was able to totally loosen the black (ground?) wire from the four-prong 240v outlet, but the others seemed to require a bit of yanking even after loosening the screws which i'm a bit hesitant to do, although perhaps i should just give them a little yank.  is it able to be tested in this state? if so, what should i be looking at on my multimeter - ohms/resistance or something else? or since it's suffering the same problem and barely two feet away, perhaps it would be easier to investigate the three-prong outlet? current state:  thanks again, i massively appreciate all the help :')
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Jun 10, 2023 05:10
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SpartanIvy posted:Did anything around your house change before these outlets stopped working? Did the breakers trip? Did you move breakers around in the panel by any chance? ack, i left this part out. i just moved into this house and, as far as i know, there's been no major work on the house for at least five years. however, the previous residents are extremely insular and have so far flat-out refused to answer any questions i have about the place save for going through two middlemen first, which i could go through to see what they know about this outlet, but it could take 48h+ to get an answer, lol
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Jun 10, 2023 05:12
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Soap Scum posted:ack, i left this part out. i just moved into this house and, as far as i know, there's been no major work on the house for at least five years. however, the previous residents are extremely insular and have so far flat-out refused to answer any questions i have about the place save for going through two middlemen first, which i could go through to see what they know about this outlet, but it could take 48h+ to get an answer, lol They're not going to tell you anything about the house they sold you. They want their hands clean of it and to be as far away from any potential liability as possible. But it doesn't hurt to ask. I suggest troubleshooting the 240v circuit first because with the 120v circuit there's a chance it's daisy chained on another receptacle or something, and it makes it harder to troubleshoot as there are potentially more variables involved. A 240v circuit is usually a straight shot from the breaker to receptacle. You should be able to touch the probe of your multimeter to the wires of the outlets without removing them, as the copper kind of stick outs a little bit beyond what is on the screw. You should be measuring AC Voltage on your multimeter. Here's a little diagram of how the dryer plug should be wired and voltage measurements you should get between the two wires as I described above (I flipped the wire colors on the breakers but it doesn't matter. Red and Black are functionally identical because they are both 120v hot legs)  If it's not as simple as a loose wire on the outlets or breakers, or the breaker being in the wrong position on the panel, you should definitely get an electrician involved again because it will mean a wire needs to be traced or completely rerun. There is probably a hidden junction box in a wall with wires that have come apart or something stupid like that. In regards to it being the breaker in the wrong slot on the panel. Some panels have legs that alternate every other slot so there is no way to span a double pole breaker over the same leg twice. However, some panels are setup so that only certain spots are setup for double poles. I think the latter type are pretty rare these days, but it's a possibility. e: Just to be clear because your language is kind of vague: Do you own this house? If you're renting then you should absolutely not being doing any of this because you pay someone else to do it for you already. e2: And please for the love of god be super careful with any loose wires, especially if you're energizing them while they are loose to test. I would recommend reattaching them to the outlet so that they are at least contained. 
SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 05:24
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SpartanIvy posted:They're not going to tell you anything about the house they sold you. They want their hands clean of it and to be as far away from any potential liability as possible. But it doesn't hurt to ask. oh, yeah, it's my place, def wouldn't be screwing like this for free if it was someone else's responsibility, haha. anyway, thanks again for the extremely detailed/quick advice. i was able to get the four-prong outlet like this:  and tested every combination that you suggested with my multimeter and got a flat zero in every single case. perhaps of interest, i left the three-prong outlet in the same state as prior photo (exposed copper still 'plugged in') and got single-digit volts on a couple different combos by touching the multimeter to the bolt heads. [ edit: and yes i did put them back (not as neatly  ) right after taking that pic ]i was curious about your suggestion with the positioning of the dipole breaker on the circuit. i have no idea if this is relevant at all, but there does appear to be some sort of... section difference(?) between the two halves of the one leading to the four-prong outlet. you can maybe see what i'm talking about here in the circled area:  comparing that to another dipole breaker somewhere else on the board connected to a thing which i know is working, you can see it's flat in the comparable area. though again no idea if that's relevant  and just for completeness, here's the three-prong's breaker, i tested bolt to bolt on this (you can't see the second one in this image) and got 120V there:  also noticed the emerging wires/romer they go into matches what i see behind the outlet. it does seem a bit strange that they would both break in pretty much identical ways without being joined -- or, well, handle in a similar way somehow -- somewhere along the path. so your suggestion of a junction box sounds relatively high probability, i would say, from my very novice point of view lol. if that's the type of thing that i might be able to find with a keen eye and poking into nooks and crannies around the place, i could at least try to find it if not fix it just so i can save the electrician some time, but if that's the kind of poo poo that you need to pull up drywall for or whatever, i think that's where i'd draw the line for myself. anyway, if you have any further thoughts/suggestions, please feel free, but again thank you a fuckton for all your advice/guidance so far Soap Scum fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 05:47
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If you're getting no readings from any of the wires at the receptacle but you are at the breaker then it has to be an issue along the wire somewhere. If you're unable to trace the wire visually, they do make tools that you hook up to the wires and it can help you follow them through walls. You could take turns hooking it up to each side of the wire(breaker and outlet) and then trace as far towards the other side as you can. Ideally both sides signals will stop at the same spot and that's where your issue is. Here's one I have. I've heard them called circuit tracers or toners. They're designed for low voltage circuits but they are fine to use on wires of any size really. Just make sure your breaker is turned off and the circuit is dead. It will probably explode if you hook it up to line voltage. https://a.co/d/8VW23ka SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 06:08
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SpartanIvy posted:If you're getting no readings from any of the wires at the receptacle but you are at the breaker then it has to be an issue along the wire somewhere. sigh, yeah, unfortunately i think it must be in the wire path between breaker and outlet. pretty incredible that the electrician thought the breaker just needed to be changed though haha. thanks for guiding me through this. i might grab a tone probe and try to locate the junction myself -- i suspect it's very very close to the two outlets tbh -- but depending on prices i might just let an electrician handle it after filling them in on everything we've been able to determine so far. but i promise i will turn off the power if i use a tone probe myself  thanks again for everything! i'm gonna try to resolve this like immediately so hopefully i'll be able to post the mystery resolution here sometime soon :')
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Jun 10, 2023 06:24
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Soap Scum posted:sigh, yeah, unfortunately i think it must be in the wire path between breaker and outlet. pretty incredible that the electrician thought the breaker just needed to be changed though haha. thanks for guiding me through this. i might grab a tone probe and try to locate the junction myself -- i suspect it's very very close to the two outlets tbh -- but depending on prices i might just let an electrician handle it after filling them in on everything we've been able to determine so far. is your panel is a square D homeline panel? there's a mix of types of breakers in your pictures so i'm impressed because homeline in particular doesn't play well with others. isn't relevant to the current issue, as others have said, if the breakers have voltage and the outlets don't, there's a break or secret disconnect somewhere. mentioning this for two reasons, could be a future issue down the line if the breakers are incompatible and not making a good connection to the bus and for your troubleshooting it means you may have to throw out assumptions of sensible decisions since the PO + their contractors were just doing whatever. the PO on my house turned off the washer water lines and removed all the aerators to hide issues with the well/plumbing and the home inspector wasn't good enough to catch it
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Jun 10, 2023 13:33
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randomidiot posted:This is why you never, ever, ever connect a generator without a transfer switch of some kind, even if it's just a piece of metal that forces the main breaker off when you turn on the breaker the generator is connected to (and this is why you have a dedicated generator input + breaker). Every transformer before the fuse/cutout/recloser/whatever that tripped also works in reverse, so you might be feeding as much as 13.2kV into a line that an unsuspecting lineman thinks is dead. Yes, they should be making sure the line is dead, but they may be trusting dispatch when they say "yeah, recloser and breakers are locked out, it's dead", and your generator probably isn't feeding much current, but it's still absolutely enough to kill someone dead. I'm definitely not defending nor advocating plugging a generator into your house using a suicide cord. It is purely an academic (hopefully hypothetical) question of "what would happen?". If the power was out and a guy plugged a generator into his house, would all the current in the connected grid go through the breaker that is on the circuit of whatever outlet the generator is plugged into immediately cause that breaker to trip due to the load from everything in the connected grid that was left on when the power went out? Edit: Unrelated question - If you are going to use a single switch to control a bathroom light and fan, would it be best to hook the wires from each directly to the switch, run them in series, or hook a single wire to the switch and use a wire nut to pigtail the switch to the light and fan? Skunkduster fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 18:05
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Skunkduster posted:I'm definitely not defending nor advocating plugging a generator into your house using a suicide cord. It is purely an academic (hopefully hypothetical) question of "what would happen?". If the power was out and a guy plugged a generator into his house, would all the current in the connected grid go through the breaker that is on the circuit of whatever outlet the generator is plugged into immediately cause that breaker to trip due to the load from everything in the connected grid that was left on when the power went out? What happens first depends on the rating of the generator, the rating of the breaker, the "load" that would be put on it. The most dangerous situation is that the generator and the breaker its backfeeding are NOT overloaded by grid demand. Because this is the scenario where you've energized lines that may be down in the street or otherwise lines that your neighbors or emergency personnel or linemen may assume are dead. Or were literally just tested as dead and "safe" before you fired up your generator.
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Jun 10, 2023 18:10
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Skunkduster posted:Edit: Unrelated question - If you are going to use a single switch to control a bathroom light and fan, would it be best to hook the wires from each directly to the switch, run them in series, or hook a single wire to the switch and use a wire nut to pigtail the switch to the light and fan? In practice it doesn't matter one way or the other. I think my choice would ultimately depend on how easy access I have to the fan, light, and switch to run wires, and doing whatever is easiest. For my bathroom light and fan, I ran my wires in parallel and have them all joined together in my 2 gang switch box. I did it that way because I had easy access to run wires through the attic and down the wall, and this way if there is an issue with one of the fixtures, it's either at the light/fan, or in the switch box, and it eliminates a daisy-chained connection as a possible point of failure. If you have enough access that you're considering running wires in parallel, I have to ask why you wouldn't break the light and fan off onto their own switches for convenience.
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Jun 10, 2023 18:23
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welp, good news is mystery solved, bad news is i feel extremely dumb. was talking to a particularly persistent friend last night after my last post here, filled him in on everything said here, and he asked for a pic of the entire box with the panel off so i sent him this  and then he was like, hm, that's interesting, if the orange romex is meant for 240v stuff, what's that second one for if there's only one 240v breaker on that side? i honestly hadn't even noticed it and assumed it was going to some other high powered appliance, but uhhhh yeah turns out there's actually another washer/dryer electric hook-up hidden in some closet somewhere that we didn't know about that the prior residents had been using lol. and basically there are wires running from a 3-prong 120v + 4-prong 240v from each of the locations down to the breaker, but you can only hook up one set of them at a time. so i (with everything off and nitrile gloves!) disconnected the wires that were currently on the 240v + 120v breakers in question, connected the wires that were just hanging out unconnected behind the panel, and that was all it took. i still need to do a little clean up (i'd like to cap & group those wires for safety and future clarity) but aside from that everything's working. thanks for all the help investigating! i know it was a bit of a wild goose chase in some regards but i also think the diagnostic data you helped me gather (particularly SpartanIvy) helped us narrow down the realm of possibilities that led to the eureka moment.
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Jun 10, 2023 18:57
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SpartanIvy posted:If you have enough access that you're considering running wires in parallel, I have to ask why you wouldn't break the light and fan off onto their own switches for convenience. It was actually something I did years ago. The fan and light used to be controlled by separate switches in a single gang box. I put them on a single switch because members of the household (myself included) would often forget to turn the fan on when taking a shower and I would get a lot of moisture condensation in the bathroom. Now, if you are in the bathroom showering or making GBS threads, the fan will be on. My memory isn't that great, but I think I just hooked both wires directly to one terminal on the switch and was curious if that was the best way to do it or if I should have run a single wire from the switch and pigtailed the fan and lights with a wire nut.
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Jun 10, 2023 19:02
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Soap Scum posted:welp, good news is mystery solved, bad news is i feel extremely dumb. Well that is the best outcome out of all potential issues so I'm happy that's all it was. Your prior electrician should have definitely figured that out as soon as they had the panel open though. As the other poster pointed out, you appear to have different brands of breakers in your panel (Homeline and Eaton) and while they work it's not optimal and may void warranties if you have any. I assume your panel is an Eaton panel because IIRC, SquareD modified their busbar geometry slightly to keep other brands from working in their panel. You might look into that more just to make yourself aware, I do not think it's a burn-your-house-down emergency or anything though. Skunkduster posted:It was actually something I did years ago. The fan and light used to be controlled by separate switches in a single gang box. I put them on a single switch because members of the household (myself included) would often forget to turn the fan on when taking a shower and I would get a lot of moisture condensation in the bathroom. Now, if you are in the bathroom showering or making GBS threads, the fan will be on. My memory isn't that great, but I think I just hooked both wires directly to one terminal on the switch and was curious if that was the best way to do it or if I should have run a single wire from the switch and pigtailed the fan and lights with a wire nut.
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Jun 10, 2023 22:46
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SpartanIvy posted:I assume your panel is an Eaton panel because IIRC, SquareD modified their busbar geometry slightly to keep other brands from working in their panel. You might look into that more just to make yourself aware, I do not think it's a burn-your-house-down emergency or anything though. Practically speaking, as long as they have a good tight connection to the bus bar, there's probably not a problem. But it may not be code compliant, and could (will) cause insurance issues if  happens, if there's breakers being used that aren't listed for the panel (the panel cover will list what you can use).Skunkduster posted:I'm definitely not defending nor advocating plugging a generator into your house using a suicide cord. It is purely an academic (hopefully hypothetical) question of "what would happen?". If the power was out and a guy plugged a generator into his house, would all the current in the connected grid go through the breaker that is on the circuit of whatever outlet the generator is plugged into immediately cause that breaker to trip due to the load from everything in the connected grid that was left on when the power went out? You'd be shocked (heh) how many people do exactly that, though. Ideally, it'll overload the generator and trip the breaker on it, but if it's a particularly beefy one, especially if it's just one transformer that's out/disconnected, it may be able to supply enough energy to heat up (liven up) a transformer; thus, livening up the lines up to whatever cutout is disconnected. Makes for one hell of a light show when they reconnect whatever fuse/cutout/breaker/etc was disconnected since it'll be out of phase, followed immediately by everything on that transformer letting the magic smoke out (including your generator). As for the wiring, pigtailing is the best practice if you're running multiple things off one switch. Incoming hot directly to the switch (if the incoming goes on to power something else on the circuit, then pigtail it), outgoing hot pigtailed to the wires going to the light and fan, all whites tied together, assuming you're not dealing with a switch loop (if you are, you'll probably have 1 black and 1 white [that really should be labeled with black tape], maybe a ground). Never put more than 1 wire under a screw unless the switch/outlet/etc is made for it.
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Jun 11, 2023 04:13
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Extant Artiodactyl posted:is your panel is a square D homeline panel? there's a mix of types of breakers in your pictures so i'm impressed because homeline in particular doesn't play well with others. isn't relevant to the current issue, as others have said, if the breakers have voltage and the outlets don't, there's a break or secret disconnect somewhere. mentioning this for two reasons, could be a future issue down the line if the breakers are incompatible and not making a good connection to the bus and for your troubleshooting it means you may have to throw out assumptions of sensible decisions since the PO + their contractors were just doing whatever. hmmm i'm not sure how different the various panel brands/types look from each other, but mine definitely looks extremely similar to what i see on google image search for "square d homeline panel." so the takeaway here is that if i want to be super super safe, i should switch out some non-homeline-explicitly-approved breakers you spotted on my panel for ones that are homeline friendly? SpartanIvy posted:Well that is the best outcome out of all potential issues so I'm happy that's all it was. Your prior electrician should have definitely figured that out as soon as they had the panel open though. As the other poster pointed out, you appear to have different brands of breakers in your panel (Homeline and Eaton) and while they work it's not optimal and may void warranties if you have any. I assume your panel is an Eaton panel because IIRC, SquareD modified their busbar geometry slightly to keep other brands from working in their panel. You might look into that more just to make yourself aware, I do not think it's a burn-your-house-down emergency or anything though. yeah, agree, very relieved that i don't need to replace a wire or tear up any drywall or flooring or anything. definitely feel a bit stupid for not piecing it together earlier but also, yeah, i feel like a halfway competent electrician should have figured that out once they saw what was going on at the panel. thanks for the extra advice on the compatibility stuff as well -- i'll take a look when some other new home related stuff is resolved and try to get it all up to spec to be super safe. thanks again all!
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Jun 12, 2023 06:24
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Soap Scum posted:i feel like a halfway competent electrician should have figured that out once they saw what was going on at the panel.
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Jun 12, 2023 11:12
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Slugworth posted:I'm reasonably baffled as to how the electrician was getting partial voltage on a wire not hooked up to anything. If that wire was routed next to a live wire it could be getting a "phantom" voltage induced on it through inductive or capacitive coupling. A good multimeter has input impedance of 10MΩ or so and it doesn't take very strong coupling to be able to supply the nanoamp of current that will be flowing through the meter.
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Jun 12, 2023 11:31
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And any electrician worth paying should know/understand that well. Dude was a loving clown.
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Jun 12, 2023 18:06
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What is the proper way for buried electrical cables to be removed/made safe? My landlord just demolished an ancient garage behind our house, which had a janky romex cable running down to the dirt floor, presumably under the concrete driveway, and into the house ~somewhere~. They came back to remove it and never needed to come inside or shut a breaker off, but everything above ground is gone. Would this be something to be concerned about?
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Jun 16, 2023 19:06
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Baronash posted:What is the proper way for buried electrical cables to be removed/made safe? My landlord just demolished an ancient garage behind our house, which had a janky romex cable running down to the dirt floor, presumably under the concrete driveway, and into the house ~somewhere~. They came back to remove it and never needed to come inside or shut a breaker off, but everything above ground is gone. Would this be something to be concerned about? The proper way is to remove the wire from the breaker it's on in the supply panel.
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Jun 16, 2023 19:22
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Please send your landlord a nice email OP.
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Jun 16, 2023 19:47
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My house use to have a “central vac” so there 2” pvc tubing in various places walls and floors. If I run Romex in that would that count as secure when it comes to electrical code?
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Jun 21, 2023 14:04
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Calidus posted:My house use to have a “central vac” so there 2” pvc tubing in various places walls and floors. If I run Romex in that would that count as secure when it comes to electrical code? No, but it would count as "fished in inaccessible locations inside finished walls" gotta make sure you've got rated clamps at your boxes. If possible, clamp within 12”(?) of the entry.
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Jun 21, 2023 14:10
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Can I use armored cable for surface mounted runs in an attached garage? If not, is there a good alternative other then rigid metal conduit?
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Jun 22, 2023 01:14
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devicenull posted:Can I use armored cable for surface mounted runs in an attached garage?
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Jun 22, 2023 01:42
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Rigid metal conduit is heavy and a pain to install, but EMT should be valid for your proposed use case.
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Jun 22, 2023 01:50
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devicenull posted:Can I use armored cable for surface mounted runs in an attached garage? Yes. wolrah posted:I'll leave the first part to the people with professional knowledge but it sounds like an important question to avoid XY problems and determine the best solution will be "why are you looking to avoid rigid conduit?" MC is a lot easier to run, especially for someone without a bender (for emt, rigid shouldn't even be a consideration if it's not for an explosion-proof installation). edit: or service entrance I guess, though PVC is way more common for that Blackbeer fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jun 22, 2023 |
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Jun 22, 2023 04:56
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My garage is concrete walls and my solution to being bad at bending conduit (since FMC looks kinda meh IMO on walls for long runs) was to measure the lengths and then trade beer to the electrician at work to do the little box offset bends for me.
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Jun 22, 2023 18:02
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devicenull posted:Can I use armored cable for surface mounted runs in an attached garage? I don't believe so. 330.12 lists MC cable as not permitted where exposed to physical damage. On the exterior of a finished wall would likely be considered as subject to physical damage. Your AHJ may need to be consulted here. I would use EMT (not rigid) conduit, and if you're not comfortable with a bender buy the premade offsets and bends.
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Jun 22, 2023 18:45
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TacoHavoc posted:I don't believe so. 330.12 lists MC cable as not permitted where exposed to physical damage. On the exterior of a finished wall would likely be considered as subject to physical damage. Your AHJ may need to be consulted here. I would use EMT (not rigid) conduit, and if you're not comfortable with a bender buy the premade offsets and bends. 330.15 says "exposed runs of cable, except as provided in 300.11(B), shall closely follow the surface of the building finish...", which means surface mounting it in some conditions is ok. Subject to physical damage isn't a defined term, it's a general rule. I've never had an inspector disallow surface mounted mc because of the possibility of running a car in to the wall or normal foot traffic. For instance, EMT isn't allowed where exposed to "extreme physical damage" but that doesn't mean it can't be surface mounted where it's (unrealistically) possible a vehicle could hit it. Blackbeer fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jun 22, 2023 |
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Jun 22, 2023 23:14
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It's mainly that I don't want to have to learn how to properly bend conduit, and dealing with that sounds like a huge pain in the rear end. Going sideways through the wall would be a huge pain in the rear end. The electrician that did the subpanel/car charger outlet install used some kind of flexible conduit:  It just got done yesterday, so it hasn't passed inspection yet. I figured if this was ok, then MC should be no different? The inspections here are largely a joke - during the solar inspections, 2/3 inspectors did not get out of their cars, and the one that did just wanted to see the line side tap. None of the other electrical components got even a cursory glance.
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Jun 22, 2023 23:50
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devicenull posted:
MC is absolutely allowed to be surface mounted. Residential garage walls, even at car height, are not an area where MC is subject to damage in my professional experience.
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Jun 23, 2023 00:07
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devicenull posted:It's mainly that I don't want to have to learn how to properly bend conduit, and dealing with that sounds like a huge pain in the rear end. That's FMC. For EMT, either a few bends (box offset + a 90) or you can go buy a pre-bent 90 and then just cut EMT to length assuming the box offset is not actually needed. Might have avoided the clamps too, since the run is so short but you'd have to double check NEC for securement distance rules.
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Jun 23, 2023 00:30
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I need to splice together some ground wires for a low-voltage device (a game controller; I'm wiring up the buttons). I'm a relative newbie when it comes to this kind of electrical wiring. What I need to have is basically a "main" ground wire that has short runs that T off of it to go to individual buttons. I could presumably do this by taking a wire, removing the sheathing from a short section, soldering a wire to that, etc. But that sounds kind of fragile. How do people who actually know what they're doing handle this kind of situation? I bought a "wiring harness" for this job, which is plug-and-play: it has wires that terminate in sockets which fit over the prongs on the buttons, and it daisy-chains the ground wires together using those sockets. But I can't use the harness, because of specific limits on how my project is laid out and the amount of room I have available. On a related note: recommendations for flux for electrical soldering? Or is that not needed? My prior soldering experience is all either jewelry or plumbing.
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Jun 25, 2023 00:09
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Terminals, or wire nuts if you have to. What size are the wires? Wago 221 series lever nuts are probably a good option and they go down to 24 AWG. Edit: Try asking in the electronics thread. They'll probably have a good recommendation for a project like this. This thread is geared a bit more towards home wiring (i.e. the stuff in the walls). Edit again: Electronics thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2734977 DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 00:25
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