Wiring Thread: This stupid safety device started alerting that there wasn't safety!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Wiring Thread: This stupid safety device started alerting that there wasn't safety!

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shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Things like this are why I pull the master disconnect at the meter before I do anything

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 17:39

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 09:25

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

mastershakeman posted:

is this OK for grounding? not sure how else to do it.

also found out the hard way that this switch wasn't on the circuit as the rest of the room, ow

edit: also, the ace hardware folks talked me into buying a 3 way dimmer+switch switch instead of just a normal one and after turning the circuit back on the light is on regardless of the switch position. dimmer works though. so now I don't know if its a hardware issue or me being a bad electrician (probably the latter)

Sounds like you've got the lights connected to both poles of the switch somewhere. The 3-way is intended to make a logical XOR with a second switch, usually at the other door to the room, so the lights are on when the two switches are in opposite positions. That way the lights change state when you flip either of the switches.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 18:29

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

beyonder posted:

So uh I kinda signed up for electrician's training. Luckily I have a degree in information and communication technology, that cuts out a lot of schoolwork leaving only nine months worth of studying to do.

Gonna be sparky. Yay.

Why? With that background you could be doing industrial automation stuff and cleaning up. All the new equipment is moving to PROFINET (Ethernet variant with some additional features to support real time tasks) internals and the older maintenance dudes don't understand how it works at all and deep down still don't really trust all that newfangled RS-485 serial gear from the last 20 years.

Ask me about seeing a multimillion dollar machine stay down for three days because the guy in charge refused to believe wire pairing mattered in an RJ45.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 02:37

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

insta posted:

Is there any reason I can't make all the lightswitches in my house run on 24v and control my lighting with relays, outside of the enormous increase in cost?

Why?

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 20:53

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

If you're only using it twice a month look for one that runs on 240v and unplug your dryer or stove for the duration. Then it only draws half the current and should be on a more than overspecced circuit.

# ¿ May 5, 2017 03:49

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

SoundMonkey posted:

the only times in my entire life when i'm glad i worked in a cable shop for 4 years is when it's time for a new extension cord

SJEOOW for life

# ¿ May 6, 2017 06:10

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Oven guy get a cheap multimeter and see if any of the pins in the plug have continuity to each other. Tripping the breaker instantly when you plug it in sounds like there's a direct short circuit somewhere.

# ¿ May 19, 2017 21:53

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Refresher question on circuit load. Say I want to get a device that's rated at a 20A load (let's ignore what it's actual draw is, this is just its nominal draw). It's my understanding that to safely use such a device, I'd need it to be on a receptacle / circuit that was rated for at least 25% more amps, so that the device wouldn't exceed 80% of the circuit's capacity. Is that correct? If so, what even is the next step up from a 20A receptacle? I'd expect you'd normally go to 220V power at that point.

Sticking with 120VAC, the bigger straight blade plug/receptacle combinations will be NEMA 5-30 and 5-50 rated for 30 and 50 amps respectively. Twist lock connectors are available at 15, 20, 30, 50, and 60A ratings but at that point you'd be silly not to step up to 240v.

# ¿ May 23, 2017 21:10

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Traditional breakers and fuses are there to keep the wiring in your walls from overheating and catching fire, not to prevent you from being electrocuted. 10 amps will happily cook you from the inside out without overloading a circuit.

Replace that heating element AND make sure that circuit is protected by a GFCI (Ground Fault Current Interruptor), which does protect against electrical shock by measuring the current through both the hot and return conductors and tripping the circuit if they don't match.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2017 13:42

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

H110Hawk posted:

This was all precipitated by the home RCD, which is what the brits call GFCI.

That'll teach me to gloss over the very first line in the post, glad to see it's working as intended though :v:

I still have nightmares about that guy in the OSHA thread that measured 120 VAC between his bathtub faucet and drain

# ¿ Jul 15, 2017 15:47

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Do you want to plug the amp into the wall or into the tone generator? Assuming you meant plug it into the wall, the product you linked isn't the right shape (for US wall sockets, anyway). But so long as the cable you're using is rated for the load you want to put on it, you can just buy some 14/2 or 12/2 Romex and a plug from Home Depot, or you could just buy a normal extension cord and chop the socket part off. The latter would save you from having to attach a plug to the cable, but it's possible that the copper in the cable is stranded copper instead of solid, which can be a little irritating to work with.

Either way you strip the cable back, separate out the hot/neutral/ground wires, strip the insulation off of them, and put them into the correct screw terminals. If you do find you have stranded copper conductors, you can try leaving some insulation on the ends of the conductor to hold the strands together; just make sure the screw terminals make good contact with the strands.

Please not romex, do not use solid core wire in anything that's going to be flexed more than once. SJOOW if you're putting a plug on it.
H = black wire
N = white
G = green

On the plug side

Brass screw > black wire
Silver screw > White wire
Green > Green

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jul 29, 2017

# ¿ Jul 29, 2017 06:03

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I was playing with an arduino once and somehow wound up with an LED with one lead plugged into the ground plane on the breadboard and the other lead hanging in the air, and it lit up every time I touched it with my finger. IDK where the current flow across my body was coming from but I really hate the wiring in this house now.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2017 17:18

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Slugworth posted:

Pulled a light fixture down this weekend to replace it, and found that the box in the ceiling appears to be too small for the new fixture. The holes for the mounting screws are 3" apart, while the new fixture needs them to be 3.25". I've replaced a lot of lights, in older homes than this, and never had this issue. Ideas?

It's happened to me a few times, I drill the bracket and file it until I have slots that can reach the threads in the box

# ¿ Oct 9, 2017 19:06

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

So this is a new home and new wiring, and the builders left capped off wires in the boxes for the lights, and you are now installing the lights?

Testing with a meter would be ideal to distinguish between a no-voltage and under-voltage condition.

Do you know if the 4 locations effected are the only ones on the circuit?

The multiple sites points to a problem upstream at or near the panel.

I would bet on either a loose hot connection at the panel causing undervoltage or a disconnected neutral at the panel.

Don't try to go into the panel without a meter and better yet make the installer fix it because that's their fuckup.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2017 21:34

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

pidan posted:

We called the electrician this morning and he claims that old houses only have two wires (it is grounded in some other way), that the green wire should be used and that he won't change the wire colors. I have my doubts, since iirc the lamps in the hallway (that have always worked) are connected to black & blue as they should be. And having a third wire for no reason seems unlikely.

I don't feel comfortable taking apart the fuse box by myself, so I think my next step is to ask the other tenants how their lights are wired.

Call another electrician because that guy is lazy and stupid

# ¿ Nov 7, 2017 15:35

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

tater_salad posted:

I think you mean most properly designed, modern houses. I had an older PO nightmare house that had like all the outlets on one HALF of a floor on a single outlet.. granted it was a small house but poo poo was that annoying.

Yeah I really need to start ripping out drywall now that I've discovered my kitchen, bath, one bedroom, all the outdoor lights, and all the ceiling fans are on the same screw-in fuse.

Oh and none of it's grounded, PO ran 2+G 12ga everywhere but clipped all the ground conductors off behind the box because gently caress you.

Every time I look at it I have idle fantasies about killing myself so I can pick a fight with his ghost.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 17:57

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

angryrobots posted:

So, I had an interesting episode that ventured heavily into "don't burn your house down", except it was an apartment building with ~25 units.

As some of you know, I'm a lineman for a utility and occasionally I respond to outages. On Thursday I had a single call at an apartment complex, tenant claimed they had checked their breakers. I found the unit had power, and the exterior breaker (110A, gang meterbase, I assume the apt breaker box has a 100A so this external breaker exists to protect the wire feeding the apt breaker box) was not tripped. The phone number on the account was not working, and the tenant was not home, or would not answer the door for me.

On Friday, the same apt called in again. I asked dispatch to ping the meter and verify both that it wasn't lost, and that it hasn't experienced any momentary outages, which they verified. I found the meter and breaker in the same state as the day previous. I knocked on the door again, and the tenant was home and informed me that apt management had instructed her to call the power company about any outage, but "that she thought" a maintenance man had come by at some point and possibly reset the outdoor breaker. She also informed me that the breaker tripped (in the last couple months at some point), and she had called in an outage and (allegedly) one of my coworkers responded and reset it for her.

So I made the decision to stop by the managers office and let them know that this apartment had an issue that needed to be addressed, and that it was not the poco's responsibility.

I'll spare you a play-by-play of our convo, but it went downhill quickly and the complex manager denied that any issue could possibly be their responsibility, that we had to fix any power issue, and that I had to leave the property immediately. I was as my only, or biggest, concern was the safety of the people living in this building. I mean maybe the breaker is bad.....or maybe there's a bad spot in the wire and a possible fire hazard right?

I called my supervisor, who went and talked to her later and *possibly* got through that the issue was not our responsibility, but I don't think any maintenance person was dispatched, at least not after our conversation.

So that's where it lays. I hope I don't hear on the news that there's been an apartment fire at that location. I know most of you have mostly contempt for utility workers... there are those of us who care, but our hands are tied.

I'm willing to bet any code enforcement officer would take a call from a power company a lot more seriously than one from a tenant, especially after you were thrown off the property. That's practically a confession.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 7, 2018

# ¿ Jan 7, 2018 04:47

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Are those DIN rail MCBs legal to use for residential in the states? I run into gobs of them in euro-built machines at work and love love love the standard compliance and brand interchangability.

E: well guess it's a moot question with the near universal AFCI mandate now

# ¿ Jan 14, 2018 18:10

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Absolutely not, you'd have 120v on a white looks-like-a-neutral conductor if you did that.

Gauge and insulation don't even matter in this question, hot conductors MUST be black or red.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jan 18, 2018

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 02:37

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Phanatic posted:

It’s some of the worst soldering I’ve ever seen. It looks more like crimped tinfoil than proper solder joins. A one-armed monkey with FAS can solder better than that.

Yeah, it’s a prototype board, but it’s still supposed to work.

That's better work than more than one industrial power supply I've autopsied.

Rescue Toaster, if you dig go ahead and run huge conduit so you have the option of building a subpanel out there someday. It's always easier to overbuild for the future once you've got a shovel involved anyway.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Feb 6, 2018

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 02:56

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

If you have breakers by Federal Pacific start planning to replace the entire service immediately because those are so notoriously poo poo that most insurers won't cover them.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 20:31 on May 7, 2018

# ¿ May 7, 2018 20:27

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Why not wire an inline fuse into the adapter

E: oh yeah it'd have to interrupt both phases thats why not

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Jun 2, 2018

# ¿ Jun 2, 2018 01:16

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

It blew everything when they switched it on, not when they plugged it in? There's a short and its probably in the motor windings and you can't fix that, take that POS back where it came from.

E: the test/reset is a GFCI which is also hosed and melted now, just take the drat thing back to the store.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jun 2, 2018

# ¿ Jun 2, 2018 03:06

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I can almost promise your whole living room isn't supposed to be on a 30A fuse. Go change it to 15 asap

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jun 4, 2018

# ¿ Jun 4, 2018 05:58

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

SpartanIvy posted:

Maybe?

Oh god does this mean the whole box is supposed to be 30 amps total?

Yeah that box is rated for a total of 30A at once split across 4 circuits which each have individual smaller fuses on them, which is fine as long as the fuses installed are the right size for the wires. 15A on 15A circuit, 15A fuse blows. 12A on each of 3 15A circuits, 30A main fuse blows.

I thought you were talking about a single circuit of regular 15A outlets on a 30A fuse.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jun 4, 2018

# ¿ Jun 4, 2018 13:42

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Are there signs of arcing at the base of the lamp socket? I'm thinking slightly loose socket + fan wobble could be causing very short interruption of contact on the center pin

# ¿ Jun 6, 2018 02:04

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

When my old rear end house got upgraded, the new 200A service went outside with a 200A main disconnect and 60A breakers for each of the AC, the water heater, and the feed to the existing fusebox.

I reccomend this because it keeps the meter pull downtime to a minimum and then you're free to replace the existing panel at your leisure without having to involve the utility or sacrifice climate control and showers while doing it.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2018 01:05

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Leave the fan like it is, put the lights on a radio controlled relay and hardwire the wall switch out of the circuit entirely. Foam tape the new remote for the lights to the cover where the switch used to be. Boom, done, only need to run 3 or 4 inches of new wire.

Hell you could even do it with a The Clapper

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jun 8, 2018

# ¿ Jun 8, 2018 03:59

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Ahhh it's my mistake I thought there was only one light fixture. The simplest solution is going to be to run a new hot wire directly from the switch box to the fan.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2018 04:46

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Ok, pictures. (Assuming worst case scenario of fan being at the end of the string)

this is what you have:

This is the relatively easy fix of rewiring the fan:

This is the alternative of adding a remote switch or dimmer to each light fixture.

if you're lucky and the wires go from the switch to the fan first, it still makes sense.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Jun 8, 2018

# ¿ Jun 8, 2018 05:38

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

GG, putting the green wire in the green hole makes you more competent than the $70/hr contractor that almost killed me with 277VAC-to-chassis a couple years ago

# ¿ Jul 21, 2018 04:49

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

Mapping the circuits in my slumlord apartment:

There are nine breakers:
240V for the AC (2 breakers, tied),
GFI for the single bathroom/sink outlet,
a circuit for the single outlet on the dividing wall between the living room/bedroom,
a circuit for a single outlet by the front door,
one for the refrigerator,
one for a single outlet next to the sink in the kitchen,
one that is completely unused - doesn't connect to anything, and no outlets go hot or go off when I switch it. There are zero blanked plates.

and the remaining one (circuit 3 by my label) for:
NINE outlets around the entire apartment perimeter wall, one of the outlets in the kitchen, ALL ceiling light fixtures (including bathroom and kitchen and front porch), and the switched outlet by the front door.

lol I have 4 15A screw fused circuits for literally everything in my house except the oven, dryer, WH, and HVAC

I put a GFCI on the string behind the kitchen counter a couple weeks ago and the found out the hard way that the fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine are all also on that string.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 25, 2018

# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 04:54

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Don't gently caress with the PoCo seal if you value your sanity and for drat sure don't try to pull a meter yourself that is literally the worst idea anyone has posted in this entire thread

# ¿ Jul 27, 2018 23:02

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I am 100% serious when I say the fact that you would even suggest that means you should not ever attempt to DIY anything because you will die

# ¿ Jul 27, 2018 23:10

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

On the off chance anybody's shopping for one, I just wanna chime in that Eaton's big cabinet industrial UPS's are dogshit. We've had to have service calls every 2-3 months.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2018 22:07

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I wish more stuff came with industrial-panel style spring-cage clamps, they are the poo poo.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2018 17:52

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I don't like the pure push-in ones because the only way to remove them is by cutting the wire and eventually you run out of wire but those spring cage Wago dealies are fantastic and work exactly the way industrial panel terminal blocks do (which they also make).

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Sep 5, 2018

# ¿ Sep 5, 2018 21:28

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

RabbitWizard posted:

Uh, no. You pull on the wire you want out of it, then twist the thing forward and backward. The wire moves a little bit with each movement until it's out.

oo that is tempting then. Are they rated for use with ferruled stranded?

# ¿ Sep 5, 2018 21:35

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 09:25

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

the ones rabbitwizard posted? Those are the Wago 221, available in 2, 3 and 5-place models

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 17:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Wiring Thread: This stupid safety device started alerting that there wasn't safety!

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