Arsenic Lupin posted:

What does code say about doorbell wire (max 24 volts)? Can it be run on the exterior of a house? Does it need to be run through conduit? It turns out the previous owners of my house cut the doorbell wire not just at the doorbell, which would make sense, but at the porch level, which means it would have to be refished in a very un-fish-friendly house.

shame on an IGA posted:

The antivax congressman from KY is proud of this abomination

e: the biggest problem here is that he appears to be using a 3-phase AC breaker to switch high current DC loads, which is a huge no-no because you need entirely different arc chute designs to quench DC. It's eventually going to blow up in his face when he tries to turn it off, and never mind the total lack of enclosure.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

As was gently suggested upthread, I've realized my electrician's proposal for replacing the doorbell wire was a hint at "I don't think this job is worth my time." (2 men, one day) This seems like a thing I can fix myself, with a tolerance for crawlspaces, spiders in my hair, and drilling poo poo.

I have one major question: How do I figure out which breaker the transformer is on? It's not like there's a socket I can plug a multitester into.

Guy Axlerod posted:

In some cases the transformer is directly attached to the main panel box so you could just see the wires when the panel cover is off.

movax posted:

Dumb quick question that I'm pretty sure the answer is "no" too -- for an EV Charger (Emporia), you cannot use SO cord to run into a junction box for a hard wired install, right? Must use conduit + THHN?

It looks like 3/4" or 1" EMT is the right size to fit into the gland that was previously for the pigtail cord, but it would save me a bit of Googling / digging up the right fittings if I could just run the whip into a junction box.

movax posted:

Am I a dumbass or is there a reason why the Raco 862 is so expensive / out of stock everywhere? I just need a simple 1-gang Decora compatible metal cover for some single-gang handy boxes in my garage. Where else should I look? This feels like it should cost $0.50.

movax posted:

Oh, 100% -- just very confused why there still appear to be 10000s of the 2-gang covers, but for some reason the 1 gang is just completely gone. I don't think it's a weird application at all!

Maybe I should put the square boxes on the wall, but I feel like that'll look weird.

e: the switches will be a Caseta and a Pico remote, so I do need Decora-style faceplates, unfortunately.

Slugworth posted:

Resolution to this: It was a loose connection in a junction box in the attic. Whoever wired this garage reno left about 2 inches of 12g wire in that box, so the connections are all under undue amounts of tension from wires being bent like crazy to make the connection. I threw a new wirenut on for now, but I wanna throw some pigtails in there to make things less dumb.

No backstabbed outlets in this room! Every other outlet in the house, yes.

But!!

The rear end in a top hat that did the reno literally did not leave enough wire in any of the outlet boxes to pull the outlets out. Like, even a millimeter. I honestly can't even figure how he installed them.

So, this thread is ok with wago lever connectors to fix poo poo like this, right? Because I still want to replace all these old, painted over outlets.

spf3million posted:

This is probably outside the scope of this thread but here goes.

I have a three gang switch in my house, the left and right switches activate two different lights and work fine, the middle one has never worked and there are two ceiling can lights that no other switches activate so I assume they are tied into the middle switch. Confirmed light bulbs are good.

I pulled the face plate and switches and couldn't figure out what was going on so I pulled the box and found this:



The left switch had wire A on the upper and D1 on the lower screw. No ground.
The middle switch had wire B on the upper and D2 on the lower screw. No ground.
The right switch had wire C on the upper and D3 (not shown off picture) on the lower screw, G on the ground screw
White wires F and E were nutted together inside the box not connected to any of the switches.

Using a multimeter, we measured the following voltages
120V across D-G
0V on all the rest to G
80V across D-F
120V across D-E
120V across A-D (working switch/circuit)
30V across B-D (this is the switch/circuit that doesn't work)
80V across C-D (working switch/circuit with a CFL)


Here is a photo of the can:


We measured continuity (steady at 0.00 ohms) from D to H. Mysteriously I measure close to zero volts across H-G even though D-G measures 120V. How can D be hot and be in continuity H while there is no voltage across H-G?

shortspecialbus posted:

I'm not sure this is the right thread for this, apologies if there's a better one. We bought a new house that has an electric stove in the main kitchen. We're planning on remodeling this kitchen at some point in the future and putting a gas (well, propane, technically) stove in its place, but until then, I want to improve it. It's a really old lovely electric stove, and all the burners work in a way that basically settings 1-7 might as well be off, 7 is low, 8 is medium, and 8.02 is blazing inferno sun, max possible temperature. All the burners are similar to this in some fashion, but not in the exact same spots.

Is there anything that can be done to fix this so that I have more than about 15 rotary degrees of travel between "can probably put your hand on it briefly without risk of burn" and "absolute max"? New burner elements? Something with the dials? I don't know poo poo about electric stoves and haven't been able to find the right search terms it would seem. I really just want some amount of meaningful heat control while cooking.

movax posted:

Hmm — I’ll flip through my code book when home, but if I’m out of breaker slots, are in-line fuses kosher? It’s accessible inside the panel, so seems like a good way to go…

DaveSauce posted:

Those lugs are almost certainly not rated for 2 wires that far apart in size. Sometimes it's fine, but most often it's not.

Don't do this, ever, unless you have documentation explicitly saying it's OK.

C-Euro posted:

I bought my house back in April and the previous owner put recessed lighting in the master bedroom. Two of the four sockets have gone dead since we moved in, and since I don't know anything really about home electrics I'm just going to call someone in to look at them. However, is there anything else I can do to better understand the issue/not give away that I don't know anything when I do call someone? All I did to test them out was to swap in different bulbs that I knew were working.

MomJeans420 posted:

two cables, one hot wire between them

MomJeans420 posted:

devmd01 posted:

I want to add a second switch to two of the upstairs bedrooms for controlling the fan separately from the light. Replacing the existing wiring run of 14/2 is easy.

*looks at price of 50ft of 14/3*

Infinotize posted:

Pics of my main and sub. The trick with the main is those 4 blanks at the bottom of the main cover are actually not blanks, there's nothing behind them. So the only free space is the 2pole in slot 6/8 that's off - that goes to dead circuit and is gonna get reused.

Infinotize posted:

This was literally the day my solar was installed so I was waiting on the utility to go ahead and commission it, it's on now!

I am just going to eat the somewhat more expensive route and add the additional subpanel at this point.

DaveSauce posted:

I'm planning on adding a light to a tub/shower combo in our 2nd bathroom. Currently only has a vanity light for the whole room. Not that it's huge, but once you throw in a shower curtain the shower is pretty dark.

If I'm reading things correctly, this light fixture need to be GFCI protected, right? And being above the shower, it has to be wet location rated, not just damp, right?

Is there any good retro-fit workaround for the GFCI requirement, like some in-line device or a special fixture/switch?

Failing that, is anyone going to care if I just pull power from the nearest GFCI receptacle? Planning on a LED puck, probably 4". Wouldn't imagine this is enough load to push past a tipping point, but I dunno... there's a GFCI protected receptacle 1 stud bay over from the switches, so it'd be pretty simple to pull from that.

Finally, maybe more of an opinion question, this is for a bone-standard tub/shower combo, 60"x30". Would a single 4" puck be enough? Seems like it would be, but I dunno. More than I have currently, at least.

movax posted:

I have a smaller than I’d like Enphase system (on install day, they discovered the roof was measured wider than it was, RIP 3 panels for fire setback) to offset my consumption. It was not a smart financial decision as it’s something like 20+ years to break even, but I work in clean technology, am a nerd and it felt like a tiny way to help offset my impact (even though Seattle is something like 95%+ hydro, IIRC).

I have iq7s; when the power dies, my panels become useless. The iq7s (micro inverters) as I understand it detect loss of grid (frequency shift or loss of what appears to be an infinite sink) and shut themselves off, after what I would imagine is a short period of oscillation as I have no batteries. The new iq8s can apparently run without a grid tie, or batteries, but if a cloud shows up, your power collapses more or less immediately.

I think it really just all comes to anti-islanding — if the grid is down / a segment of lines is desired to be dead, the PoCo assumes a model where since they control the only sources of power, and the switchgear along the way, they can properly de-energize it. Any yahoos without transfer switches who have energized their homes / buildings may potentially work against that goal, hence the transfer switch requirement.

I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in my current place, but given the small size of solar, I don’t think I want to invest in batteries, or do the work of installing a transfer switch… power outages are rare. I’d rather build a ~24 V backup system that can run low power DC loads… e.g., charging radios and phones.

nwin posted:

One question: I’m used to referencing the code of federal regulations for ship inspections in my job, where things are broken up by applicability based on year of build, passenger capacity, hull material, etc. is the UL code kind of the one-stop shop for something similar or are there other references electricians use to determine what’s up to code?

Motronic posted:

If there's room/enough depth to surface mount a box in the back that's what should happen. Put in a single outlet dedicated to the dishwasher.

The rest of that circuit may or may not be correct/to code, but an individual outlet on one single circuit (potentially with an accessible switch to turn the outlet on and off if you're in a weird jurisdiction) is the most correct way to power a new dishwasher.

The Bananana posted:

*Me, to this thread*: Hello again old friend.

Question. I just replaced an existing light fixture with a ceiling fan.

It is working. Light works, fan works.

But since it was my very first time doing this, and I basically had no idea what I was doing,
I have to ask: how long... do I have to wait, before its likely I'm out of the woods?
Like, how long after doing this, and it working and what not, and my house doesn't burn down, before I can breathe easy, and think it's probably ok.

Is there a point, like, maybe a few hours, or a day, or a week, after which, if it was gonna fail, it probably would have already?

Lawnie posted:

Trying to make sure I’ll know when my house is burning down from random bare wires by replacing old smoke detectors with self-contained units. Here’s what it looks like inside the box behind the backplate for the old detector:




For now since I don’t know what exactly to do I’ve just put a cap with some electrical tape on the end of that red wire coming out of the plug for the detector. I doubt it’s hot since there’s not any obvious reason to me why there would be contact between red and black in the plug, but I’m not an electrician. I was originally coming here to ask if I could just put a box cover on top of that box without doing anything with the plug and then affix the backplate for the new detector over top of it using one of the same screws (plus another outside the diameter of the box since the new backplate is a bit larger than the old one), but now I’m additionally making sure there’s no harm in leaving that red wire coming from the plug as-is.

E: I have a baby in the house so if I need to be cutting the breaker to that box then I can do that, it just is most likely on the same circuit as all the ceiling fans.

movax posted:

This caught me off guard at my parents place but I think i know what’s going on, but want a double check.

I was expecting to find a simple single location switch controlling a single overhead fluorescent fixture in my parents’ laundry room… and instead I found this:



There’s no second switch location… was not expecting this. Is this running LV / something to do with a ballast for the light? It’s a 2005 construction house. Not aware of any outlets connected to this either.

What’s going on, goon mind?

I was hoping to put this in there, as I put a couple in their bathrooms and this room would be perfect for it:

KKKLIP ART posted:

It really seems like a lot of appliances that were hardwired are switching more to plug. I know that I’ve seen kitchen dent hoods that are down from a ceiling come with a plug adapter you hide behind the facade used to cover the ducts.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

Bleh. Gonna be costly to replace. Most of the upstairs is two prong so I'm slowly replacing the load in outlets with GFCIs. I tested every three prong in the house and the only ones actually grounded are the washer/dryer area and the one next to the water heater, which is good since a freezer and fridge are going down there.

Speaking of, would having a fridge and freezer on the same outlet be too much load? I'm not sure how to check that.

ssb posted:

Eh, I decided this was beyond my comfort/skill level even if someone were to tell me exactly what to do, so I have an electrician coming. Feel free to answer for other people's sake if you want, but I'm just having an outlet installed into the wall back there.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

Cool, thanks. Should I snip the ground wire just in case? Obviously it has nothing to connect to on this end once the receptacle is removed but who knows what's going on in the walls.

movax posted:

Do they make 1.406” Decora inserts? Context, I’d like to have a triple gang box with two regular receptacles + a NEMA 6-20… didn’t think about it until I placed the receptacles in the gang box to test fit and realized the 6-20 wasn’t Decora outline.

E: nvm, shouldn’t have posted before checking Kyle: https://www.kyleswitchplates.com/1-4-round-outlet-2-gfci-decora-rocker-wall-switch-plates/ Will just have to paint it black.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

1951. There's a switch on the wall but it only affects one of the outlets in the living room, and not even the outlet closest to the switch. I opened that box and it had six wires, three each of black and white. Two of the black and one white wire were twisted together and taped with what looked like seventy year old electrical tape so I cut all that crap off and used a wire nut. Two of the sets of wires were hot. The light switch only has two wires so it just gets power from that outlet I guess, which is why it has six wires?

Sorry that I don't know all the proper terms

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

I'm helping a friend with solar. Going to quote my post from another thread.

So the question is mainly, what the hell do I do with L2 from the transformer, if anything.

I'm not kidding when I say no electrician here wants anything to do with solar, even though a lot of homes have it.

E: my friend is currently in frustrated "just hook it up" mode but we've already discussed conduit, wire that isn't meant for a dryer, moving the Growatt to another wall to give the transformer and the growatt room. He's hesitant to ripping the drywall down to put up concrete board to mount these onto, but I'll break him eventually.

SyNack Sassimov posted:

That's fair and probably about what I expected. At the moment I'm still very much doing research and to be frank I haven't yet looked for engineered solutions that fit what I want. That said, I had certainly intended to get an engineer at some point since I recognize the many dangers inherent in all of this - additionally, this will be permitted in a fairly populated California county so I can't yeehaw a solution together and expect the county to go sure yeah looks great no problem.

At the moment I'm weighing the pros/cons of microinverters vs putting panels in series to get high-voltage DC (300-400 volts) for a high voltage and relatively high wattage (30-50 kW) inverter to more efficiently generate 240 split-phase and charge a storage battery at high voltage (though I'm not one of those morons repurposing Model 3 batts, this would be a real battery from, ideally, a company that isn't just rebadging poo poo from Alibaba). Dealing with 300+ volts DC obviously has a major advantage in wiring costs/ease since I don't need literal shipping containers of copper, but has a major disadvantage in that, well, it's loving 300 volts DC Microinverters give me 240 AC straight out, but charging batteries is then more inefficient and more importantly, conforming to UL 1741 means they don't output power unless they're getting "grid" input, so I'd have to fake that essentially. (I think Enphase's 8 series now allow you to do this but may require the Enphase batteries to fake the grid input - only glanced briefly at the datasheet and have to look more into it). The Enphase ones are also essentially limited to ~500 watt solar panels.

Anyway I don't think I know enough at the moment to request advice so you don't need to bother responding to any of that, but just wanted to get a sense of how knowledgeable I need to be, and I completely understand your criteria - one of those instances where what at first seems like gatekeeping knowledge is in fact preventing people from hurting themselves or others, because they don't know enough to properly use the knowledge they're asking for.

Motronic posted:

Yeah, don't feel bad. It's really really not obvious. I've had to point them out to multiple people over the years.

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

Yeah I did not really scrutinize it and thought it meant keeping a spare hot for adding an outlet or whatever later, but when I reread it later, it was all about the neutral.

Edit: I get the idea that I want a neutral in case I use a smart switch later so I think the thing is I should run new circuits that have a switch with NM 2-wire instead of ... NM 1-wire? I don't think that is even a thing, but I guess you can see just hot and ground in older stuff?

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

Get the one with the little flashlight in the end. It's far more useful than I ever imagined. Also, get something that takes real batteries (AA or AAA) and not USB-rechargable.

quote:

408.4(A) Circuit Directory or Circuit Identification
Every circuit and circuit modification shall be legibly identified as to its clear, evident, and specific purpose or use. The identification shall include an approved degree of detail that allows each circuit to be distinguished from all others.

babyeatingpsychopath posted:

I just kicked some electricians off of a job because they made a "panel schedule" for a 3-section 96-breaker panel where the entire second section was "lights" on every single circuit. Forty-two spaces of single pole breakers that say "lights." Not what room, section, north south east west upstairs downstairs nothing. Just "lights."

The invoice will not be paid until they can figure out what they ran to what. I'm not spending any of my money IDing circuits for sixty rooms on a commercial remodel. I know section 3 of that panel was going to say "outlets."

It took them six weeks to label the terminal equipment as to what panel and circuit stuff was on. I had some fan controllers that had makeup exhaust air, plus separate circuits for controls and equipment. The only label was a sharpie saying "panel N-13." Panel N is 480V, and the control is 120V, so I know that's wrong. They looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I said to label everything properly.
"I need the circuit for each fan and the controlled equipment labelled on the outside of the box so I know all the independent sources of electrical energy to secure before opening this box."
"We'll write it inside in sharpie."
"That is not acceptable according to current OSHA and NFPA Arc Flash Hazard requirements. Permanent labels affixed to the outside of the box where no energized equipment can be touched."

Lazy rear end in a top hat electricians are the worst.

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.

The tricky bit is in planning the conduit run. The most convenient route would be to start at the main panel, run horizontally to midway down the wall, make a 90 to go up to the ceiling, make another 90 to go across the ceiling, then make a final 90 to go down to where the box should be installed, on the opposite wall. This route would require crossing over a previously-installed 1/2" conduit run, though. Is this permissible, and if so, how should it be done? Do I just bend the conduit gently around the obstruction?

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.

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 :')