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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#161

Post by sokoloff »

londons_explore wrote: post #114
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.

They only need to be installed in specific places... But they ought to be installed for the whole house. You do want your refrigerator on one. What when your mom is putting a metal saucepan into the fridge of leftovers, knocks and smashes the lamp inside, and the AC lamp power supply kills her though the metal saucepan? What when a baby puts a fork into an electrical outlet in the living room? What when floodwater co…

I have twice lost a fridge full of food due to spurious GFCI trips, once when I was a recent graduate and it was a painful experience financially.

I now make sure my fridge/freezer is NOT on a GFCI. I'll take my chances of getting a 120VAC shock from my fridge [which is attention-getting, but very unlikely to be injurious].

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#162

Post by cinntaile »

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.

Are you trying to say that the risk to lose electricity is bigger than the risk to lose the other heat sources? Wouldn't houses at risk have some sort of contingency measures in place such as insulated pipes, alternative heat sources,..?

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#163

Post by sokoloff »

brodouevencode wrote: post #81
planetafro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like some of this should be "grand-fathered" in. Perhaps you were a victim of an upsell. Any electricians that can verify? For example, I needed a new fence. I got a few quotes and most were DRASTICALLY high priced as they wanted to move my fence to comply with current code. An older, more experienced worker had no problems with permits and said I was grand-fathered in because it was already existing. I even s…

I think there's some of this in there too. Out-of-code is grandfathered in unless you're touching that part of the system in most places.

And even if you're touching that part of the system, you can usually replace like-for-like without bringing it all up to current code, even if the current condition is non-compliant, you can generally put it back to the same level of non-compliance, even if it's with entirely new parts. (I'm not arguing that that's a good idea to elect as a property owner, but rather that NEC does not require "you touch it, you have to fully modernize it". This will likely invite an argument with the AHJ's inspector, if the work is subject to inspection.)

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#164

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #132
mfer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool! Most of the houses in areas of the US where pipes freeze are quite old, many have effectively no insulation (the one I currently rent has no insulation at all). If heat goes out, it'll reach outside temperature within a day. People here in Buffalo recently died because a blizzard took out electricity, homes lost heat, and they froze (mostly when they tried to get to the "warming shelter" locations and were trapped, but trapped in a car without heat vs trapped in a house without heat is freezing all the same).

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#165

Post by Filligree »

nemo44x wrote: post #128
pyb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Generally (in the USA) if you touch something in your home, you need to bring it up to code. You touch a wall, well now you need to make sure that wall has a socket in it, for example. Doing an addition? Well, now you need to ensure the entire house has fire/C02 detectors wired together with it.

> Generally (in the USA) if you touch something in your home, you need to bring it up to code. You touch a wall, well now you need to make sure that wall has a socket in it, for example.

Sorry, is there a requirement that every single wall should have a socket? ...that's what extension cords are for.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#166

Post by iso1631 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #53
nsporillo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I got the exterior siding of my home replaced, we also wanted to have our electrical meter box replaced because it was falling off the side of the house. The work we originally thought was needed was just a new meter box. Turned out we needed a new wire run from the meter all the way to our water line, a new pipe for the underground wiring, two additional grounding wires. The utility said it wasnt their problem…

> Nearly $2000 to get a simple meter box replacement. If it’s so simple, why didn’t you do it and save $2,000? Part of that price is uncertainty due to scheduling/coordinating with the siding contractor and utility. Everything after the meter, including grounding conductors, are premises wiring aka your responsibility. Having your electrical service properly grounded sure beats being electrocuted. I manage electricia…

Clearly it's not simple, but superficially you wouldn't think it was that complex.

Think of the old "I could write twitter in a weekend" adage. Sure it seems simple at first glance, but once you get into it it's far more complex.

A layman would think "It's a plastic box with a couple of wires in, surely it can't cost more than $200" and take more than an hour".

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#168

Post by bell-cot »

irq wrote: post #64
SoftTalker wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we will need more electrical generation. I have zero interst in solar panels on my house. I don't live in an area where they would be particularly useful; moreover, I don't want to own them, or to be responsible for maintaining them; I don't want large batteries in my house, or to be responsible for maintaining those. I don't want transfer switches or the responsibility of maintaining those. I want to pay the ele…

The ability for power companies to deliver on this reliably is decreasing as our society grows increasingly low-trust. This is why you may want to take control of your own destiny and secure your own source of power.

Last I heard (a friend is a retired Electrical Engineer, with solar panels), there is a massive cost & complexity gap between "have solar panels on the roof of house" and "control your own destiny" (meaning you're able to run your house off-grid via solar panels).

The former only needs (relatively) simple/stupid/cheap power & control electronics. Mimic the frequency & phase of the incoming AC from the utility, and let the panels run at 100%, 24x7, regardless of in-home power usage. Any solar_output > local_usage excess gets shoved back at the utility, any solar_output The latter - even with no batteries - requires a bunch of complex control electronics - because solar panels do not magically put out 120VAC at 60Hz, for any load short of their maximum current power output.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#169

Post by bluGill »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #153
danans wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my wife won't accept an ordinary electric range She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. > and an electric water heater. Make sure it's a heat pump water heater if efficiency and operating cost matter to you.

> She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. This, and also easier cleanability than either of them (basically it doesn't need more cleaning than the rest of your kitchen counter) and much safer (won't heat anything non-metallic that you leave on top, won't heat the surface of the stovetop itself except indirectly via heat transmission from the…

I've been looking at them, but almost all have unusable touch controls. (My background is human machine interaction - I've never seen an acceptable stove, but induction stoves are all really bad). Since I've have to replace all my cookware as well I'm not in any hurry.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#170

Post by linuxftw »

mwattsun wrote: post #126

I was an electrician in the US Navy but couldn't get an electricians job out of the Navy without starting over. We could help this shortage if we did more to qualify military electricians as civilian electricians when they leave the military.

There is literally a program for this: https://usmap.osd.mil/navyRatings.htm
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