Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

[dmill89]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

we wanted a small cement slab outback to park our car. 20 foot by 20 foot or so. That's around 3,000$, if not more! That's insane! I couldn't imagine how much a completely concrete house would cost. That 20'x20' would only be 6" deep or so.

^This, in the US it is reversed, wood is cheap and concrete/masonry is expensive. A standard 8' 2X4" wall stud is about $2 at most major home improvement stores (and even cheaper for builders who buy in bulk from suppliers), while an 8X8X16" concrete block costs about the same, but it takes a lot more concrete blocks to make a wall than wood studs (standard building code in the US has the studs spaced 16" on center). for example a single 16" (8' high) section of wall would cost about $5 with wood (2 studs, top plate, and bottom plate) and over $20 with concrete blocks (this is just structure, and doesn't factor in sheeting, insulation and drywall which would be required for both wall).

maybe u.s. lumber is subsidised - wouldnt surprise me as i know they blocked the free import of canadian lumber.

Not really subsidized, but the US has lots of forests and lost of cheap undeveloped land in rural areas for "tree farms" so as a result lumber is plentiful and cheap to produce.

[diif]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

The labour is more expensive to put up a brick/block wall than timber.
Brick/block requires no maintenance, provides better security and insulation though. It won't blow away either. It does however require proper concrete foundations, which again cost proper money.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

Here, there are almost all houses are made of stone/bricks/concrete.
The price of 3000$ for bricks is just extortion.

This is what I was thinking, maybe it was the area we live in. It's not for brick though, it's for cement. I bet brick would be cheaper for the material but probably more for the labor, because then you have to find someone who knows how to lay them. I'm sure there's people in the area who do this, but because it's not necessarily a high demand, I bet it'd cost.

Also, here, we're surrounded by trees. Even in the city, you can look around at the hills and see all kinds of trees. Almost all of the places in America I've been are like this (except for when you start getting further down south or into the really big cities, like New York City). Maybe lumber is cheaper here and maybe it's cheaper because we have a lot of trees.

Just connect all the routers to your cable modem/primary router. You can either set your routers as wireless switches(disable DHCP and set every router LAN management address to differ from the others) or you can just connect the routers to the primary. In the first case, the routers will act as switches and all the addresses will be given from the first router or cable modem, in the second case the first router will give each router 1 private IP, and then this IP will pass thru NAT. In this case every router will give private IP from it's individual DHCP server, and all connections will pass thru NAT. Both cases will provide you working network, but in the first one you will have transparent network, method which has it's advantages.

So the first method has it's advantages? I want to try the 1st way. I've tried the 2nd, but I think the 1st will be better. With consumer grade routers, is the 1st method sometimes called bridge mode?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

Your wireless access point or points would be wired to the switch. No need for repeaters.

Normally it would be Cable modem->firewall->switch .
Your AP then plugged in to the switch as well as all your other Cat5e and Cat6 sockets.

That CAT 5e is being used for telephone, so they shouldn't be going into the switch. I'm not doing a VoIP or anything fancy like that. Just normal telephones but using CAT 5e so there's a potential for four lines and we have less interference than what we'd have with CAT 3.

For the firewall, the cable modem has a built-in firewall, but I was almost thinking of setting up some form of Linux to act as a firewall. I remember at my old job, there were these red firewall boxes that ran Linux of one sort or another. They were a bit pricey but we liked them. Watchguard makes them: http://www.watchguard.com/

I think I could do something probably equally as effective if I use Linux and just configure it the same. I dunno, I might get one of the Firebox's one of these days.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

The labour is more expensive to put up a brick/block wall than timber.
Brick/block requires no maintenance, provides better security and insulation though. It won't blow away either. It does however require proper concrete foundations, which again cost proper money.

A house made out of lumber requires a proper concrete foundation as well though. Back in the day, people would use stone sometimes, but now, they use concrete. With smaller houses, they might not have a basement and just a concrete slab. I wonder if, because it's heavier, the brick / block houses would require a thicker foundation...

Only time I've heard of houses blowing over were because of tornadoes or because they were abandoned and not maintained. Do brick and block houses stand up to tornadoes?

[diif]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

An old PC running smoothwall or pfsense would do.
Your cable modem as provided by your ISP ? Pretty sure it's bought buy them for cheapness not quality/security. At least in the UK the ISP can see all devices connected to them.
A timber house doesn't require anything like the foundation a brick house requires.
Roofs occasionally get blown off and a few bricks fall down.
Some photos from today's storm damage. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...r-hits-UK.html

Would a wooden house stand up to a tree falling on it ?

[televizora]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

This is what I was thinking, maybe it was the area we live in. ..
So the first method has it's advantages?

Just connect to each router, change the LAN address so the addresses of two router don't match, disable DCHP of the all routers and wire all routers to the main router/cable modem. You should connect the routers from the yellow jack of the primary to the yellow jack of the other router.
p.sHere we usually don't use cable modems...
AND YES, we ALSO have many forests here. We are not UK, where they have cut down all the forests and just bare land with some grass is all that you can see. It's just that the real wood is expensive. I don't know about your regulations, but here you need special license and there is limit how much trees you can cut down from square kilometer.
I've seen shows on Discovery and Viasat, where they cut down whole forests in the USA without any mercy, till the bare soil is all that remains. NOT NICE, NOT NICE!

Do brick and block houses stand up to tornadoes?

What do you think? Concrete is much more stable than wood. It's much more heavier. And it doesn't lie down on stilts. What the tornado can do is to blow away the roof, which is still made of roof-tiles and wooden construction. Here we use what you call "roman roof tile".

[dmill89]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

The labour is more expensive to put up a brick/block wall than timber.
Brick/block requires no maintenance, provides better security and insulation though. It won't blow away either. It does however require proper concrete foundations, which again cost proper money.

The real scary thing is that they also build some new Apartment buildings and Hotels in the US with wood framing. Near me they just put up a bunch (at least 10) 5-story apartment buildings built with wood, and I've seen s few new motel/hotels (all 3-story +) built with wood around here. Now with type-X (fire-rated) drywall and fire-rated insulation wood can obtain the necessary fire rating to meet code in such buildings, but it is still a scary though if you're on the 5th floor of a wood building and fire breaks out below you.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

An old PC running smoothwall or pfsense would do.
Your cable modem as provided by your ISP ? Pretty sure it's bought buy them for cheapness not quality/security. At least in the UK the ISP can see all devices connected to them.
A timber house doesn't require anything like the foundation a brick house requires.
Roofs occasionally get blown off and a few bricks fall down.
Some photos from today's storm damage. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...r-hits-UK.html

Would a wooden house stand up to a tree falling on it ?

The cable modem is provided by the ISP. I bought a nice one once but we have to buy from a list of approved cable modems. I wasn't sure at the time why, but it turns out it's so they can cripple the firmware and we're not allowed to control the firmware. They make it horrible, so unless we get something like FIOS into the area, we're kinda stuck with a crappy cable modem.

I run personal firewalls on my computers and so does my wife. She uses Norton I think, which provides a decent firewall / IDS. I run iptables, which is a stateful packet inspecting firewall.

I don't know much about the brick houses, thank you for sharing about their foundations and the whole tree thing. My parents have a wooden house (as does most people in this area) but they live in the country and there's a big tree that's big enough and close enough that if it were to fall, and it fell in the right direction, if they were sleeping, it'd probably kill them. My mum wants it taken down. My dad thinks he can do it. He cannot do it. He might have been able to before the dementia, but now, he just can't. We've had younger trees nearly as big break in two last summer during some storms. If the storms can take down those younger trees, it can take down that big one. It's just a matter of time.

I'll look into smoothwall and pfsense. pfsense sounds familiar. I might have played with that before, I dunno.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

Just connect to each router, change the LAN address so the addresses of two router don't match, disable DCHP of the all routers and wire all routers to the main router/cable modem. You should connect the routers from the yellow jack of the primary to the yellow jack of the other router.
p.sHere we usually don't use cable modems...
AND YES, we ALSO have many forests here. We are not UK, where they have cut down all the forests and just bare land with some grass is all that you can see. It's just that the real wood is expensive. I don't know about your regulations, but here you need special license and there is limit how much trees you can cut down from square kilometer.
I've seen shows on Discovery and Viasat, where they cut down whole forests in the USA without any mercy, till the bare soil is all that remains. NOT NICE, NOT NICE!

They're trying to fix this, but sadly, I just don't think enough American's care. It's changing slowly, but I have friends of a wide age range. A younger friend told me global climate change was fake. He said a volcano, after going off, will raise the temps more than we ever will. Volcano's have a tendency to cool the temp though, with all the ash they put into the air. This blocks the sunlight and cools the temp a bit. Another friend, that's much older, he says why should he care, he's not going to be around when we can't live here anymore. Any friend, my age, says he'd love to live green but cannot afford it.

The one my age is intelligent and he does do stuff, like recycle and carpool, etc. For electric, we can choose to have part of electricity come from a renewable source (windmills aren't too far from here) but if we do, we actually have to pay more money! That's ridiculous!!!! It should be the other way around.

What do you think? Concrete is much more stable than wood. It's much more heavier. And it doesn't lie down on stilts. What the tornado can do is to blow away the roof, which is still made of roof-tiles and wooden construction. Here we use what you call "roman roof tile".

I figured with the winds that a tornado can produce, even a brick house wouldn't stand much of a chance. I figured a tornado could throw a car around, for example, and take out just about anything. I remember learning in school that a blade of grass can actually go and stick into wood, if the speed was fast enough. I almost want to say they were talking about the tornado could take a piece of grass and make it stick into the wood, but I could be wrong.

I saw this television show once about how the world would change if society ended now. 20 years or so into the feature, all the buildings and stuff were covered with vegetation. Then they show this religious structure, nice and clean. The cement blocks were special. They could clean themselves somehow and looked brand new. I think we live in a scientific illiterate society though. It's easy to manipulate the general masses just by showing something on TV or the internet. People don't fact check, they read something and just assume it's true. People tend to care more about money then the environment. People tend not to think. With the Golden Gate Bridge, I believe they paint it all year round. As soon as they finish, they paint it again. This is to prevent it from rusting. It costs a lot of money. If they had built it out of something like stainless steel, although the initial cost would have been much higher, it would have been cheaper than what they've put into it already.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

Okay, I killed the power. I found down in the basement, we have the 20 amp fuse. A wire comes from that 20-amp fuse and goes to a junction box. In that junction box, we have the incoming hot wire, we have a wire that goes to the bathroom fan, we have the wire that goes to the bathroom GFCI outlet and then we have a wire that goes to an unknown location (that's not in the bathroom). All of them are wired together.

In the bathroom, at the GFCI outlet, we the line coming from the basement and then we have a line going to the lights above the sink. The bare wires are tied together but NOT hooked the GFCI outlet. The old GFCI outlet _is_ a 20-amp GFCI outlet.

I am going to hook the bare metal wires up to the new 20-amp GFCI outlet. Is it okay to hook them both up to the outlet or should I really use a pigtail? I don't have any wire nuts, but there's on there connecting the two bare metal wires. That one is only meant for 2 wires though, so I'd need to go find a wire nut made for 3 wires

[stj]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

we have a wire that goes to an unknown location (that's not in the bathroom)

i would disconect that and see if anything stops working.
also, when you put the power back - meter it to see if any power is backfeeding.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

i would disconect that and see if anything stops working.
also, when you put the power back - meter it to see if any power is backfeeding.

What do you mean by back feeding?

I've currently got the breaker flipped. I've checked the lights and they all work, I'm going to take my multimeter and go test some of the receptacles throughout the house, just to figure where it goes.

What should I do with the bare metal wires that are tied together in the 1-gang box where the GFCI receptacle goes though? Should I try wiring both into the GFCI receptacle or should I go buy a larger wire nut and run a pigtail to the GFCI receptacle? Thanks!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

That unknown wire has now been successfully identified. It goes to all four receptacles in the dining room, but just them, nothing else.

So, that one 20-amp breaker feeds the exhaust fan in the bathroom, the 20-amp GFCI outlet in the bathroom, the lights above the mirror in the bathroom (4 round LED bulbs), and the four receptacles in the dining room.

The breaker goes to the junction box in the basement where it gets attached to three more wires. The three wires go like this. One wire goes to the dining room and provides power for all four receptacles. One wire goes to the bathroom and provides power to the exhaust fan. One wire goes to the bathroom and provides power to the GFCI receptacle which provides power to the 4 LED bulbs above the mirror.

[dmill89]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

I figured with the winds that a tornado can produce, even a brick house wouldn't stand much of a chance. I figured a tornado could throw a car around, for example, and take out just about anything.

That is mostly the case, concrete (block) houses are common in areas where hurricanes are common (such as Florida), but in the mid-west "tornado country" they aren't any more common than they are in the rest of the US. While a concrete/brick house will generally hold up to a hurricane (at least much better than a wood one would) it still doesn't stand much of a chance against a major (F3+) tornado. F5 tornados have been known to even take down heavily reinforced concrete/steel commercial buildings.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

That is mostly the case, concrete (block) houses are common in areas where hurricanes are common (such as Florida), but in the mid-west "tornado country" they aren't any more common than they are in the rest of the US. While a concrete/brick house will generally hold up to a hurricane (at least much better than a wood one would) it still doesn't stand much of a chance against a major (F3+) tornado. F5 tornados have been known to even take down heavily reinforced concrete/steel commercial buildings.

Too bad there wasn't something we could to help. I wish I could invent something that could withstand the strongest winds on Mars and Jupiter! But I guess either the technology doesn't exist yet or people just don't want to spend the money to make it.

[stj]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

if you build something pyramid shaped, it will deflect the wind.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

if you build something pyramid shaped, it will deflect the wind.

I don't think the problem is so much the wind, but more or less what's in the wind (ie, cars flying at 200+ MPH). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the wind itself does damage too. I've seen videos where roofs just peeled right off the houses.

I think fixing the houses for just the wind would be the first step, and then work on fixing them for all the stuff that might fly into them would be the second.

I think I'm just going to run both bare copper wires to the GFCI receptacle instead of pig tailing it. I don't have any spare 12-2, I don't have any wire nuts. I figured if it was a bad idea, someone would have said so by now. If it turns out it is a bad idea, I can always undo it. I just want to get juice going back to the bathroom.

[dmill89]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

Too bad there wasn't something we could to help. I wish I could invent something that could withstand the strongest winds on Mars and Jupiter! But I guess either the technology doesn't exist yet or people just don't want to spend the money to make it.

The technology absolutely exists to build a building that can survive an F5 tornado, but it is hideously expensive to do so. Due to this and the relatively low odds of any given building/house being hit by a tornado (even in areas where tornados are common) it simply isn't done. "Tornado-proof" rooms made of steel and heavily reinforced concrete (similar in construction to a vault) are often constructed where underground storm shelters are not possibly or practical (due to a high water table, excessive rock, etc.) but building an entire building to survive a severe tornado is rare.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Using higher amperage receptacles with lower amperage breakers

The technology absolutely exists to build a building that can survive an F5 tornado, but it is hideously expensive to do so. Due to this and the relatively low odds of any given building/house being hit by a tornado (even in areas where tornados are common) it simply isn't done. "Tornado-proof" rooms made of steel and heavily reinforced concrete (similar in construction to a vault) are often constructed where underground storm shelters are not possibly or practical (due to a high water table, excessive rock, etc.) but building an entire building to survive a severe tornado is rare.

Wow, thanks for sharing! So it's a money thing? I'd hope one day we would reach a point where money wouldn't be the driving factor for the stuff we did. It'd be nice to see all houses built to stand the test of time, capable of withstanding hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, even in areas where there are none. Houses that will never rot or rust, etc.


Anyway, I went out to the garage and the old owner had these little pull out drawers. I started pulling them out and found a red wire nut! I went down into the basement and found the wire that isn't hooked to the breaker, the one that just dangles. It looks like it was installed but never hooked up. Never found out what it goes too. Everything seems to work. My guess is a light for the side porch, but I'll have to buy equipment to trace it.

I cut a bit of copper off that wire and used that to wire a pigtail. I then went and hooked up the GFCI receptacle. I went down to the basement while my wife stood upstairs. I flipped the breaker, she said it didn't work! I said push the buttons, she said it still doesn't work! I said try the fan, the fan worked. So I came up and she just didn't hit the button hard enough. You gotta push it down hard and really deep to get it to reset.

Looks really nice. I think we made the right investment here.

Thanks for all the help! And it was 12-2 wiring, so it's all proper.