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STR posted:You're loving golden for a 20 amp circuit then. Relabel one of the wires with white tape at the outlet, do the same at the breaker end and attach it to the neutral bar. Move that bare one to whatever grounding there is in the panel. It may be 10-2 and I'm bad at eyeballing, but if they didn't bother getting a 4-wire romex cable, I have a feeling they used left over 12-2. I haven't used this plug for anything so I'm not too concerned about it burning down the house anytime soon. The difficult challenge with swapping the breaker is that there's no main shut off. So I'll have to pull the meter or have it pulled for me so that I can swap it out without danger.
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Aug 16, 2019 03:28
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I know dedicated AC circuits can get a bit weird, but that seems... weird.
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It's a retrofit sub panel wired in parallel with the original 1950 fuse panel. They both connect right from the meter. I can cut power to the fuse panel with a big switch on it, but the sub panel they used for the breakers doesn't have one. Here's a photo from my inspection when I bought the house. Bottom right is the AC Condenser. Top left is the 220v for the dryer. The 3 in the top right I think go to A/C, Furnace, and blower for the HVAC. Bottom right is my 6-30 plug in the bedroom. Of note is that there's another 6-30 plug in my dining room, but it doesn't appear to be powered. I've tried getting a reading off it from my multimeter several times. I'm not sure what the deal with that one is.   For kicks, here is what my fuse panel looks like. In this photo from the inspection you will also note everything has a 30 amp fuse which is double what it's supposed to be fused at according to the door. I put in the correct 15 amp fuses and the only one I've blown has been the kitchen. I can't run my microwave and anything else. 
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Aug 16, 2019 04:29
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I've talked to a couple electricians and they both want to install a main breaker in place of the sub panel and then slave the fuse box off of a breaker, which I think kind of sucks as a solution because then I'm still limited by the fuses inside the house. It's already expensive (~$7-10K not including drywall or other repairs) and doing it any other way would be more costly, so it is what it is. However it's worked fine for decades so I'm not in a huge rush to fix it and there are other higher priority items still. Anyway, swapping out the double pole to a single pole breaker and converting that bedroom outlet to a normal outlet still seems pretty easy to me? I just have to pull the meter, right? SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Aug 16, 2019 |
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Aug 16, 2019 15:40
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Endymion FRS MK1 posted:How do I wire my bedroom light switch? That sure looks like exposed copper touching the metal box at the back there. If that insulation is that far gone, you're going to need to run a new wire down the wall. That looks incredibly unsafe, like burn-your-house-down unsafe. Do you know if the wire(s) on the left is the power coming in, or the power going out?
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Sep 7, 2019 15:21
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If they're exposed I think they need to be metal by code, but I'm not certain. Either way I'd go with metal if only because I'm in Texas and the heat buildup in the attic tends to make plastics brittle over time.
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Sep 15, 2019 20:18
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Well they're only kids. I'm sure they'll get it right the next time. Was that a light-only dimmer wired to a ceiling fan?
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Oct 7, 2019 20:01
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Honestly it's a pretty easy mistake to make. The packages I've seen at the store were not very clearly marked and your average person is a moron who is used to the consumer electronics mindset that if something can be plugged in to something else, it means it's safe.
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Oct 7, 2019 20:16
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You can also nut the ends of those wires all individually (not together!!!) and turn the power back on to see what's lost power. Make a note of it, then stick together and nut one of the sets of wires to the live wires (black to black, white to white), flip the power back on and see what regained power. At that point you should know what all the sets of wires go to. My guess is one set of wires goes to another outlet (or chain) and the other set goes to a light.
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Oct 17, 2019 04:27
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Was there anything in the house already not working? You can't power anything with 2 positive wires. If they go to something that works then that means the neutral for that mystery device is wired into another outlet. 
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Oct 17, 2019 05:17
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IANAE but different phases of power still have to be synchronized/offset to each other so it wouldn't work. This is also why you shut off the main power when you hook up a generator. When the main power comes back on the two frequencies won't be aligned and it will gently caress poo poo up.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:23
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All outlets in the room? That's asinine. If you remove the switch you can nut the wires to bypass it.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:06
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In my experience with switched outlets in the US it's usually just half an outlet that's switched. You can undo that by jumping the screws with a small piece of wire and disconnecting and capping the switched wires.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:13
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Just replace the whole outlet. They're cheap.
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Dec 16, 2019 17:57
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:Hi everyone!
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Dec 17, 2019 19:57
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That's how all renovated houses are.
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Dec 17, 2019 21:15
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Please disregard all these posts and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and days of your time on inspections and such before not buying the house. The Bad With Money thread needs more content.
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Dec 18, 2019 19:17
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Can you not just put in a GFCI outlet?
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Dec 20, 2019 04:55
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Sounds like you figured it out but for others sake: The switch only had a single Romex cable going to it and the hot and neutral for that switch cable needed to be nutted in line with the hot wire to the led and fan to act as a switch.
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Jan 6, 2020 06:08
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Wiring story: I swapped out old 2 prong outlets for GFCI in my dining room this weekend and discovered that my entire kitchen is running through my dining room outlets. So by putting a GFCI on the first outlet I have protected them all. It's a 1950 house so the wiring I think is how it was originally setup, and while not optimal, it seems to work fine. I took a wire wheel to the copper wires in the wall and gave them a nice polish to make sure I had the best conductivity possible as they were a bit tarnished. I would have stripped more insulation off but they were a bit short already as is.
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Jan 6, 2020 18:34
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kid sinister posted:Yeah that should work. Did you put the stickers on your kitchen outlets?  My fridge is like a 2015 model. It's energy efficient and stuff. The only time I've blown a fuse is when I use the microwave and literally anything else. The microwave is like 14 amps and the fuse is 15. I've got wago nuts but didn't even think about it at the time. Is it worth it to pull all of it out again to pig tail? I would think my polished wire solution was pretty good.
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Jan 6, 2020 20:53
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Ferrule posted:That's, erm, not how it works. And you';re setting yourself up for all kinds of ghost trips and weird things. I know that's not how it works and it's temporary. At the time I didn't realize everything was daisychained to the dining room and I haven't had a chance to replace those downstream GFCI outlets yet. kecske posted:UK posting so I dont know how different the wiring regulations are but isnt having multiple GFCI (RCD for us) on the same circuit generally avoided? Here you'd get flagged up for fault markers and discrimination/selectivity. We'd have a single 30mA device at the consumer unit / fuseboard protecting all outlets on that circuit. That's the ideal solution and if my house had a breaker box I'd go that route but I'm still on screw in fuses and capitalism has failed me because nobody makes screw-in GFCI fuses! 
SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 00:11
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Based on the multimeter readings it sounds like they were trying to wire up a NEMA 6-15 outlet or something similar, but used the wrong everything.
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Mar 11, 2020 19:24
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I am told early window ACs used that kind of power. I have 2 plugs for them in my 1950s house. One in the master bedroom and one centrally located in the dining room.
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Mar 11, 2020 20:07
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Electrical wires are stapled to the framing when installed so you won't be able to pull out the old stuff unless it was also an addition to the house and simply fished through the walls.
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Apr 23, 2020 20:57
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It looks to me like the bottom left wire is the source of power. Once the switch is on, the electricity will flow through the black wire pigtail and out to the different lights and fan. Then it comes back through the neutral wires in the pigtail, and back out through the single neutral wire in the same bundle as the first black wire that connects to the switch.
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May 27, 2020 04:28
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I fixed my girlfriends backstabbed outlets in her house and it took a whole lot of cursing to get those wires out. I had to cut the wires off on one outlet.
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May 27, 2020 15:01
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I'm also a member of the Wago Gang. The things are life savers.
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May 27, 2020 20:08
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That one box that looks like they punched the hole in the wall for it really pisses me off. How loving hard is it to cut sheetrock? Especially when it's your "trade".
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Jul 1, 2020 15:43
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I found out yesterday that my bedroom ceiling fan supplies the power to my garage and that the insulation is falling off of the wires so today I'm crawling up in my billion degree attic to rerun the wiring and hopefully find a better circuit to splice the garage into. Yay homeownership.
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Jul 4, 2020 17:02
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kid sinister posted:Hindsight is 20/20. Do it at 4 in the morning. I setup a big box fan pointed at me and finished most of the work by 2PM and it was actually pretty bearable. I didnt need to do as much work as I thought because the condition of the wire in the attic was better than the wire in the ceiling box. I moved everything into a junction box and ran a small run of romex down to the ceiling box for the fan. Everything is 12 gauge and the only thing in my garage right now is lighting so I decided to leave it be for the time being. I never trusted the garage outlet too much anyway so almost all of my tools are battery powered. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Jul 5, 2020 01:03
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Touching the metal drain and the water spout should do it. I suspect what happened is your plumbing was used as a ground as was done in the old days. Then at some point an important piece was replaced with PEX or PVC and no longer conductive. Then a fault happened in the electrical system and the original ground around the water supply pipes no longer connects to the ground, so the electricity is travelling through the water and you to travel between the ungrounded plumbing and the sewer line which presumably is cast iron or something metal and connected to the ground.
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Jul 6, 2020 21:20
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That reminds me that until I redid my plumbing with PEX last year my grounding was the plumbing as well. While I had proper grounding rods installed, I still have the original grounding wire still wrapped around some remnants of the old plumbing I didn't tear out. I should probably sever that so nothing fucky happens down the road.
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Jul 6, 2020 22:56
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Well my chain of events is that my house originally had galvanized steel plumbing that used the dirt as insulation. So the main water line came in underground, and ran underground to the bathroom and kitchen, where the pipes came out of the ground and up into the structure. At some point before my ownership the hot water lines rusted through and were (poorly) replaced with copper lines just sitting on top of the ground. After I moved in the cold water galvanized steel failed and I replaced it with PEX. This required tying into the original supply line from the street which was a larger diameter galvanized steel from what I can tell. I had a master plumber tie it in because I was terrified to touch it. The pipe itself looks like the surface of a desert after the wet season where the ground has dried up and cracked. Somehow it's not leaking but the plumber estimated I have a few years of life left on it so I'm just waiting for it to spring a leak. The city is replacing my water main soon so I'm hoping they break it and I can get them to replace it for me! Anyway, the original ground for the house is bonded to the piping that comes out of the bathroom and down into the dirt. After I had to cold lines replaced with PEX, I ripped up most of the buried pipe that remained, and the small pieces that are left are no longer connected to any part of the system that's running water, and I don't think there's more than a few feet of pipe under the ground anymore. So the ground is useless except to energize some left over pipe in the walls of my bathroom in case I have a fault.
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Jul 7, 2020 03:19
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I'm also dubious that a leaking pipe could be the culprit but I guess it's possible.
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Jul 7, 2020 18:00
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Wiring Thread 2: Electric Bungalow
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Jul 8, 2020 04:58
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Wiring: My bathroom fixtures are American Standard voltage
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Jul 8, 2020 15:16
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Check to see if any GFCIs have tripped. Could be an upstream GFCI tripped and cut power to everything else.
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Jul 19, 2020 16:01
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My first thought was induced voltage, but I wasn't sure if you can even have enough induced voltage for an LED light, and apparently you can! https://lamphq.com/led-lights-glow/ Another issue could be a switched neutral.
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Jul 23, 2020 04:53
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Bioshuffle posted:My electric outlets have the GFCI sticker on it, but no test or reset button. Does this mean the GFCI is at the breaker level? Is there a reason to switch them out for ones with the button? They're a bit yellowed with age, so I need to update them all to begin with. Usually it means they are chained off of a GFCI outlet somewhere upstream. If you don't have any GFCI outlets anywhere, it could be a breaker. Or it could be that there used to be a GFCI outlet and they removed it but left the sticker.
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Jul 28, 2020 14:42
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:20 |
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GreenBuckanneer posted:This one is better than black & decker models or similar brands? I've got a tool box of odds and ends but no power tools. I'm a Milwaukee slut myself, but Ryobi makes good tools for most non-professional applications.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:40
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