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Happening live on a Facebook group near you: the cheapest of landlord special hacks https://m.facebook.com/groups/ElectronicParts/permalink/2312142825641706/ Don't worry I've saved screenshots for the eventual legal case and/or when the post is inevitably deleted by the poster. The admins are in the comment section with the rest of us, they aren't taking it down.
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Dec 6, 2023 03:11
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 23:56 |
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Dec 6, 2023 05:41
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Measure the actual running load of the sump pump and check what duty cycle it actually runs at in your usage. It's very unlikely your sump pump runs 24/7, unless your house is somewhere a house should not be.
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Dec 8, 2023 18:36
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Man, I'd be kicking myself so hard for not redoing it right that moment. Hindsight is a curse.
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Dec 10, 2023 19:57
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I hardwired my dishwasher the first time I temp installed it, thinking it was better. I put an outlet and a plug in for the final install because that sucked and made little to no sense.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:00
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Industrial controls would be a good spot to look into as well.
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Dec 15, 2023 20:09
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This is definitely ditch witch territory, those things are amazing. I just did a 160ft trench with one this summer on my in-laws place for the power feed to their wood shop they built. Definitely call your poco and also Google their service installation standards and read them before you call. I went into this headfirst in like September of last year not knowing that the scheduling and project management part on national grids part was going to take months, they finally called me back in early December. Even as a non electrician I was able to get all my work done and pre inspected by the town the day before, except for the last stick of conduit into the indoor panel and the feeder conductors in it, and the final overhead hookup. 8am they pulled the old meter, I spent till about 3-4 pulling all the existing breakers out of the indoor panel, putting the last of the conduit and feeders in, landing it on the lugs and then put as many of my overstock of AFCI and GFCI breakers in as I needed to to comply with 2020 NEC, rewiring the whole panel neatly (it had been a huge rats nest with ten years worth of incremental upgrades added) before calling the inspector out to do the official inspection. He got it all squared away and my power was back on a few hours later though I'd only expected to get power back the next day. It's definitely something I would do before moving in so it won't interrupt your power like someone else said. Try to avoid going under any areas you'll want to build so you don't mess up the undisturbed soil where your footings will be or have to worry about burial depth being sufficient to miss the future footings. I can't recall where you are but somewhere I've still got the links to the service installation standards for national grid, pg&e, PSE, penlight, and I think enersource.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:46
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Shifty Pony posted:Are AFCI/GFCI combo Square D QO breakers simply $65-70/ea now or is there some hidden reputable online electrical supply house with better pricing? I seem to recall buying a fair number on Amazon for less than that but I might be brain farting. Make sure you buy the correct kind, if you have a plug on neutral capable panel (PON) you'll want the PON breakers for sure but if your panel is not PON capable, you will have to get the pigtail kind.
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Dec 25, 2023 06:54
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Maybe it's just me, but I would not buy safety-critical items from Amazon. Not only are they full of counterfeits, but they dump all incoming GurgleAs into the same drat bin, so you may think you're buying from a trusted source, but actually you're getting whichever GurgleA is at the top of the bin. You aren't wrong, but so far all the square D stuff I've gotten there has been legit square D, no sign of counterfeit fuckery at all.
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Dec 26, 2023 01:22
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Motronic posted:No displays/no meters but a couple cheap sensors and a $2 wifi SoC is way cheaper than doing things "the right way" for consumer goods. Man, all they gotta do is this but put a status page on a basic webserver on the device so you can poke it with a cell phone browser if you don't have Wi-Fi available. If only they gave enough of a poo poo to do so.
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Jan 17, 2024 22:05
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frogbs posted:Thank you for the info! I think at this point my choice is either: My personal favorite right now is a 240V/30A L14-30P generator inlet, some 10/3WG cable of the correct sort for your jurisdiction (usually NM-B but may require conduit for example Chicago), 30A tandem breaker for your panel, and the correct generator interlock kit to prevent the generator and main from being turned on simultaneously. Finding that last piece can be somewhat annoying due to unclear ad copy by the sellers of the kits but they're available for most common panels. I prefer the inlet and interlock over the multi circuit transfer switches because it leaves what gets powered and what doesn't up to my choices at the time of the power outage rather than hardwired at install time. If I want to turn off everything for an hour to run the clothes dryer on low, because the power has been out for a week and I need to run laundry, I can do that.
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Jan 19, 2024 03:25
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I think you're being remarkably kind, that's not "sealed up" I bet it's "completely filled with newspaper and spackle on top of bare wires "
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Feb 6, 2024 14:16
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That panel work is not as clean as a few I've seen but it's both cleaner and better labeled than mine, and in the top 95% of panels I've ever seen or been in. Great work. This is about how mine ended up. My utility foot dragging time was much less, only a few months, and my inspector had a similar reaction. He went from "this guy sure is asking a lot of stupid questions about NEC article 250 on the phone I don't know if he can do this" to telling me I would definitely pass and my power would probably be back on same-day after one look. Outside panel:  I didn't think this would comply with 250.64(F)(3) so I upgraded to something that would to avoid it being a question:   All stainless hardware with rectorseal #5 on the threads and under the nut to avoid the holes I drilled rusting:  Power was cut in the morning for final cut-in of the last work (the last 6 feet of conduit and the feeders from the outside panel to the inside panel, which previously had been the service disconnect)  And after a frantic rushed day of finishing the conduit and doing a full panel cleanup since I needed to get the feeders under all that mess anyways:  It wasn't perfect, but it also was a lot better than the rats nest it had previously morphed into over many years of incremental upgrades, and since I did this in December '22 in the only two consecutive days of above freezing weather with no backup in place, I kind of wanted the power back on same day if possible so my pipes wouldn't freeze. Had inspection done at 4pm and power back on by 7. I am buying a plug-on neutral panel next time. Whole album: https://imgur.com/a/U9ne5lc
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Feb 20, 2024 03:01
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Yeah, if you have a metal water pipe it's required by NEC 250.104 to be bonded to your electrical grounding system so you can't just isolate it to make it stop. I would do what TooMuchAbstraction said. Flip half the breakers off, if the noise stops, turn half of them back on, if it doesn't, turn them back on and turn half of the other half back off, etc etc until you find the one breaker that is powering whatever is at fault then work through the devices and connections on that one circuit. "Divide and conquer" is usually the fastest search algorithm for stuff like this.
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Feb 22, 2024 05:08
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I would leave it off for now. In fact I would turn off the breaker for that whole circuit if possible. I think you're right on the money with the conduit as neutral theory and that's definitely not ok.
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Mar 1, 2024 21:30
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Perfectly fine. No need to insulate or anything. There might technically be a reason it needs to be physically protected being under a certain gauge but I can't think of one, I think all the reasons I've seen for that are based on protecting ground electrode conductors in article 250.
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Mar 2, 2024 01:48
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I see a couple code violations (but not big ones) Conduit must be strapped even if it is under the length (30in IIRC) allowed between a box and the first strap. Box offsets would make it look nicer, but I totally understand not wanting to do them, I only learned to do them easily a few weeks ago myself. I used to get them wrong more than I got them right because I just trial and errored it instead of actually doing the math.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:29
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H110Hawk posted:Good thing you're no snitch. What? I didn't see poo poo (I just thought you might want to see it and decide if you are going to have them fix it before inspection, some inspectors may let it slide or not even know, I see this violation all the time and have committed it myself)
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Mar 3, 2024 01:45
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Just be careful where you put the nails when reattaching the trim, you don't want to turn your Ethernet into WiFi by making it leak.
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Mar 11, 2024 19:08
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frogbs posted:So I asked my electrician for two quotes to install a transfer switch for my small generator, one that would let us run 4 circuits, and other that would let us run just one circuit (furnace). Those interlocks are like no more than 200 bucks online for most panels (though there are like 96 million styles of panels and therefore interlock kits and it's annoying to find the right one if you haven't done it before.) I've seen them as cheap as 15 on aliexpress for more common panels. The nice thing about them is they technically back up your whole house, you just can't draw more than the generator can supply.
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Mar 12, 2024 07:14
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Extant Artiodactyl posted:that's a big gently caress-up. it probably cascaded from the equipment mistake leading to redoing all the connections of the system controller. it's easy to sit here and go "i never did that" but any time i touch service equipment and especially with these systems i am putting the meter on everything, taking pictures, physically touching each wire after the torquing to see if there's something to miss on the insulation or the way the lugs lined up ... My biggest gently caress up so far was the time I didn't remember to pull the jumper tab off of a dual SPST switch fed from two breakers. Two 20A breakers. On separate phases, as luck would have it. ... In the panel run off of an absolute UNIT of a 208V 3 phase transformer in a big building downtown. Maybe a total of 6-8 feet of 12awg between the breakers and my switch, which was still hanging out of the box as I wanted to make sure I'd put the right lights on the right switches before buttoning it all up. The arc was, shall we say, impressive. Concussive, even. It turned that little tab into a large bright cloud of brass vapor in half a cycle flat and tripped both breakers. I was lucky and all I had to replace was the switches, not because they broke but because they were supposed to be white, not white-black-gold camo pattern.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:03
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I'd run it in 1/2 EMT as well. I'm guessing you meant LBs with 3 hubs but not sure. You normally use what's called a box offset bend for getting to the breaker panel. I would definitely use individual THHN conductors as well, if you get an accurate estimate of how much you need and order online you can often get it a lot cheaper than home depot. Remember you will need GFCI if it is concrete floor in there and possibly AFCI as well, I'm not sure what WA amendments or NEC require for attached vs detached garage wiring, I know last year when I did my in-laws detached woodshop it was GFCI only. If you did mean LBs you definitely do not want to use NM in conduit, you are going to hate life trying to get that shoehorned in there without breaking bend radius rules. Depending on your inspector they might consider anything below about 8ft AFFL in a garage subject to mechanical damage which will mean you need sch80 if you use PVC. If you want, I can probably swing by with my code book at least two different days next week just to speed the question/answer loop up a lot till you have a better idea what you're in for, I'm probably going to be over your way on Wednesday and/or Thursday for a few side jobs in the area. I'm not a licensed electrician, but I play one on the Internet.
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Apr 6, 2024 20:11
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You absolutely should not use expanding foam for that, it's totally the wrong thing for the task. If the wall is not textured this is like a half hour fix to do right especially with access to the back of the wall from the attic. Ideally you would use setting mud instead of finish or all purpose mud, but all purpose will work. Cut patches a quarter inch smaller than the holes after removing all loose and peeling material, use a little wood backer board to hold the patches in from the back, pack the seams with mud then tape over the seams ideally with paper tape but something this small you can use mesh too. Let that dry then skim it all, sand, prime, paint. If there is texture, it can be a pain the the rear end to blend and match the patch to the rest. I hate textured walls and ceilings for several reasons but this is one of the bigger reasons.
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Apr 7, 2024 13:38
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Coolguye posted:Here's the kicker: I specifically want to AVOID using smart functionality controlled by apps if possible. I have personally worked on a few of those codebases, and bluntly they are all horrifying. Remote controls are acceptable if they allow me to set the timer and store the remote. The ideal would be some sort of simple mechanical timer - the same type we have all been using for 30 years to turn lights on and off. I don't blame you at all. As I've heard it put, there are two kinds of tech people, the "every device in my house is smart and I can change the color of my lighting from my phone" kind, and the ones that have a shotgun in the corner in case the LaserJet 4 makes a funny noise. As an embedded systems engineer I am 100% in the latter category. I don't need my Wi-Fi/Bluetooth RGB LED light bulbs leaking my goddamn Wi-Fi credentials or turning into ewaste the second the vendor decides to save 50 bucks a year by shutting those cloud services down.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:02
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 23:56 |
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AFCI terminology is very confusing as is combo breaker stuff. I had written up a post about it but everyone else beat me to it.Jabronie posted:Also, id recommend commercial grade receptacles for any outlet that’s being plugged into a lot such as spots for vacuums or kitchen appliances. They’ll cost a little more but the springs will last longer. Strongly agree. I use commercial or industrial grade anywhere it'll be used frequently.
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Apr 24, 2024 17:53
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