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Also, keep in mind that only dates when it was made, not necessarily when it was installed. Someone could have spotted it at a flea market when it wasn't so old 20 or so years later, fell in love with it and installed it. If you're wondering, reproduction cloth covered plastic insulated wire is available today. Plugs too. I've used them before when restoring a radio from 1940.
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Aug 30, 2023 03:34
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With this house, it's much much more likely to be original. I mean, there's a hand built wooden ironing board - not built in, standalone - and a 220V outlet in the upstairs to run an electric heater. Plus three different obsolete vacuum cleaners.
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Aug 30, 2023 04:49
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HolHorsejob posted:All the trades have their own traditional units. It's infuriating. Gauge means different dimensions for electrical wire, structural wire, drill bits, ammunition, and sheet metal. For sheet metal, they even vary depending on the exact alloy. It's the dumbest poo poo on earth. Sorry to bring this back up, but in my limited experience with household wiring, something else that annoys me is the white wire is always neutral and red, black and others(?) are power, but in automotive applications, black always seems to be the ground while red, white and whatever other colour are power. Fake edit: Except for green I guess.
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Aug 30, 2023 20:02
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Ambassadorofsodomy posted:Sorry to bring this back up, but in my limited experience with household wiring, something else that annoys me is the white wire is always neutral and red, black and others(?) are power, but in automotive applications, black always seems to be the ground while red, white and whatever other colour are power. Except when you deal with trailers that have white for ground and black for +12V. I suspect RVs are a special slice of hell.
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Aug 30, 2023 21:48
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IOwnCalculus posted:Except when you deal with trailers that have white for ground and black for +12V. Heavy equipment and buses: everything is white
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Aug 30, 2023 21:50
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Ambassadorofsodomy posted:Sorry to bring this back up, but in my limited experience with household wiring, something else that annoys me is the white wire is always neutral and red, black and others(?) are power, but in automotive applications, black always seems to be the ground while red, white and whatever other colour are power. Green and green yellow are ground in stuff governed by NEC. Gray, natural, and white are neutral. BMW likes to use brown for ground and black for battery voltage on some years IIRC which has killed more than its fair share of electrical systems when someone hooked a battery up backwards. there is essentially no standard. Verify everything before modifying.
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Aug 30, 2023 21:56
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It's all black or grey switchboard wire with green grounds. To track things down you're doing a lot of tugging. Only once have I seen a color code, yellow was ac, blue was dc, and red was for the cut this and it will probably kill you circuits.
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Aug 30, 2023 22:32
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kastein posted:BMW likes to use brown for ground and black for battery voltage on some years IIRC which has killed more than its fair share of electrical systems when someone hooked a battery up backwards. It's OK though it's low voltage nothing matters. Pulls 600amps cranking engine. My dad told me a story a long time ago when he worked at a material handling place of dealing with customer techs parts cannoning control modules at stuff and "THEY ALL ARE DOA YOUR COMPANY SOLD US A BILL OF GOODS <string of expletives>." Yeah no color/wiring standard and everything being wired delta when 3 phase meant they grabbed basically whatever off the shelf, wired it up, fired it up, and poof. Basically half the time they were putting a single phase module onto 3-phase, or a 240V module onto a 480V circuit (basically you name it for how they got it wrong) to try and close tickets. 5 extra minutes reading plates and their meter would have saved them days of downtime.
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Aug 31, 2023 14:53
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I used to write repair manuals and service technician training programs. One of the other guys went to the factory to see some of the first of a new machine as it was being built. They were making up wire harnesses with whatever color wire they had. Oh blue is out? Start using red. The colors were entirely meaningless.
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Aug 31, 2023 16:39
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Guy Axlerod posted:I used to write repair manuals and service technician training programs. One of the other guys went to the factory to see some of the first of a new machine as it was being built. They were making up wire harnesses with whatever color wire they had. Oh blue is out? Start using red. The colors were entirely meaningless. at least the place that builds all the industrial panels I work with is consistent about using orange for "line voltage connected upstream of the machine disconnect" why that category exists at all is a whole different question
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Aug 31, 2023 16:49
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There are sometimes a few supervisory circuits that need to be connected upstream, like for example if it's a machine that will be damaged by losing a phase sometimes there will be circuitry to prevent the machine from being turned on unless all 3 phases are live. By definition you need to have access to those 3 phases before turning the power on to allow the power to turn on in that case. That's just one example, I'm sure there are more I'm not familiar with. Chillers, heaters, dehumidifiers, etc for specialty optics that absolutely cannot be allowed to get condensation on them because they'll be instantly destroyed if you run the laser without cleaning the condensation and any residue it left on the optics off before powering up. Flammable gas detection systems. Etc etc
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Aug 31, 2023 19:50
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Industrial machinery/control panels: Green or green/yellow is ground White/gray/etc. is grounded conductor Orange is stuff not de-energized by the local disconnect everything else is a free for all baby Technically the relevant US standards ask you to use: Black: Ungrounded AC or DC at line voltage (or sometimes for power circuits only) Red: AC below line voltage (or sometimes for AC control circuits only) Blue: DC below line voltage (or sometimes for DC control circuits only) White w/ blue stripe: DC grounded conductor but lmao this is all "if you want." You can change it at will as long as you have it documented. And that's only if you rely on color for identification... if you use wire numbers or other ID, then you can just use whatever the gently caress you want as long as it's not green or white or orange. Fun note: green wires can be anything if they're part of a multi-conductor cable (and other conditions are met)! So green doesn't mean ground anymore! In Europe, for DC they tend to use brown/blue for +DC/COM respectively. tl;dr: gently caress wire colors, they ain't poo poo. My company bought a Swiss company a long time back, and they used blue wires in their panels. For everything. With no wire labels anywhere. shame on an IGA posted:at least the place that builds all the industrial panels I work with is consistent about using orange for "line voltage connected upstream of the machine disconnect" As above, orange is "not de-energized by local disconnect." Lots of times you have separate disconnects for a panel that has stuff like heaters, enclosure lighting, A/C, convenience receptacles, etc. that you don't want to turn off when you shut down the main panel power. So maybe you want to shut off the machine it controls, but you need the panel heater to stay on in cold rooms or something so the electronics don't drop below their temperature spec. Sometimes it's local, just not the main disconnect, other times it's wired hot and the service disconnect is what turns it off. edit: I'm at a food/bev company now and we used to put heaters in our enclosures to fight condensation. We use pneumatic dryers now, but before either of those we'd have a rainstorm inside our panels when they got shut down at night... our equipment is in refrigerated rooms, so when they shut off at the end of shift the cabinet would cool off and any moisture would condense and rain on the electronics. No bueno. But with adding heaters, we needed them to stay on when they shut the machine off at night, so they would be fed from the line side of the disconnect. I mean, we wouldn't always have that problem, but a surprising number of refrigerated facilities don't give a poo poo about humidity. I've seen steam tunnels that just vent to atmosphere, and they don't get shut off at end of shift so they just... spew steam in to the air constantly. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 20:50
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Electrons don't care what color the wire is. This is a shot I took of rewiring an airplane. According to the FAA, this aircraft is still airworthy (conditions apply).
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Sep 2, 2023 15:17
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Electrons don't care what color the wire is. Thank you for reminding me to never leave the ground
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Sep 2, 2023 19:14
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HolHorsejob posted:Thank you for reminding me to never leave the ground
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Sep 3, 2023 02:04
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It's always interesting how small line voltage wires actually are. Finally finishing up my years long panel(s) upgrade project and wiring up the new garage subpanel, which has a large pull box mounted above it since I'll need to pull the old wires out of the wall and they won't have enough length to make it down into the panel (old panel was in-wall, new one will be surface mount). I've got a 1.25" nipple (5 inches long) between the two and I just finished wiring the hot and neutral jumpers from the breakers up into the pull box, and the nipple was looking pretty full so I figured I'd do a conduit fill calc just to make sure. (18) 14 ga conductors, (12) 12 ga conductors, there'll be (3) 10 ga and (3) 8 ga as well. Total fill? Barely breaking 30%, and here I was worried I might be getting close to the 60% limit. Just for kicks I added to the calc the 3 ga ground that will be running from the panel up into the pull box (going to land all the grounds up there so I'm not running them all down into the panel for no reason, and run a 3 ga jumper between the ground bar in pullbox and the one in panel), and that puts it at 45% or so total fill, i.e. actual space used, even if code doesn't care about the ground. Just looks a lot more full than it is.
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Sep 3, 2023 09:03
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I want to have some recessed lighting installed in a couple rooms in my house. I've had two different contractors come and quote it, and both suggested installing these all in one LED fixtures. They don't have replaceable bulbs which is my concern since the whole unit will have to be replaced when the LED dies. I know LEDs last a long time but this seems silly and wasteful when they eventually fail. Is this just how things are done now or should I look into more quotes? A lot of my house has older fixtures from the 90s that I simply swapped bulbs but it doesn't seem like they would even install something like that when asked.
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Sep 8, 2023 13:06
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Suburban Dad posted:I want to have some recessed lighting installed in a couple rooms in my house. I've had two different contractors come and quote it, and both suggested installing these all in one LED fixtures. They don't have replaceable bulbs which is my concern since the whole unit will have to be replaced when the LED dies. I know LEDs last a long time but this seems silly and wasteful when they eventually fail. Is this just how things are done now or should I look into more quotes? A lot of my house has older fixtures from the 90s that I simply swapped bulbs but it doesn't seem like they would even install something like that when asked. This is how nice can lights are made now. There is absolutely no need to have a whole "can" with a bunch of extra connections anymore. The LEDs drivers fit through the hole for the light, the lights clip in. There will always be other lights available in that size. Between the reduced bill of materials, fewer connections and extremely long life (of good ones) it's a win win. The brand I've found to be a great mix of quality, choices and price is Lotus: https://www.lotusledlights.com/
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Sep 8, 2023 13:20
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Motronic posted:The brand I've found to be a great mix of quality, choices and price is Lotus: https://www.lotusledlights.com/ I’ve been starting to plan out some recessed lighting and got all excited about this…no distributor locations within 500 miles of my location in the Midwest. Ouch. Got any good secondary recommendations?
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Sep 8, 2023 13:26
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csammis posted:I’ve been starting to plan out some recessed lighting and got all excited about this…no distributor locations within 500 miles of my location in the Midwest. Ouch. I don't think there are any distributors near me either. I order them from https://www.prolighting.com/ Just look at these cut sheets they have for each of their lights: https://www.lotusledlights.com/resources/Spec-Sheet-LRG2.pdf Information dense, so you have to take a minute to figure it out, but from that you can build a part number of just about anything you could possible want in that series. I was using them to choose cutoff angles and lumens per square foot when arranging a bunch of 2" gimbals like that for my last lighting project: 
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Sep 8, 2023 13:35
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kastein posted:BMW likes to use brown for ground This logic is impossible to argue against
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Sep 8, 2023 17:52
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Also a big fan of RAB lighting who has a complete line of led pucks. Their customer service is the same handful of people in Pennsylvania. They recently replaced a 1994-era flood motion floodlight for me for the cost of shipping. If you’re worried about a failure having different trim, maybe buy an extra.
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Sep 10, 2023 03:46
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Anyone with bad opinions or concerns about the new Leviton outlets with the Wago-like lever connections? I figured it was an unnecessary gimmick when I saw them getting hyped on YT, but I want to replace some outlets and was surprised to discover they're available in 10-packs where they carry no price premium over other name-brand Decora style outlets, soo, why not?
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Sep 10, 2023 08:15
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Can you link them? As long as it's a lever camming over to provide tension instead of a spring they ought to be fine.
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Sep 10, 2023 14:45
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Looks like these are what they were talking about https://youtu.be/IjDBRYLFaqs Looks reasonable enough.
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Sep 10, 2023 15:04
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Shifty Pony posted:Looks like these are what they were talking about Oh yeah, I can see those catching on real quick with electricians who do new construction. Anything the speeds up install is great. This is where backstabs came from, but since they can't use those this is the next best thing. Rear-insert/tighten the clamp needs a screwdriver, these don't.
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Sep 10, 2023 15:23
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I was expecting the price to be the catch but Home Depot is showing $2.49/ea when purchased in a 10 pack. I might just use those instead of Eatons to re-outlet my house, drat. Also won't have to worry about the screws hitting the small metal junction boxes. I'll definitely pick one up to mess around with.
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Sep 10, 2023 16:43
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Exactly the same thoughts, I'd been aware of em for awhile but I thought I made the safe assumption they'd be significantly more money and they're really just not. Going to order a bunch of em, bit of extra motivation to replace the old backstab outlets I know are still lurking in my house which I'm suspecting may cause issues as I upgrade my panel to include AFCI. (I know, I know, if I thought that was the case should've replaced them all already)
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Sep 10, 2023 17:44
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I'm cautiously optimistic about those. We used wago terminal blocks and that style of termination a lot in the control panels at my last job and never had any issues with them, though I like them a lot more with stranded wire then solid for sure. I still prefer side screw with a clamping plate so I don't have to bend a hook in every wire, but I think I'll give these a shot.
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Sep 10, 2023 19:57
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kastein posted:I still prefer side screw with a clamping plate so I don't have to bend a hook in every wire Same. And since I'm not a commercial electrician working at the mcmansion factory who's expected to bang in 40 outlets before lunch I'll be sticking with that kind, but I totally see the value in this wago type.
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Sep 10, 2023 20:17
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Found the published patent application which shows the mechanism:  Wire goes in at 118. I don't see anything obviously wrong with it, although the clamping connection is more of a narrow guillotine type deal than wago's wide flat spring. Dunno which I will go with, but I noticed that the Leviton design is quite a bit larger than the back-clamp Eatons which might be a problem jamming them into older boxes.
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Sep 11, 2023 00:03
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I just put those in the notes I wrote up for meeting with an electrician tomorrow as an example. They're currently the same price as regular leviton outlets in the contractor packs at home depot ($2.63/ea). Also gently caress me why are outlets $2.63/ea.
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Sep 11, 2023 00:28
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Shifty Pony posted:Found the published patent application which shows the mechanism: Isn't this the exact same problems with backstabs? You're relying on the spring tension of that 250 piece to hold the wire against 130. Maybe I'm not getting it, but I wouldn't trust those...
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Sep 11, 2023 01:16
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devicenull posted:Isn't this the exact same problems with backstabs? You're relying on the spring tension of that 250 piece to hold the wire against 130. Maybe I'm not getting it, but I wouldn't trust those... The issue with backstabs is the spring in the "fully closed, no wire inserted" position has to be weak enough to allow you to fairly easily shove a wire in there without bending it, which means that it can have only marginally stronger pressure at "1.6mm deflected from fully closed, clamped on 14awg wire". A lever actuated spring doesn't have that problem and the clamped position can have a hell of a lot more pressure applied to it when closed to ensure a good connection. Think of it like the difference between a paper clip and a binder clip. A paper clip can only exert a little bit of force since you need to be able to jam the paper in there, but a binder clip has an external lever there that you use to open it up and can clamp so hard that getting paper in is impossible. The result is paper can work loose of a paper clip pretty easily but will tear before coming out of a binder clip. Backstabs try to compensate for this by having the spring bite into the wire if it is pulled backwards, but the fundamental problem of it being a pretty weak connection compared to other methods is still the same.
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Sep 11, 2023 02:00
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So we're in a new house as of a year ago, and this last weekend friends were in town staying the night with their electrical car and wanted to charge it, even knowing we didn't have a 220v available. Like a dumbass I said sure, and now the outlets and lights on that side of the garage are tripped (I think). I checked the circuit breaker, nothing is tripped and I even flipped all the switches one by one to try and hope that was the issue. I checked the 4 gfci outlets in the house hoping for the same thing and no luck. Much of the wiring on that side of the garage is behind cheap siding and a workbench, so I wasn't able to trace the connections super well, but it looks like the wiring might be coming from the main power to the house and not from circuit breaker? Photos below. My experience with electrical stuff is very low (swapped some light switches before), I can call an electrician if this is going to be complicated or dangerous, but if it's finding the last gfci outlet I missed somewhere I'd rather avoid paying a couple hundred. Any suggestions for what I check / try / or call an electrician next? The outlet that the car was plugged into  The wiring behind the outlet. Down the wall there are two more outlets that are no longer working. Up the wall leads to the next photo  I haven't pulled this off the wall yet, but I believe it's where the power comes into the house? Just based on what I see below and on the other side of the wall is the electrical meter. 
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Sep 11, 2023 19:37
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Spikes32 posted:So we're in a new house as of a year ago, and this last weekend friends were in town staying the night with their electrical car and wanted to charge it, even knowing we didn't have a 220v available. Like a dumbass I said sure, and now the outlets and lights on that side of the garage are tripped (I think).
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Sep 11, 2023 19:46
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Spikes32 posted:knowing we didn't have a 220v available This appear to be a 240v NEMA L6-20 outlet.  I'm also guessing it's a tripped GFCI you haven't found yet.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:49
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Sorry yeah, that 220 outlet I only found this morning. Previously it had a light cover hanging over it. But thanks for the advice I'll keep looking behind the walls for the gfci outlet then.
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Sep 11, 2023 20:00
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Motronic posted:This appear to be a 240v NEMA L6-20 outlet. I might pull that wooden cover off the L6-20 outlet and see what's under there. The screws on the left of it are suspiciously placed (and look like standard box cover screws), almost like there's another outlet under there. It looks like you've got a significant Gary infestation, so things might not make sense.... Either way, I'm pretty sure pressboard covers are not appropriate for electrical boxes devicenull fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 20:07
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No luck, I'll continue investigating behind the workbench this afternoon. 
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Sep 11, 2023 20:25
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