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shame on an IGA posted:I'm starting to get big "why can't my refrigerator and dehumidifier tap coolant from the 3 ton HVAC compressor that's just sitting outside" vibes from this discussion I understand that no equipment currently exists to wire a house for direct current, and that doing so today would be exorbitantly expensive. I'm not trying to argue that anybody should go wire their house with direct current. I'm just wondering if at some point in the future there might exist some option to just set up USB PD 4.0 at most outlets, the way that today most outlets are NEMA 5-15 and the dryer and range have their own special outlets. For houses with solar panels and battery storage, it just seems weird that they're converting to AC (at 6-10% loss) and then back to DC (at 6-20% loss), and that there might be some efficiencies to be gained if a bunch of smart people figured out how to provide DC for the entire system. And it seems, from what I'm reading, that 110V DC would be enough for a house smaller than a football field to provide 48V to devices plugged into some sort of DC outlet like USB C, so, like, it is theoretically possible today with, like, an RV or a tiny house and USB PD 2.0. Possibly the "home wiring help" thread isn't the right place for this, and I apologize for the tangent.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:08
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cruft posted:Man. There's just got to be some efficiency to be gained here. I mean the friggin' space station doesn't convert to AC and then back to DC to deal with line losses, and if anybody cares about efficiency it'd be those people. Uh, the space station isn't trying to send electricity hundreds of miles away to power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, all having drastically different usage requirements that may or may not benefit from DC. The space station does, however, run 100% custom equipment that can be designed specifically to most efficiently utilize whatever power supply system the engineers want to specify. I'm not going to argue that the current system is perfect, mainly because I'm honestly not equipped to say one way or the other, but there's massive inertia that prevents big changes like this from happening. Often the efficiency gains, if there even are any, just aren't worth changing everything at once. I mean, go back 150 years and maybe you'd have a shot at changing some minds, but it's more or less set in stone now. Improvements can be made piecemeal, but overhauling the entire system like that is not going to happen overnight. edit: cruft posted:I'm just wondering if at some point in the future there might exist some option to just set up USB PD 4.0 at most outlets, the way that today most outlets are NEMA 5-15 and the dryer and range have their own special outlets. USB has been around for less than 30 years and has already changed multiple times, so much so that anything designed even 10-15 years ago is basically obsolete. You're advocating that we change our entire power distribution system for a new spec that MIGHT last 10 years. Then we'll have to go through this exercise all over again for the Next Best Thing. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 20:10
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cruft posted:Possibly the "home wiring help" thread isn't the right place for this, and I apologize for the tangent. If you're not looking for cold, hard facts and reality I guess it's not. If you want a tech-bro level "disruption" wankfest I'm sure you can find it somewhere around the forums. DaveSauce posted:Often the efficiency gains, if there even are any, just aren't worth changing everything at once. This is what is actually comes down to. If you're looking at this as a wholistic environmental project, producing all of the parts, installing them, and scrapping the old stuff is likely to have a breakeven timeframe of "a few hundred years before the earth crashes into the sun". This is why the focus is on reduced usage and clean generation. Not min/maxing existing endpoint infrastructure. Motronic fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 20:10
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DaveSauce posted:I mean, go back 150 years and maybe you'd have a shot at changing some minds, but it's more or less set in stone now. Improvements can be made piecemeal, but overhauling the entire system like that is not going to happen overnight. I'm really not suggesting we use USB for the power distribution system. Perhaps I should have talked about a recreational vehicle instead of a house, to be more clear. But it might interest folks to know that for very long distances, High Voltage DC (HVDC) is very much in vogue right now. Also idly interesting (to me, anyway) is that Consolidated Edison finally got rid of its last DC transmission line in I think 1998. If I'm not mistaken, it was powering some elevators in Manhattan. e: I was mistaken. According to Wikipedia, ConEd shut down DC service in 2007. PG&E still provides DC service in San Francisco, to power elevators. cruft fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 20:21
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Please do not install 800kV HVDC transmission lines in your house. The goal here in this thread is to help people not burn their house down with electricity, and 800kV makes that difficult.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:26
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cruft posted:I'm really not suggesting we use USB for the power distribution system. Perhaps I should have talked about a recreational vehicle instead of a house, to be more clear. But it might interest folks to know that for very long distances, High Voltage DC (HVDC) is very much in vogue right now. This isn't an AC vs DC issue. It's primarily a LOW VOLTAGE issue. And RVs already run mostly on 12v. Because they are cars, and this is normal for cars and trailers. Cars are also small as compared to fixed homes, which eliminates all of the low voltage/large conductor issues. I'm not against doing any of those stuff, it's just implausible. I'm sitting at a desk in my barn right now that it run entirely on 12v from a couple of solar panels and a battery. I have a small 12c to 120v inverter for random charger needs where it's a device that takes something other than 12v and I don't want a full on project just to plug it in for a day or so. So this is proof it works fine in small, considered situations. Very much like an RV. Motronic fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 20:37
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We're deeply into diminishing returns, so diminishing that by the time you scrape together those returns you've blown past them in manufacturing energy. Those last few % are HARD to get. You can now light a whole house for the energy it used to take to light a room. That was a 90% reduction in the electricity needed to to light a house. Now if you want to scrape 10% of that remaining 10% you have to do it for less energy than you are saving. In this case you're talk about a distribution network, even at the room level, made for less than say, 40watts per hour. That is a tax if you cannot convert the whole room as you still have 120v in the wall.
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Aug 9, 2021 20:48
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I like the concept of "each house an island" where you just get "power" at whatever delivered to a box on the wall, and your house converts it down to whatever all your devices use. This means that Siemens and GE and Cutler-Hammer and Square-D and Amazon and Google and Apple can all have a family of products that work perfectly together. And maybe your Apple House will also accept devices not made by Apple to be plugged into it. There's a nonzero chance that you can find a Google-to-NEMA adapter to let you plug in an extension cord to power that ancient toaster you keep around. I bet your Siemens-compatible Kitchenaid Microwave will even be able to call an electric company that is certified to work on Siemens equipment. On the upside, the solar you have on your roof is only converted once, and to the 20.7V your DeWalt by Amazon Basics tool line runs on. Instead of burning 3-6% in conversion losses and possibly dozens of watts spread across the whole house, the one static power supply you have on the wall in the garage only needs to reject about 800W of heat to keep your entire house powered at some low-but-standardized-in-your-house voltage. Don't take any of your battery tools to your neighbors, unless you are living in a Leviton Smart Community; noncompatible chargers will brick the firmware, but you can buy one-time-use charging tokens if you desperately need to charge somewhere other than your house.
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Aug 9, 2021 22:51
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:I like the concept of "each house an island" where you just get "power" at whatever delivered to a box on the wall, and your house converts it down to whatever all your devices use. This means that Siemens and GE and Cutler-Hammer and Square-D and Amazon and Google and Apple can all have a family of products that work perfectly together. Mods please delete this before a tech bro sees it
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Aug 9, 2021 23:05
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Thank you for describing hell.
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Aug 9, 2021 23:11
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Thanks for the reminder to install DIN rail instead of a proprietary load center whenever I get around to replacing this fuse box
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Aug 10, 2021 00:39
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:I like the concept of "each house an island" where you just get "power" at whatever delivered to a box on the wall, and your house converts it down to whatever all your devices use. This means that Siemens and GE and Cutler-Hammer and Square-D and Amazon and Google and Apple can all have a family of products that work perfectly together. How do I like and subscribe?
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Aug 10, 2021 02:12
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Hey dumb question, why the hell would every ground conductor in a junction box and the downstream light switch box (plus the ground screw of the switch itself) have voltage, and could this be as simple as the PO swapping wires on the light fixtures as he did on every single other fixture in this house? If there's a metal j box downstream of this whole mess without ground wires connected to that box, would that do it or am I looking for something nastier and harder to find? I can connect the cable feeding the j box to something else and get no voltage on the neutral or ground, so hoping that means everything upstream of the j box is ok.
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Aug 10, 2021 03:54
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Sounds like maybe a rogue ground/neutral bond. I know you're dealing with an old place.......how many boxes are we dealing with here? Do you have an electric dryer and/or oven?
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Aug 10, 2021 05:13
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Motronic posted:Sounds like maybe a rogue ground/neutral bond. I know you're dealing with an old place.......how many boxes are we dealing with here? Do you have an electric dryer and/or oven? Built 1962, but this wiring was put in around 2013 (by a loving clown who clipped every cable to 3 inches). No K&T anywhere in the house, just old ungrounded nm in the few places where I didn't rip it out. I have both an electric dryer and oven. If it's at all helpful, I've found no other weird behavior anywhere else in the house, though I still have a handful of outlets I haven't personally opened and a couple lights to map out. Bear with me on the box count, because the wiring for this circuit meanders throughout the house. Originally it went from the panel, through a couple of ridiculous j boxes into the basement, up into what I'm calling J1 (currently a hole in the wall) where it splits to the front and back of house, roughly. I pulled a new grounded run from the panel to bypass the downstairs nonsense, so it now goes from the panel straight to J1 where I tie it in to existing wiring. Before I did that, I verified only the black wire was hot on the home run. Front of house seems to be isolated from the back of house shenanigans so I'm setting that aside for now. Power comes straight from J1 to J2 which sends three cables out to the bathroom lights and the switch. S1 sends some number of cables to J3, which is metal and shared with another circuit that powers a few outlets on this side of the house, all wired correctly per the plug in tester. The two circuits don't have bonded grounds and don't appear to have any other shared connections just from looking at it and poking (like everything else in this house, I have to dig), but I don't think either is grounded to the box. I have a handful of lights and outlets on the problem circuit somewhere downstream of J2 that I think split out of J3.   I don't know if this is the cause of the problem, but something in here seems not right. A is power in (no problems here), B is straight to Light 2 (no problems), C & D go to S1 and both get hot grounds if either is powered and the switch is on, while its mate will get a hot black wire coming back from the switch. I know that with D powered, Y is the line in (X is switch load), but I think it actually doesn't change if I connect C instead. When C or D is powered and the switch is on, W and/or Z is powered (I haven't tried pulling them apart yet), the twisted grounds are powered independently of the switch (they're not connected) and the switch ground screw is hot. With the switch off, the ground screw stays hot, but the ground conductors lose power and the black wire for C or D does too. It's wired A + D, B + C in the pic which is the only configuration that operates both lights off the switch. A + C powers the switch box and grounds and Light 1, but the switch doesn't control it. A + D powers Light 1 off the switch, and the ground wires are all hot.
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Aug 10, 2021 09:39
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BonerGhost posted:Built 1962, but this wiring was put in around 2013 (by a loving clown who clipped every cable to 3 inches). No K&T anywhere in the house, just old ungrounded nm in the few places where I didn't rip it out. Is there a second switch? It almost sound like a three way circuit, but with only 14/2 wire instead of 14/3 for the travelers. That would explain the wandering hots, perhaps. 
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Aug 10, 2021 14:27
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Don't take any of your battery tools to your neighbors, unless you are living in a Leviton Smart Community; noncompatible chargers will brick the firmware, but you can buy one-time-use charging tokens if you desperately need to charge somewhere other than your house. You forgot block chain for the tokens, consuming around 13kwh of energy converted to heat to generate and another 1kwh to validate.
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Aug 10, 2021 16:22
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Harry_Potato posted:Is there a second switch? It almost sound like a three way circuit, but with only 14/2 wire instead of 14/3 for the travelers. That would explain the wandering hots, perhaps. I had a hunch this might be the case, especially because the original light switch was a two pole wired like a single pole. I swapped it with a single pole to check, but same behavior. There's definitely no other switch that has an effect on these lights and this switch doesn't affect anything else, but there are up to three other switches that could be connected in some fashion to whatever the hell is going on in here.
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Aug 10, 2021 16:23
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So I needed to add an outlet and I was going to use this as my source, I did not expect to see two lines coming into the box. They're also wired together and the left outlet reads as a open ground on my tester. Is it possible the line leaving the box is running to the next outlet in the wall and that's why they're wired as such? Is the open ground going to hurt anything? Am I going to cause a problem if I run another line down to floor level for another outlet? edit: the left wire ground is just wire nutted to the piece connecting the two recepticles, is it also supposed to run to the ground on that outlet?  I DIDN'T WIRE ANY OF THIS BE GENTLE Rhyno fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 18:18
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good lord that hurts to look at the loving jumper with the jacket still on it lmao edit: wire those 2 romex together then jump out pigtails to your receptacles. Rufio fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 18:26
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Rhyno posted:So I needed to add an outlet and I was going to use this as my source, I did not expect to see two lines coming into the box. They're also wired together and the left outlet reads as a open ground on my tester. Is it possible the line leaving the box is running to the next outlet in the wall and that's why they're wired as such? Is the open ground going to hurt anything? Am I going to cause a problem if I run another line down to floor level for another outlet? What. The. gently caress. Just initial observations: -The outlet on the right has both a hot and a neutral wired onto the neutral side of the outlet. -The outlet on the left has a ground and a hot wired to the same screw terminal on the hot side. -The wire coming into the box on the left side doesn't have a ground. So I'm making a big assumption here, but I bet you're right in that the power comes in on one wire, transfers to the other outlet, and then back out through the second wire to feed some other outlet or device. If it was me I would disconnect that mess and wire nut all the exposed conductors and then flip the power back on and test with a non-contact voltage tester to see which of the 2 hot wires coming out of the wall is the one supplying power. Then rewire the outlets correctly using pigtails instead of daisy chaining them like that. See if you can find a ground wire on that second wire and hook it up. If you can't get it grounded you should consider swapping in a GFCI outlet to provide similar protections.
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Aug 10, 2021 18:29
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This thread has been a goldmine just for seeing the exclamations and swears by the experts in the thread when goons post what lies in their walls. e: Is the little black square the screw goes through important? Sometimes those fall off when I'm messing with stuff in boxes and I don't bother putting them back.
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Aug 10, 2021 18:34
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Here's a top down SpartanIvy posted:-The outlet on the right has both a hot and a neutral wired onto the neutral side of the outlet. Looking closer, it doesn't appear to have hot and neutral on that side. The left just has the two grounds wired together. There is a ground on the left. Rufio posted:good lord that hurts to look at So wire the two in wall lines together and pigtail out from there? Edit: To be clear, twist the two ends of each romex together right? And then a pigtail off that? Can I split all three outlets off that safely? Rhyno fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 18:39
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Rhyno posted:Here's a top down That looks better. The other picture definitely had some things hidden. Nothing is particularly bad in that picture except they forgot to nut all the grounds together which is why you have a floating ground on the one outlet. The better way to do that is to have all the wires of each type (hot/neutral/ground) nutted together so you have 3 wire nuts in the box and only 3 wires going to each outlet to supply power. Power going downstream to other outlets won't be passing over the outlets screw terminals. Nutting 4 wires together is difficult though, which is probably why it was done that way. I will go ahead and plug the WAGO 221 connectors because they make this stuff easy and I love them. E: you can add a third wire to the stack but then you'd have 5 wires per nut which is also a lot harder to do. Using the screw terminals is totally kosher though, just make sure you get the wires screwed down good and proper. IE wrapped clockwise the whole way around the screw and tightened really tight. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 18:56
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I have wagos here but not the 4 slot ones drat it. I'm gonna lay this out and take a pic and you guys tell me if I'm a fire hazard. Edit: I will absolutely go buy other connectors if you tell me to  So I have both wall romex parts connected to a 3 port wago (1). i've run a short piece out of each of those as a pigtail and into another wago (2). So I can then run to each original outlet from here correct? And I could then run the new line (new) to either of those? Or does each of these need it's own pigtail? Rhyno fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 18:58
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One more nitpicky consideration is box fill. That's a double gang box and probably like 30 cu in? Looks like 12 gauge wires so by my quick napkin math with 3 romex wires you've got 6 conductors that terminate in the box, and 2 gangs of outlets, plus internal clamps, so you should be fine with any box volume above 26 cu in or so. Not really a concern here but always good to keep in mind when shoving a bunch of wires into a box!
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Aug 10, 2021 19:10
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I think if I do it this way it'll be less cluttered than before.
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Aug 10, 2021 19:11
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Rhyno posted:Here's a top down Is this taking advantage of the fact that when you don't snap off the tab, the top and bottom terminals are connected, as the way to do the daisy-chaining?
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Aug 10, 2021 19:18
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FISHMANPET posted:Is this taking advantage of the fact that when you don't snap off the tab, the top and bottom terminals are connected, as the way to do the daisy-chaining? Rhyno posted:I have wagos here but not the 4 slot ones drat it. I'm gonna lay this out and take a pic and you guys tell me if I'm a fire hazard. That's one way to do it but a lot simpler way to do it would be to use the 5 terminal lever wagos (the 221s). They are far superior to the push-connector type in my experience. They hold better and can be reused and adjusted easily if need be. Here's a pack of different sizes on Amazon This is how I would wire it up with the 5-terminal 221's. You have all 3 sets of wires from the wall and both outlets all wired up and grounded properly there with a minimum of connections and wires. 
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Aug 10, 2021 19:23
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Inner Light posted:e: Is the little black square the screw goes through important? Sometimes those fall off when I'm messing with stuff in boxes and I don't bother putting them back. No, that's just there to keep the screw in place (during shipping etc) until you actually tighten it down.
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Aug 10, 2021 19:24
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SpartanIvy posted:That's exactly what it's doing. Since each outlet can hold 2 sets of wires, with 2 outlets that's the only way to do it without using a pigtail or jamming multiple wires under the same screw. (DONT DO THIS!) The downside is that there's still only 1 ground screw per outlet, so unless you pigtail the ground, something isn't getting grounded which is what happened here. I think I wasn't clear about one thing, that third romex is the piece i shoved through the wall for the new outlet. So I will order those connectors but I need to get the breaker back on as it runs other parts of the basement I need to have power on for the rest of the day. Here's what I have for now.  I just have the two original outlets wired up and pigtailed (i think this is done correctly as you guys originally taught me 2 years ago). Both are now testing correct. From here I could just wire the lower outlet to either existing as I originally planned but I want to do this correctly so I will get the other connectors and rewire this later in the week.
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Aug 10, 2021 19:29
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SpartanIvy posted:WAGO 221 connectors Holy poo poo, those are amazing! I feel like I've been living in a cave my whole life!
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Aug 10, 2021 19:34
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What you've got looks safe to me, certainly better than it was. Generally with electrical there's a bunch of safe ways to do things to code, but some ways are better than others, and everyone disagrees on which ones those are. 
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Aug 10, 2021 19:35
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SpartanIvy posted:What you've got looks safe to me, certainly better than it was. So Should I just wire the new outlet onto the left one and pigtail the new ground to the that pigtailed ground?
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Aug 10, 2021 19:41
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Rhyno posted:So Should I just wire the new outlet onto the left one and pigtail the new ground to the that pigtailed ground? Daisy chaining the new outlet off one of the existing outlets would be fine, as long as the ground is pigtailed. Which is what I think you're saying. Afaik there's nothing in code against daisy chaining off outlets as long as you're not putting two or more wires under a single screw, which is definitely bad and dangerous. Pigtailing from the supply wires is the better option though and the way I do my own outlets. IE what I illustrated above. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 19:47
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SpartanIvy posted:Daisy chaining the new outlet off one of the existing outlets would be fine, as long as the ground is pigtailed. Which is what I think you're saying. I think that's what I'm saying  .Okay I'm gonna do that and button this all up. Thanks a ton man!
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Aug 10, 2021 19:50
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Rhyno posted:I think that's what I'm saying Countdown until Motronic posts that everything I said is wrong.
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Aug 10, 2021 19:54
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SpartanIvy posted:One more nitpicky consideration is box fill. That's a double gang box and probably like 30 cu in? One note here is that I don't believe the plastic tabs count as internal clamps for box fill. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:30
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Yeah, the box is a little bit cramped with that many connectors in there. I think I'll grab the 4 ports tomorrow and re do it so it's not so hard to get the outlets back in place.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:43
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Wagos are great but if at any time you need to wire nut 4 wires together, just line them up and twist together with your Kleins.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:48
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