We need a lot more electricians • Hacker News Board

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#131

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

tibbon wrote: post #116

anikom15 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country? In the U.S., GFCIs only need to be installed in specific locations, which is good. I do not want my refrigerator or computer on a GFCI. In the U.K., you just can’t have plugs in bathrooms (aside from the shaver plug), which is probably more sensible.

You need a AFCI in most places now. In the 2020 edition of the NEC®, Section 210.12 requires that for dwelling units, all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying outlets or devices installed in dwelling unit kitchens, family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms, parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms, closets, hallways, laundry areas, or similar rooms or areas shall be…

Some countries you have a single one for the whole building, rather than one per circuit.

That dramatically lowers the cost.

The only real downside is that if you accidentally put your finger in the toaster, rather than just the power to your kitchen cutting off, the power to the whole house cuts off. I think thats a fine tradeoff to save $1200.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#132

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #115

cinntaile wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get what frozen pipes has to do with electrifying the home?

There is a push to move to electric heat generation in homes in some areas. If electricity goes out you loose heat. In many areas you can have weeks (even months) where the temperature is below freezing. Loose heat to your home and your pipes can freeze. When this happens they burst causing damage to the home.

Pipes don't freeze immediately. A semi-decently insulated house will loose less than 10 degrees per day, so it would take a few days before pipes start freezing.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#133

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

I thought I wanted to be an electrician growing up in the 80's, but my parents steered me away from it into the then-booming programming field. It does seem like programmers are doing a lot better than electricians these days.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#134

Post by ilyt » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #20

londons_explore wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of laws and regulations about electrical installations. In many regions, doing it legally requires lots of courses and certificates. When you have invested all the time and money into getting said certificates, which is sometimes multiple years full time, you typically want to become a full time electrician to pay back the time+money investment. That means that 'I just do electrics on the side' is bec…

Obviously in most parts of the world, there is no electrical police who will raid your home and look for evidence of wiring done without the correct certifications. Therefore, lots of people DIY stuff illegally... If you choose this route, understand that: * The main cause of injury/death caused by electrics is fires. Fires are normally caused by improper fuses (a fuse/breaker should always be the lowest rating of an…

Are you sure that's "illegal" or just "illegal to take money for it" ? Here (Poland) you can do it just fine on your own stuff as long as you don't pretend to be electrician and sell your service, with caveats (only touching anything after power company stuff IIRC)

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#135

Post by ajross » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #15

The article is touching on the important issue of homes but is missing three very important related issues. 1) The network that delivers power to the home. It's not able to handle everyone electrifying everything. If you electrify everything (electric stove, electric car, air conditioner/heater) you are going to be hard pressed in many locales to be covered by at home solar. 2) Electricity generation. We need a lot m…

> If you electrify everything (electric stove, electric car, air conditioner/heater) you are going to be hard pressed in many locales to be covered by at home solar.

That's exactly backwards, though. The problem[1] with ad-hoc local solar installations is that they're undersubscribed, and end up pumping juice back into the grid at inconvenient times where it can't be used. Being able to use that power locally is the goal, not something to be solved.

[1] From the perspective of resource management. If you want to install solar as part of a prepper/off-grid effort you have a lot more design work to do and are absolutely going to have to inefficiently overprovision.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#136

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

anikom15 wrote: post #100

londons_explore wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> likely have some non-compliance with the current electrical code. It frustrates me that every year quite a lot of people are killed due to old houses not having whole-building GFCI's. A GFCI costs only $20 and can be installed inside 10 minutes. So it seems crazy to be letting people die... Yet typically electrical regs require that if an electrician installs a GFCI, they bring the whole house up to modern standard…

Which country? In the U.S., GFCIs only need to be installed in specific locations, which is good. I do not want my refrigerator or computer on a GFCI. In the U.K., you just can’t have plugs in bathrooms (aside from the shaver plug), which is probably more sensible.

It's funny, In was doing a huge renovation once and during the work my refrigerator had to be plugged into another outlet that happened to be GFCI. We had to be very mindful about making sure power was flowing. Sometimes, certain combinations of things being on at the same time would trip it. It was an old house with only 100A service and who knows what with the wiring.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#137

Post by pavon » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #33

BitwiseFool wrote: post #11

Something to keep in mind is that most homes, if they haven't been constructed within the last 10 years, likely have some non-compliance with the current electrical code. For instance, I needed to install an exterior disconnect which wound up costing me more than a thousand dollars on top of the existing electrical work I needed done. The electrician also needed to replace my existing ground wires because they are su…

In most countries, I don't think you're required to update your home every time the electrical code gets a change. However, many electricians will try to sell you on this unnecessary work.

The general rule in most places is that any circuits that aren't modified as part of the new work don't need to be brought up to modern code. The main service panel is the main thing that ends up needing to be upgraded incidentally, since all circuits depend on it, and that can easily be more expensive than the actual work being done. But that only needs to be done once, and many old houses will want it upgraded anyway to allow for more circuits to be added than the box was originally designed to accommodate.

However, I think the 10 years is a bit pessimistic. At least in the US, the code hasn't changed that much in the last 20-30 years, and many of the changes are at the periphery where they are easy to modify like GFCIs, and tamper resistant outlets, etc, so I wouldn't be afraid of making modifications to existing circuits for houses in that range. Older than that you start running into (AA-1350) aluminum wiring (35 years or older) or two-conductor wiring (65 years or older), and you'll want to take the policy of not touching those old circuits unless you plan on completely replacing them.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#138

Post by repiret » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #11

Something to keep in mind is that most homes, if they haven't been constructed within the last 10 years, likely have some non-compliance with the current electrical code. For instance, I needed to install an exterior disconnect which wound up costing me more than a thousand dollars on top of the existing electrical work I needed done. The electrician also needed to replace my existing ground wires because they are su…

You don't say where you are, but that certainly hasn't been my experience. Where I am, in Oregon, USA:

* I own a house that was built in the early 20th century. As was typical of the time, the house has a small number of fused circuits, which do not have a ground wire, and where the wire gauge is thinner than would be required for a modern circuit of the same capacity. Just the same, it's perfectly legal to: * Add new outlets to existing circuits without changing the fuse to match the wire gauge of the circuit or adding a ground wire. It has to either be a NEMA 1-15R receptacle (no ground plug) or a GFCI receptacle with a label that says there's no equipment ground. * Replace the fuse boxes with modern breaker boxes without re-wiring the house to have grounded outlets. The only limitation is that the new breakers would have to be smaller than the existing fuses so that the wire gauge meets current code for the breaker size.

* I have a 1998 house which has several pairs of circus on opposite phases which share a neutral wire. This is legal still, but requires that the circuits are connected to dual-throw breakers, so that it's not possible to have one circuit hot with the other dead. But this house doesn't use dual-throw breakers like it should. As far as I know, that wasn't even code when the house was built. But electricians can still add new circuits without fixing that.

* Some years ago I was remodeling a 1956 house. Initially, the inspector asserted that we would need to replace a staircase whose width and pitch did not meet current code. But he was mistaken. Even though we replaced the stair treads, because we didn't make any changes to the structure of the staircase, the head county building inspector agreed that we didn't need to bring it to current code.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#139

Post by tzs » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #70

vehemenz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article does a disservice to its thesis by focusing on California. Half the country lives in places where subzero temperatures are an issue. Not to mention, the rest of the country doesn't have the sunlight hours to make solar as viable, let alone the disposable wealth to upgrade their homes. Electric cars are still a long way from viability in most places, though it may not seem that way in California.

> country doesn't have the sunlight hours to make solar as viable California somehow gets more sunlight than the rest of the US? If I recall for physics, the amount of light depends on the latitude, not what state you're in.

Weather affects usable sunlight and weather patterns vary quite a bit as you across the US at a given latitude. See this map [1].

[1] https://unboundsolar.com/solar-information/sun-hours-us-map

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#140

Post by vel0city » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #56

newZWhoDis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Required to sheath ground in green? What on earth for? That makes ground less effective since you want any incidental contact with ground to ground the object touching it.

Electrical specs are very strict. They aren't just about electrical safety directly, but also about not potentially confusing people in the future. If the cable was black, then someone may not have known that it was an earth cable, and might have cut it, which would leave your electrical installation unsafe. Thats the reasoning why using the wrong color for a wire can make it illegal.

That's the thing though: the best choice for a ground wire is no color at all, just the raw copper wire.