Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

I would wonder how good of an electrical inspector he is if he does not a least try to get back to you?

Kaboom when I was talking about pulling the meter I meant to call the city and have them come up to pull the meter.

If you have a 200 amp main and it was installed correctly then you will be fine. The cross sectional area of the wire and type of wire determine the current capability for a given length. This can be look up. I do not know what rules apply in Corning, but 45 years ago when I work as an electrician's helper in Florida one had to pay for the city to change the wire from the pole/transformer to the meter at the same time they would pull the meter for you so an electrician could replace the wire from the meter to the panel. After the electrician replaced the wire to the panel the owner could call up the city to come out and replace the meter. This could be all done in 2 hours time as not to inconvenience the home owner.
One other thing if we found that the sub panel ground was not connected to the main panel then we would connect a ground wire between the two.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

http://www.cityofcorning.com/index.a...5D4B6AEC0C7%7D

I am pretty sure the city will want to do the inspection and want you to get the permit.

When I ran the 240V up here, I tried keeping it to code and I tried doing the right thing and calling that code enforcer guy, Steve, but I never got any responses. I left a few messages, I tried morning, noon and evening. I tried multiple times. That was a few months back. I was talking to the realtor. She said because I currently live in the Town of Corning and not the City of Corning, the enforcer probably just ignored my calls. She said if I do any work in the new house and can't get a hold of him, let her know. She said she's got his personal cell but I can't let him know where I got it from.

I've never done this kind of work in the city before, always up in the country here, where we just do it and we never have issues. My dad was really skilled and building stuff, but if we wanted to put a roof on, we just put it on. If we wanted to run electricity to one of the sheds we built, we'd just run it. Before I was born, my dad jacked up his house and dug out the basement with my pregnant mom by hand, because there was no basement. And he built it. He hired someone to pour the concrete I think but he laid those cinder blocks by himself and even did the piping for the drainage, in case it leaked. I've told the realtor some of my ideas for some of the various houses we've looked at, and it seems no matter what type of repairs I do or no matter what I change, I'm going to need one of these enforcer guys to come and check and make sure it's sound!

I wanted to add a balcony to one of the houses, but nope. Because it's load bearing and gonna have people on it, I need an engineer to sign off and stamp the freaking blueprints!!! and show them to the city, showing exactly how much weight it can handle without collapsing and then I get a permit and I only get 12 months or so to build it. I can get that extended to longer if I need to. But it's a lot different in the city. I guess if I'm just replacing the boards on the porch floor, that's okay, no permit or blueprints or drawings needed.

I wonder what permit I'd need. Probably the:
RESIDENTIAL, Installation, Extension or Replacement of HVAC, Fire Protection, Electrical or other System, Structural Repairs, Roof Replacement one, right?

I see there's a 50$ base fee and a 2.00$ per 1,000$ of Project Cost fee. That means I probably just can't replace it. I'd need to show them some plans or something on how I'm going to do it, and how much I expect certain things to cost and all that jazz before I even get the permit, right?

There's a small back balcony on this house. I like it. But I would have built it a little bit different. I'm not a great builder like my dad though. They got a bit of a railing, it's solid. And it's got maybe a 2 x 6 on the top of the railing. So the railing kind of looks like a T if you were gonna take a cross-sectional. Then, there's 4x4's that go from those 2x6's up to the roof and hold the roof of the balcony on. I would have ran those 4 x 4's all the way down and tied the railing into them. Anyway, those 2 x 6's, they need to be replaced now. But replacing them...that's not the easiest because you got those dang 4 x 4's. I'll have to secure the roof somehow and then somehow unhook those 4 x 4's from the 2 x 6's and replace the 2 x 6's one at a time. Then tie the 4 x 4's back into the new 2 x 6's so the roof don't fall down. If we get the house, when I do this, I wanted to extend the balcony. I also wanted to extend the wrap around porch in the front. I thought it'd be really cool to make that wrap around porch go out further and connect to the side door and roof the whole thing so that back roof, where the balcony is, connects to the front porch roof, they'd all be the same roof, you know? And the balcony, I'd just have it go the whole length as the down stairs porch. So in the end, the down on the ground porch would go around the front of the house, and wrap around the one complete side of the house and go to the back of house. Then, on the roof of that porch, instead of a roof, we got a giant balcony that does the same. And on that balcony, we got a roof to protect the whole thing. I thought because the balcony was already there, I might not need blueprints with an engineer's signature to just "modify" it a "little", you know? Same with the porch...because it already exists, I could just kinda "stretch" it a little and just pay for a permit to "modify" it.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

That's so often overlooked around here- TVs and cable modems are often destroyed because "Circus Electric" neglects to bond their coax to the service- or puts "ground rods" in without bonding them to the service! Without the bond, they become "lightning rods" during tree/ground strikes because step potential puts the coax at a different potential than the elec service- this voltage difference causes current to flow through your electronics in an attempt to "equalize." You can imagine what happens.

If that cable modem is connected to a computer and there's no CATV bond per NEC, that step potential comes in on the coax, goes up the USB/ethernet cable and through the motherboard to get to the system's chassis. Once there, it returns to the electric service, via the PSU's secondary-EGC bond- it goes up the third wire on the computer's power cord.

The ethernet transformers do not have sufficient isolation for such events.


IOW, if you don't have the required bonding jumper(s), think again; your electronics will serve the purpose given the right (wrong?) circumstances.

That's all for now...

How can I check if it's bonded? Do you got any pictures you can show me of what it'd look like? It probably isn't. But I mean, someone did know something about structured wiring or whatever it's called. They got some of the modules, like the telephone punchout or breakout board, whatever you call it. It's next to the cable splitter. Maybe they did that right. But I don't like it. I'd want it all moved to the side of the wall, kinda like this:

http://static1.squarespace.com/stati...pg?format=500w


Maybe I'd put the cable modem inside the box and have a box just for the transformers or somehow try to isolate the power lines from the data lines and keep them in the same box, so they'd interfer. Something like that would be nice I think. In 2008, 50% of the houses being built included structured wiring. That would make me think it's a feature that people like. A feature that would make our house more valuable, even if it's just a little more.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Their other hangup is "all bedrooms ckts must have AFCIs." Not unless new construction (new bedroom for Grandma), a certain percentage of building is remodeled, or circuits in existing bedrooms are modified.

That does not apply to replacing receptacles or switches; this is maintenance not "new construction."


Want to see receptacles "mysteriously" heat up with nothing plugged in? Then backstab the entire circuit and run a window AC or space heater in the last recep on the chain. The receps with backstabs in the worst condition will heat the most. Every winter around here, plenty of fires, not from the heaters, but "that plug in the next room over" that ran hot for awhile. As times goes by, the backstabs get worse. Never a problem with a few lamps, but load the circuit good and all hell breaks loose. The sad part is "last year we ran that heater and the other room's plugs never heated up." Well, the backstabs weren't totally gone at that point...

This is why the "electrical" fires come in cycles, mostly with the heaters in winter, sometimes with the window ACs. Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years is also interesting with the small appliances. Not always leading to fires because, usually someone's in the kitchen "supervising" the coffe maker, etc, and unplugs/kills power when something's not right.

So, I just googled what backstabbing is. Let me see if I got this right, it's actually bad to backstab the wires? Meaning it's better to strip the wires and hook them up via the screw terminals? When I took my basic electricity class in highschool, I was taught the other way was safer! Putting them in those little holes. The teacher said screws could come loose over the years, but those wires wouldn't come out unless you purposefully tried to remove them. That's wrong? We should be using the screw terminals? I figure I will just go through the house and manually check every single outlet / light switch and see what's inside there. Are GFCI outlets really nice? Would it be worth replacing every single outlet in the house with GFCI outlets? I'm okay with spending money, if it can raise the value of the house, so when we go to upgrade, we get more money than what we paid. I mean, upstairs, new molding, but I think the wood is pine or something soft like that. It looks fancy, but I don't think it is at all. The wood down stairs, it's really hard and looks old. I think it's expensiver for the downstairs molding than it is for the upstairs molding. So, that's something we'd probably replace. The wiring for this house is listed as updated. However, in the attic, there's Romex (or what I'd call Romex) but it looks old. Like the new stuff that I play with, it's not round, like a circle. But this older stuff, it's round. Maybe it's just a heavier gauge. I saw the rubber coating and thought okay, we're good. I wonder if that stuff has to be replaced as well.

...I found no power at box in question and the one downstream; had partial power at upstream box. Partial power meaning had hot to a remote return path (cold water pipe in this case), but no neutral back to the panel. So it was time to look inside this box. There were three on this ckt; this one (1), the dead one where the coffee maker plug burned up (2), and the one after that (3).

Is there any easy way to tell what outlets / switches belong to what circuit, or do I just gotta flip the breaker and then go and see what outlets / switches have juice going to them?

Inside box 1, more backstabs! 3 out of 4 were shot. Both neutral coming and going, and hot going out. And #2's replacement was also backstabbed by "son-in-law." Because of box fill constraints and lack of available wire, used the screw terminals in #1 to feed #2. #2 had not just a recep, but a disposal switch leg. Power to and from #2 went to the screw terminals- had to backstab line and neutral to disposal because of fill. Iffy, yes, but the disposal is less than half the ckt rating, and non-continuous; the power must feed thru the screw terminals, as far as I'm concerned, if not pigtailing.

This is one of my fears! I don't want to make it worse, you know? I took a class back in high school once and we had to build a fake wall and wire it up. Back then, outlets just started having those holes in the back, if I remember correctly, and that's what we was taught to use. I don't want to do the wrong stuff. How do you know how much the circuit is rated to handle? I mean, for this panel in the house we're trying to buy, we see mostly 20-amp breakers. Let's say we have 3 receptacles and one switch on that 20-amp breaker. How much is the average receptacle rated to handle? 15-amp? Maybe 20-amp? If we have a 20-amp receptacle hooked up, should that be the only receptacle on that 20-amp breaker? If we have 3 20-amp receptacles and one 15-amp light switch hooked to the same circuit, should we be using a much larger breaker? This is stuff I don't know yet and need to learn.

Found counter-clockwise wire wraps on the screw terms in #3, another "son-in-law" job; told him right there about proper wrap direction making them self tighten.

I couldn't tell you without looking if a wire wrap was supposed to go counterclockwise or clockwise, but I always twist the wires and use those wirenuts properly, so when I'm tightening them, it doesn't loosen the wires I wrapped inside, it tightens them as well. Glad to learn I've at least been doing that properly!

Backstabs were only "UL listed" because cheep tract home builders same a few seconds per device during trim out. Those same tract houses with extreme voltage drop? Part of it is 50' ckts with #14 w/o planning for voltage drop, the other part is the damn backstabs- which only get worse with time.

When common crimped plugs get loose on their power cords and start heating up, replace them! Otherwise, the contact spring tension is lost in the recep. Then, when you plug a "big load" in, the good plug on that vacuum, heater, or window AC [/i] also[/i] melts/deforms/corrodes!

And endless cycle- one plug or recep goes bad. That makes poor contact another plug/recep- now that one starts oxidising plugs/receps. It sort or "spreads" til they're all replaced.

As far as the service upgrade, you do not usually have to bring the entire building up to current NEC specs; your "rehab code" will detail this for you. Basically, as your service upgrade only deals with that equipment, GFCIs/AFCIs on existing circuits are outside the scope of the service upgrade.

I have to go look at a friends outlet. He's got fuses. When I was there the other night, he told me he was having trouble. I had this little tester with me, you just plug it in and it lights up telling you what's wrong, if it can detect it. It's fairly basic. But when I plugged it in, the whole outlet sparked real bad and went dead. His TV in the bedroom is hooked the circuit and works until this outlet shorts out. I figure the outlet itself is probably bad but didn't have time to pull the cover and look at the wiring. I'll be going down to look at it in the future. Do you think it could be that back stabbing?

Also, upgrading the breakers weren't really for code or anything, we just thought they would be safer. What would you recommend would be the safest / most viable type of breakers?

What will apply to any service upgrade is bonding of all incoming signals, such as telco, antenna masts, and CATV. These must be bonded to each other an the service per NEC 250.94, 800.100, and 820.100.

Will the inspector know to look for this? Or chances are no, unless it's a real good one? We planned on upgrading the incoming lines. I think they call it structured wiring or something like that. This kind of has that, a little. Phone line jacks in the wall and down in the full basement, there's an area, on the ceiling of the basement, where all the various lines come together. We'd probably put a nice box in and hook everything up with those modules, if you know what I'm talking about. If not, I can link you to what I mean, but from reading this post, I got a feeling you're on top of this stuff and know exactly what I'm talking about.

One thing that really sucks, I don't think they ran ethernet to the rooms and there might not be even wall plates for cable. I'd really hate to open up that newly put up drywall to run the cable and ethernet properly. But that's something we really want, plates for ethernet, cable, phone, etc. If we had a way to run the wires through the studs without having to drill holes, we might be able to do it without having to open up the drywall, but I don't think that's possible. Drywall is gonna need to come down eventually, unless we just missed it and it is ran.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

...The main thing here is to only tie (bond) the neutral and ground at the first disconnect, and only at the first disconnect. Any panel fed after this point by a feeder is a subpanel; neutrals and grounds seperate. This becomes a moot point if you get a large enough panel to accomodate all circuits.

Does moot mean invalid? I read the definition and it said it meant it was up to debate. We'd be removing both panels and replacing them with one larger panel that has breakers to accommodate all the circuits.

Note: If you put a service disconnect outside, right after the meter, that becomes your service equip where you bond neutral and ground; the indoor panelboard in this case becomes a subpanel (seperate neutrals and grounds), even though it's the "only breaker box."

I think this is the setup we currently have here, but my understanding was these were generally used for mobile type homes. Our home, although it's stick built or whatever it's called, looks very much like a mobile home. A really fancy, well built, mobile type home, that has a foundation and no frame! This is where you have the panel outside, under the meter, usually attached to some pole and a wooden box in the yard right? 200-amp breaker only and the wire goes from the pole to this thing. Then there's a wire that goes from this panel to the one in the house. If that's what you're talking about, and if those are generally acceptable for houses, I'd rather have that type of setup. If the city could kill the juice to the house and hookup the juice to that box, I could do the rest myself. I could even hook up the big wires to the box without fear of being hurt.

Okay, the local POCO will typically size their residential service conductors on anticipated load, diversity if elec heat/hot water/range/dryer, and "extra" or "specified" customer loads like a hot tub or on-demand electric water heater.

If the house is "all gas," then don't be surprised to see #2 (or 1/0)AL on a "200A" service- they don't play by NEC rules and don't have to.

So even if we requested something bigger, they don't necessarily have to provide that? We can't say hey, eventually, we'd like a hot tub and we're going to be drawing 200-amp eventually at one time, we'd really like wire that could handle that?

...As for the AFCIs, they're not all they claim to be. Some say they were "legislated" (can't think of a better term right now) into the NEC, such that the MFRs of the devices would profit; actual "arc fault" detection falls under two different categories. "Series arc" from say a loose light switch, and "parallel arc" from the hot and neutral shorting- those are two rather "dumbed down" examples. Keep in mind that "arc detection" does not occur til fault current is over ~70A (parallel), and ~5A (series).

That's a super-generalization, only intended to be a starting point. Spend some time at http://www.electriciantalk.com/ or http://forums.mikeholt.com for greater detail.

With that out of the way, AFCIs, to me, are the wrong solution to a very real problem- and not one that can be detected "at the panel." It's been my experience that more often, outside of nasty cloth/rubber/cotton "fall apart" romex, aluminum wire (small-conductor 1350 alloys) and other exceptional circumstances (zinsco, fpe, etc.) , that the biggest hazard that builds over time is poor connections, oxidized plug and receptacle contacts, no "pre twisting" with wirenuts, corrosion between breaker/bus, and, in overpriced-but-low-quality developlents, backstabbing!

Those "home inspectors" make up toothless reports and scare people over countertop (and other) GFCIs, etc, but often miss glaring shortcomings. Bonding for one (see below), and cables pulled from boxes, such that the clamp is bearing down on individual conductors instead of the MC/conduit jacket! Or, a setscrew-type conduit fitting used to "secure" NM cable to a metal box- that setscrew isn't holding anything, and may rub thru and short...

...
This is stuff that I want to make sure I learn. I want to make sure that the house is wired properly and that everything is done so that it's as safe as it can be. I mean, I'm sure having no electricity would make it safer, I'm not talking about stuff like that. I mean, there's a right way, and then usually an easy way. I want to make sure everything is the right way. If that means pulling or trying to pull new wire through and replacing outlets or going through and attaching the wires to the outlets differently, throughout the whole house, I'd like to do that. My friend lost someone to a house fire years ago that was caused by an electrical issue. I don't want that ever happening, you know?

Yes, that "inspection report" is toothless- no good unless written up by someone who knows what the hell they're looking at. Not from the town/city, just a way for people to "feel good" about a given property- almost a misrepresentation scam by the realtor... "HIs" only go for low hanging fruit- whatever's easy and they can "scare" someone into doing, wrongly as a "condition of sale." Think about that one- if it had any merit, you'd never see houses for sale "as is."

Our realtor says she can suggest some really good inspectors. My wife went to school with her daughter. We get the feeling she can be trusted, but I think that might be her job, you know? To make us feel we can trust her? I don't know. Whatever house we move into though, she's giving us a table for free for the house. She says it's been sitting in her garage. It's a nice one but not as nice as the one we seen last night in the current house, she says. I don't know if it's normal for realtors to give gifts like this or not. I feel like she has our 6 though. Should we not trust her and try to find a better inspector somewheres? I'd feel more comfortable having someone like you go through our house and find problems with the electrical than some stranger!!! I know the one my parents hired, he was okay. But instead of pulling each cover off each outlet in the house, he just used his little tester to see how they were wired. Don't get me wrong, that'll tell you stuff if the neutral and hot are switched or something, but you can't tell how much bare wire is there or if there's lose connections or if someone just ran pigtails to the box or what, you know? I mean, I felt a real good inspector would probably pull the covers off as well and take a peak to see what's back there...

[budm]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

http://www.cityofcorning.com/index.a...5D4B6AEC0C7%7D

I am pretty sure the city will want to do the inspection and want you to get the permit.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Kaboom could help you out in this. How these things are chain together would be of importance as to one panel feeding another panel. The size of the wires coming from the pole to your home may need to be changed to accommodate a 200 Amp main as apposed to a 150 Amp main. Then the meter would need to be pulled so you can then replace the wire safely from the meter to your panel if the wire is to small.

Here's some questions though. I haven't read through the rest of the new posts, so if these have been answered further down, please ignore them. What does the city have control over? The wire coming into the box, I believe it comes from the meter that's owned by the city. But is that my responsibility? That wire? Or is that the cities? I didn't see a big wire going into the second box. I didn't have a lot of time to look it over though. But we really believe this was a multi-family home that was converted back into a single family home. So there's a chance that both boxes, at one point in time, ran off two meters outside.

That wire going to the one box looks a bit old. I'd almost wish it was a similar setup as our current stick built house. Where there's a box outside that only has a 200-amp breaker. The meter goes to that box, and that box goes to our inside box. If I flip that one breaker outside, I can do anything to my box inside without fear of getting fried. That's kinda nice. I mean, if I flip the main breaker in here, for the most part, I can do just about anything. My mum's house recently got their breaker box replaced. The breakers themselves are physically good. It was a 40-panel or 42. They replaced every single breaker as well and my dad saved all the old ones. They're not GFCI or arc fault protection ones, but still, I bet that's some good money right there, even for the older ones. HOM they say on them. Ours here say the same, type HOM. So even though our box is only 6 years old or so, it uses the same breakers.

[kaboom]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Kaboom could help you out in this.

I can try...

I'll address the items you brought up first, then give more specific advice to Spork.

How these things are chain together would be of importance as to one panel feeding another panel.

The main thing here is to only tie (bond) the neutral and ground at the first disconnect, and only at the first disconnect. Any panel fed after this point by a feeder is a subpanel; neutrals and grounds seperate. This becomes a moot point if you get a large enough panel to accomodate all circuits.

Note: If you put a service disconnect outside, right after the meter, that becomes your service equip where you bond neutral and ground; the indoor panelboard in this case becomes a subpanel (seperate neutrals and grounds), even though it's the "only breaker box."

The size of the wires coming from the pole to your home may need to be changed to accommodate a 200 Amp main as apposed to a 150 Amp main.

Okay, the local POCO will typically size their residential service conductors on anticipated load, diversity if elec heat/hot water/range/dryer, and "extra" or "specified" customer loads like a hot tub or on-demand electric water heater.

If the house is "all gas," then don't be surprised to see #2 (or 1/0)AL on a "200A" service- they don't play by NEC rules and don't have to.

Then the meter would need to be pulled so you can then replace the wire safely from the meter to your panel if the wire is to small.

Depending on the condition of the jaws in the meter can, and stabs on the meter, this can be dangerous! If the terminals have corroded together and the meter seems "stuck," extreme force can break the insulators holding the contacts/jaws. If these always-hot terminals then short to the can or each other, things will be bad.

Further, certain "infamous" POCOs consider even pulling a meter for a service upgrade to be "tampering." Even though you are pulling it for legitimate purposes, they'll scream like you were jumping the meter or opening the potential coil link on the back of the meter itself.


On to you, Spork...

As for the AFCIs, they're not all they claim to be. Some say they were "legislated" (can't think of a better term right now) into the NEC, such that the MFRs of the devices would profit; actual "arc fault" detection falls under two different categories. "Series arc" from say a loose light switch, and "parallel arc" from the hot and neutral shorting- those are two rather "dumbed down" examples. Keep in mind that "arc detection" does not occur til fault current is over ~70A (parallel), and ~5A (series).

That's a super-generalization, only intended to be a starting point. Spend some time at http://www.electriciantalk.com/ or http://forums.mikeholt.com for greater detail.

With that out of the way, AFCIs, to me, are the wrong solution to a very real problem- and not one that can be detected "at the panel." It's been my experience that more often, outside of nasty cloth/rubber/cotton "fall apart" romex, aluminum wire (small-conductor 1350 alloys) and other exceptional circumstances (zinsco, fpe, etc.) , that the biggest hazard that builds over time is poor connections, oxidized plug and receptacle contacts, no "pre twisting" with wirenuts, corrosion between breaker/bus, and, in overpriced-but-low-quality developlents, backstabbing!

Those "home inspectors" make up toothless reports and scare people over countertop (and other) GFCIs, etc, but often miss glaring shortcomings. Bonding for one (see below), and cables pulled from boxes, such that the clamp is bearing down on individual conductors instead of the MC/conduit jacket! Or, a setscrew-type conduit fitting used to "secure" NM cable to a metal box- that setscrew isn't holding anything, and may rub thru and short...


Yes, that "inspection report" is toothless- no good unless written up by someone who knows what the hell they're looking at. Not from the town/city, just a way for people to "feel good" about a given property- almost a misrepresentation scam by the realtor... "HIs" only go for low hanging fruit- whatever's easy and they can "scare" someone into doing, wrongly as a "condition of sale." Think about that one- if it had any merit, you'd never see houses for sale "as is."

Their other hangup is "all bedrooms ckts must have AFCIs." Not unless new construction (new bedroom for Grandma), a certain percentage of building is remodeled, or circuits in existing bedrooms are modified.

That does not apply to replacing receptacles or switches; this is maintenance not "new construction."


Want to see receptacles "mysteriously" heat up with nothing plugged in? Then backstab the entire circuit and run a window AC or space heater in the last recep on the chain. The receps with backstabs in the worst condition will heat the most. Every winter around here, plenty of fires, not from the heaters, but "that plug in the next room over" that ran hot for awhile. As times goes by, the backstabs get worse. Never a problem with a few lamps, but load the circuit good and all hell breaks loose. The sad part is "last year we ran that heater and the other room's plugs never heated up." Well, the backstabs weren't totally gone at that point...

This is why the "electrical" fires come in cycles, mostly with the heaters in winter, sometimes with the window ACs. Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years is also interesting with the small appliances. Not always leading to fires because, usually someone's in the kitchen "supervising" the coffe maker, etc, and unplugs/kills power when something's not right.

Here's a story from about 8 years ago. Neighbor had a kitchen ckt "go dead" the day after Thanksgiving. It was a coffee maker and either the appliance's plug or the recep wore out and overheated. They ended up with a tripped bkr, but someone may have "been playing" with power still on- like pulled the recep from the metal box while still live and the backstabbed hot came out and hit the box. The bad recep was replaced, bkr turned on, but still nothing- then they called me.

I found no power at box in question and the one downstream; had partial power at upstream box. Partial power meaning had hot to a remote return path (cold water pipe in this case), but no neutral back to the panel. So it was time to look inside this box. There were three on this ckt; this one (1), the dead one where the coffee maker plug burned up (2), and the one after that (3).

Inside box 1, more backstabs! 3 out of 4 were shot. Both neutral coming and going, and hot going out. And #2's replacement was also backstabbed by "son-in-law." Because of box fill constraints and lack of available wire, used the screw terminals in #1 to feed #2. #2 had not just a recep, but a disposal switch leg. Power to and from #2 went to the screw terminals- had to backstab line and neutral to disposal because of fill. Iffy, yes, but the disposal is less than half the ckt rating, and non-continuous; the power must feed thru the screw terminals, as far as I'm concerned, if not pigtailing.

Found counter-clockwise wire wraps on the screw terms in #3, another "son-in-law" job; told him right there about proper wrap direction making them self tighten.


Backstabs were only "UL listed" because cheep tract home builders same a few seconds per device during trim out. Those same tract houses with extreme voltage drop? Part of it is 50' ckts with #14 w/o planning for voltage drop, the other part is the damn backstabs- which only get worse with time.

When common crimped plugs get loose on their power cords and start heating up, replace them! Otherwise, the contact spring tension is lost in the recep. Then, when you plug a "big load" in, the good plug on that vacuum, heater, or window AC [/i] also[/i] melts/deforms/corrodes!

And endless cycle- one plug or recep goes bad. That makes poor contact another plug/recep- now that one starts oxidising plugs/receps. It sort or "spreads" til they're all replaced.


As far as the service upgrade, you do not usually have to bring the entire building up to current NEC specs; your "rehab code" will detail this for you. Basically, as your service upgrade only deals with that equipment, GFCIs/AFCIs on existing circuits are outside the scope of the service upgrade.

What will apply to any service upgrade is bonding of all incoming signals, such as telco, antenna masts, and CATV. These must be bonded to each other an the service per NEC 250.94, 800.100, and 820.100.

That's so often overlooked around here- TVs and cable modems are often destroyed because "Circus Electric" neglects to bond their coax to the service- or puts "ground rods" in without bonding them to the service! Without the bond, they become "lightning rods" during tree/ground strikes because step potential puts the coax at a different potential than the elec service- this voltage difference causes current to flow through your electronics in an attempt to "equalize." You can imagine what happens.

If that cable modem is connected to a computer and there's no CATV bond per NEC, that step potential comes in on the coax, goes up the USB/ethernet cable and through the motherboard to get to the system's chassis. Once there, it returns to the electric service, via the PSU's secondary-EGC bond- it goes up the third wire on the computer's power cord.

The ethernet transformers do not have sufficient isolation for such events.


IOW, if you don't have the required bonding jumper(s), think again; your electronics will serve the purpose given the right (wrong?) circumstances.

That's all for now...

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Kaboom could help you out in this. How these things are chain together would be of importance as to one panel feeding another panel. The size of the wires coming from the pole to your home may need to be changed to accommodate a 200 Amp main as apposed to a 150 Amp main. Then the meter would need to be pulled so you can then replace the wire safely from the meter to your panel if the wire is to small.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

I was wondering if that was the battery backup for the house. You know, for when the power goes out?

I see about 25 generations of spiders there too.

LOL! Yeah, we can pretend that's the battery backup for the house! And 25 generations of spiders!!! Yuck! 35 years of my life and one thing I never seemed to overcome, my fear of spiders! Pretty sad when the realtor laughs when I scream like a little girl after seeing one and then run and hide behind my wife!

Anyway, is it a big project upgrading these things? Or with a little research, would I be able to do it pretty easy like? I've been studying mine here at this house and honestly, it doesn't look to crazy or anything. The person who did it didn't even make it look nice. I bet I could even make it look nice.

[rhomanski]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

I was wondering if that was the battery backup for the house. You know, for when the power goes out?

I see about 25 generations of spiders there too.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Man, those pics turned out horrible! The one with the batteries on top is the second box. They're all on their side, try to visualize them side ways or maybe turn your monitor up side down.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Sorry for the crappy pictures here. My father, who has dementia was with me and it was a bit hard making sure he wasn't doing something down there that was going to hurt him and taking the pictures. For some reason, he kept grabbing hold of one of the big thick wires that thankfully wasn't hooked up. He'd grab hold of the red wire and say hey, this doesn't seem right. And then as soon as I got him away, I'd try taking a pic, but he'd come back and do it again.

What do you guys think? Easy upgrade? There's actually two boxes here. I believe it was once a multi-family house and one panel is for the upstairs, one is for the downstairs. I'd like to get a 42-panel breaker box and just combine them all into that and add a few more I think. What do you guys think?

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

We're thinking of buying this house. It's got a weird setup. I'll try to take pictures later. I think it's listed as having a 150-amp panel but it's two small ones chained together. I was thinking of replacing it. I wanted a bigger panel, like a 32 or 40 slot one. I notice they got some really neat breakers now, like arc fault protection and GFCI. The breakers that have both built in are expensive, around 250$ for 6 of 'em that handle 20-amp each.

Do they make panels that have an arc fault and a GFCI 200-amp breaker? The big one? Also, what if you got something like an arc welder and you got one of those arc fault protection breakers...would that trip it? Or would it allow the arc welder to run, and just trip when bad arcs are detected somehow?

I couldn't find a 200-amp GFCI + arc fault protection panel when I looked earlier. Thanks!