Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

When you connect a coax plug on, say an antenna on an airplane, you are supposed to tape it to keep moisture out and to keep it from unscrewing, then put tie chord around the tape to keep it in place. Regulations, you know.

Is that a reason to tape the outlets / switches / etc? What's the general consensus here?

We should start a poll! Tape the receptacles / switches or waste of tape? What do you guys think?

Also, I remember the first time I played with a 3-way switch. Normally, are the hots on different breakers? This one had one hot on one breaker, one hot on another breaker. It was my buddy's house. Our friend who he paid to fix it (a proclaimed master electrician) didn't have a clue what he was doing and after he rewired it (he was hired to replace the old wire with the new romex style), they flipped the breaker and there was smoke, but it didn't trip, which was good. Anyway, they called me. My buddy who owned the house, he said they flipped the breaker because of the smoke. I said let's see what we got up here. I'm not sure if there ever was any smoke or not. I'm not sure how something could smoke like that and not trip a breaker. I ended up getting it all hooked up correctly but while I was working on it, one of the wires, the red one I think, was live. I grabbed that and it knocked me off the chair! The guys came running out because of all the swearing I was doing but man, that 120 really wakes you up! You don't really remember how much until you touch it. But that's got a nice tickle to it, I'll say that much!

I've heard stories of old people who used to test 120 with their fingers. Not sure if it's true or not, but that'd be insane if it was, wouldn't it?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

like in the foto.
power exits the panel , passes through all the sockets in series, then goes back to the same breaker.

it means you have less risk of arcing or fire from a loose wire, and you can draw more current from a socket than the individual wire is rated at. (not that you really should - but it can happen)

So hold up, your black and red are hot and your green is neutral? There's no ground? Here, the picture would be similar, but I don't ever remember making the wire go back to the breaker! We generally deal with 120 and sometimes 240 and even in more not some common in the house situations, 480. But we have a black, white and bare wire for the normal 120 outlets. The black is hot, the white is neutral and the bare wire is gnd. Sometimes, the ground wire is green. Because the white is generally neutral, we can just wire it to the receptacle. If we don't want to go off of it, we don't have to and we don't have to wire it back to the box. The white wire is what completes the circuit.

[rhomanski]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

When you connect a coax plug on, say an antenna on an airplane, you are supposed to tape it to keep moisture out and to keep it from unscrewing, then put tie chord around the tape to keep it in place. Regulations, you know.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Yes, these:


They are the standard way of joining wires in a junction box in the US.


Note: these images don't show tape being used with them. Unfortunately many "professional" electricians (especially "tract" builders) don't use the tape (can't waste a few seconds for safety's sake), but I always make a point of using tape in addition to the nuts to ensure they don't come loose, I also like to tape the screws/exposed wires on outlets/fixtures (after the connection has been made of course), especially with metal boxes, to prevent possible shorts.

Like this:

and this:

I thought taping the receptacle was considered amature. Is that not true? A person on an electrical DIY blog once told me this. I was under the impression he was a "professional". I just wanted some clarification on this. I think the general train of thought goes something a bit like this. A properly installed receptacle will not require electrical tape and now-a-days, most work boxes are plastic. This isn't the first time I've seen where people have claimed taping the outlets was considered amature for some reason. I just never questioned it until now.

Thanks!

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

like in the foto.
power exits the panel , passes through all the sockets in series, then goes back to the same breaker.

it means you have less risk of arcing or fire from a loose wire, and you can draw more current from a socket than the individual wire is rated at. (not that you really should - but it can happen)

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.
Yes, what you call the panel we call the consumer unit.
The electric is done in rings, lights upstairs is one, lights downstairs is another. There was one single ring main for all my sockets (excluding cooker). I now have 3 ring mains for my sockets since i made downstairs open plan. One for the sockets in my lounge and bedroom, one for my computer room and the original ring that's now smaller that covers the rest of the house.
A spur is a wire that is taken from a socket on the ring if another socket is required somewhere.

Thank you for explaining that to me! I understand now!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

that would be illegal in the u.k. anyway.

no twists, no tape, and no inline splices or couplers.
if you break the ring, you need to wire from each nearby original socket to the new one with a single length of cable to re-create the ring.
.

When you guys say ring, you just mean the circuit right? The receptacle would be the midpoint of the ring, right? The juice is going down the black wire (or white if we're really old) and then it returns through the white. That's what you guys mean when you say ring, right?


So, just so I have this right, you guys only go from the outlet / switch / load / whatever to another outlet / switch / load / whatever from the breaker back to the breaker? It's always one continuous wire from the breaker to whatever load, it never splits or anything, and then if you need more, you always run off another device? You never just splice into a wire, throw up a junction box and go from there?

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

twist-nut?
damn your "safety standards" are low!
if i ever caught someone using those i would hurt them!

I'm glad you don't live around me I would hate to get hurt. What would you do solder the wires?

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

not on mains.

[budm]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Wirenuts in UK?
http://www.idealindustries.co.uk/ind...rticleid=10819

http://www.idealindustries.co.uk/ind...pk=18070&fk=57

[dmill89]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.

Yes, these:


They are the standard way of joining wires in a junction box in the US.


Note: these images don't show tape being used with them. Unfortunately many "professional" electricians (especially "tract" builders) don't use the tape (can't waste a few seconds for safety's sake), but I always make a point of using tape in addition to the nuts to ensure they don't come loose, I also like to tape the screws/exposed wires on outlets/fixtures (after the connection has been made of course), especially with metal boxes, to prevent possible shorts.

Like this:

and this:

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

[diif]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.
Yes, what you call the panel we call the consumer unit.
The electric is done in rings, lights upstairs is one, lights downstairs is another. There was one single ring main for all my sockets (excluding cooker). I now have 3 ring mains for my sockets since i made downstairs open plan. One for the sockets in my lounge and bedroom, one for my computer room and the original ring that's now smaller that covers the rest of the house.
A spur is a wire that is taken from a socket on the ring if another socket is required somewhere.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Consumer unit is the thing with the breakers/fuses in.

A new socket would be added in the ring or a spur taken from a socket. I personally wouldn't chop into the ring main to add an extra spur using twist nut and tape. That's just me though, I'm no electrician, I'm just going on what I've been told is best practice.

I gotcha. It's a bit hard I think because we use different terminologies. Maybe twist nut over there means something different than what it means over here? I believe the consumer unit, over here, we just call them panels. Like a 200-amp panel. That's where the wire from the meter goes to. If you run it to another panel after that, I believe that other panel is called a sub-panel. For ring, I'm guessing you're meaning just a circuit, right? From the breaker to where ever the lines go? Not sure what a spur is.

Normally, if I can, I'll just jump from one outlet / light switch to the next, within reason. I try to figure out how much load each outlet will have at one time and not go over a limit. But there's times when there's no outlets to jump off of. When you want to run a new wire and yeah, you could open up walls or dig up ground or just splice into a wire. That's where wire nuts come in handy here.

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

that would be illegal in the u.k. anyway.

no twists, no tape, and no inline splices or couplers.
if you break the ring, you need to wire from each nearby original socket to the new one with a single length of cable to re-create the ring.
.

[diif]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

So are do you guys combine two or more wires? What do you mean by a new consumer unit?

I can't really think or two many ways besides wire nuts / tape / solder to combine wires together...I guess you could use screw down terminals in some sort of panel. That'd work I guess. Is that what you guys have? Some sort of panel where you screw down the various wires that you want to connect together (ie, you want to splice into a line and run a new outlet from it but there's no outlets or switches near by to run off of...here, we'd just cut the wire, use maybe a junction box and some wire nuts / tape). Basically, something like this:

https://www.teksupply.com/wcsstore/E...ge/lj2100a.jpg

Keep in mind, the tops been removed so you can see inside.

Consumer unit is the thing with the breakers/fuses in.

A new socket would be added in the ring or a spur taken from a socket. I personally wouldn't chop into the ring main to add an extra spur using twist nut and tape. That's just me though, I'm no electrician, I'm just going on what I've been told is best practice.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

...I don't care that the instructions were changed several years ago to suggest "no pretwisting required;"...

This sounds like a horrible idea! When you twist the wires before putting the wirenut on, they work in tandem, you know? The tighter the wirenut, the tighter the twist becomes and the harder for the nut to come off I feel.

Remember, soldered splices are still allowed per the NEC, but they also need to be twisted (secure connection established) before soldering.

I've never soldered AC lines before. Is it generally frowned upon or is it a waste of time? Are there really any benefits to soldering them after twisting them?

If the jacketed portion of existing cables reaches the new panel enclosure, you can still enter that enclosure; you may splice the individual conductors inside to land them on the busses/bkrs. You are allowed to splice within panelboard enclosures provided "box fill" isn't exceeded.

I'd rather not have to have spliced wires inside the box if I could help it. I'd rather keep them outside and everything, I just think it looks nicer, personally. If it comes down to it though, I'll remember that. It's probably a lot better than trying to pull new wire through and I'm sure it's a heck of a lot cheaper!

Existing cables/ckts that don't reach can be landed in overhead 4sq boxes; then come out of those with NM-b "whips" into the new panel.

That's what I planned on using. If the wires weren't long enough, I thought maybe I could just use the 4sq boxes. Then I didn't see anyone suggesting it and I thought maybe the reason was because it wasn't the "proper" way, even if it was up to code. Glad to know there's nothing wrong with it! I bet I could even get it looking pretty nice like.


From looking at our box here, it just doesn't seem like there's much to these now. I think the biggest thing would be running the actually big gauge wires to the box. That's something I'd probably need help with, other than that...it looks pretty straightforward. From what I can tell, on my box, the neutral bar is tied into the GND bar. Is that normal and allowed or was someone just being lazy? I can't really see how they could of wired it different with what's coming into this actual box here...

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

you combine wires traditionally with a ceramic terminal block or bakelite junction box.

although now, you can do low current (under 25a) with helacon.

[kaboom]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

when used properly, those wire nuts seem pretty secure. I know I can't physically pull one off that I put on. I can unscrew it, but pulling it off doesn't seem to work. That's before I tape them, I always give them a nice tug, to make sure they're secure. If they're not, I've used the wrong side or twisted the wire inside incorrectly.

Just a quick post for now....

Emphasis mine. Wirenuts get a bad rap because many don't "pre twist!"

Never count on the spring to either twist the wires and/or carry current. You must have a good splice before you twist the wirenut on.

I don't care that the instructions were changed several years ago to suggest "no pretwisting required;" this was apparently done to make those "unskilled" feel more "comfortable" installing stuff that didn't understand. I don't mean "Happy Homeowner" here- it refers to those to proud to take any pride in their work...

Remember, soldered splices are still allowed per the NEC, but they also need to be twisted (secure connection established) before soldering.

there's two panels already there. I was hoping the wires would be long enough where I could put the new larger panel in the middle of where the old two are and just hook them up to new breakers

If the jacketed portion of existing cables reaches the new panel enclosure, you can still enter that enclosure; you may splice the individual conductors inside to land them on the busses/bkrs. You are allowed to splice within panelboard enclosures provided "box fill" isn't exceeded.

Hint: box fill isn't as much an issue as it appears. I'm talking now about device/junction boxes- usually, if it "seems" too small to work in and you go up a size or two for more room, you're usually OK.

In the typical Siemens/Murray 40/40 panel, such as this one:


you'll have enough room to splice/extend your existing conductors. These also have four pegs on each corner of the panelboard itself; keep the wires on the outside of these and you'll never have them interfere with the bkr positions.

Existing cables/ckts that don't reach can be landed in overhead 4sq boxes; then come out of those with NM-b "whips" into the new panel.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts and tape sounds nasty.
Over here a qualified electrician is required to install most things, definitely a new consumer unit as they are the only ones that can issue a certificate to show it's been done properly. (I had one fitted a couple of years ago, along with the first fix for 30 down lighters and kitchen sockets).

...

So are do you guys combine two or more wires? What do you mean by a new consumer unit?

I can't really think or two many ways besides wire nuts / tape / solder to combine wires together...I guess you could use screw down terminals in some sort of panel. That'd work I guess. Is that what you guys have? Some sort of panel where you screw down the various wires that you want to connect together (ie, you want to splice into a line and run a new outlet from it but there's no outlets or switches near by to run off of...here, we'd just cut the wire, use maybe a junction box and some wire nuts / tape). Basically, something like this:

https://www.teksupply.com/wcsstore/E...ge/lj2100a.jpg

Keep in mind, the tops been removed so you can see inside.