We need a lot more electricians • Hacker News Board

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#191

Post by dboreham » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #108

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…

There is no way a pro can install a GFCI for less than $150 in the ideal case where everything else is up to code. Anything non ideal adds cost. While there isn't much labor, you also have to count the time to get from the last job to yours, and other overhead.

In my experience when you get some competent pro on your site to do anything, it's minimum $1K.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#192

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #161

londons_explore wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

Also funny how fridges are required to have their own circuit, but newer fridges are increasingly vfd/inverter drive, and don’t have surge power draws anymore. They use a few hundred watts continuously and that’s it.

I’d be more quickly to find out my fridge died if the lights in the kitchen stopped working.

Not sure why fridges don’t just have a battery-powered alarm that goes off when the temperature gets too high for too long.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#193

Post by sbradford26 » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #186

sbradford26 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty brutal on the cost. We live north of Boston is a decently high cost of living area but nowhere near California. I got the our main panel upgraded from 100 amp to 200 amp, the mast and meter socket replaced, and 4 new outlets in the basement for $2400 in 2021.

Wow! Yeah, skilled trades are not cheap in the sf area. Also, restaurants and houses. Groceries used to be far more expensive than the rest of the country but my recent visits to family in the Midwest have me thinking they have almost caught up on that one.

I also grew up in the Midwest and was just visiting home over Christmas. Groceries and other commodities seem to be similar prices, but everything else felt so cheap.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#194

Post by stjohnswarts » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

newZWhoDis wrote: post #37

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…

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.

how in the world would it make it less effective? that doesn't make any sense. If it's properly done, it's equivalent.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#195

Post by throwaway4aday » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

dml2135 wrote: post #130

treeman79 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent cold snap left East coast with rolling black outs across a number of states. This is not California where you put on a warm jacket. You heat the home, find shelter somewhere or die. I kept getting notes to hold off on using appliances for a few days. Can imagine that if our areas heat was electric that would have collapsed the grid.

Just have a wood stove or fireplace for emergencies? Harder in cities but anywhere with detached homes, this doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve.

A wood stove isn't a trivial thing to maintain or install. Sure we could require everyone to add one but that's a huge expense for a lot of people. After they have one, you need to manage your firewood which involves having enough for your needs delivered ahead of when you need it, you need to store it somewhere it will stay dry, you need to educate people on how to properly use the wood stove, etc. and that's not even considering the insurance implications and the guarantee that there will be a lot more housefires. Propane heat would be simpler but still costly to install.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#196

Post by idiotsecant » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #159

anikom15 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t even get me started on AFCIs. At least the behavior of GFCIs is well-defined. The AFCI thing is a money grab.

why's that, is there some guarantee they fail to live up to? Is there something probabilistic to them or something?

GFCIs have a simple and well defined function. What is the current through one lead? What is the current through the other lead? Do they differ by more than x amount? If so, trip.

AFCIs are a whole different thing - the plug is trying to predict when arcing is happening somewhere downstream of it and it has very little in the way of 'processing' power to do it, so generally there is a classical filter that is designed to detect the characteristic harmonics of the current waveform that are inherent to an arcing condition. When you experience a sharp upward or downward step in power draw you introduce harmonics, when you have capacitive coupling between SMPS you introduce harmonics, motors often introduce harmonics, etc.

There's like a zillion things that can create AFCI trip conditions and cause spurious trips and frustration for users, and there's very few documented cases of them doing the thing they're supposed to do. I think it's a case of someone being well intentioned but releasing regulatory guidance to use a product that isn't quite there in terms of technology maturity.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#197

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #185

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.

My understanding is a GFCI is an American term for an RCD or an RCBO? My (UK) fridge is on a standard 30A breaker which itself comes off a single 80A/30mA RCD which was presumably part of the regs at one point. It's never tripped. All the RCBOs I've seen are 30mA too. (I have some sockets on a 10A breaker downstream of this which have tripped - the house needs a total rewire, total bunch of bodge jobs from the previo…

Yes. USA GFCI's are like RCD's, but trip at 5mA. Thats why they false trip pretty often.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#198

Post by carcostthrow » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:33 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…

Oh it gets even funnier then that.

So I took quick look into what it would actually take to upgrade the main circuit breaker in the house assuming a 100A to 200A upgrade is needed to accommodate both an EV and a heat pump. I thought it was $5000 or so.

As it turns out, $5000 is for pole mounted service. It's range is actually around $15,000 to $25,000 for underground service, as it requires digging the line from the street to the house. Unknown how much cost there if too many houses here need to upgrade as well which would necessitate upgrading transformers feeding this area (most houses here are 100A AFAIK).

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#199

Post by dboreham » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #166

quickthrowman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Concur. I have an electrical engineering degree, and a copy of the NEC. However, in many situations I end up deciding that it will take me so long to figure out the correct interpretation of the code for my situation that I may as well pay someone who takes one look and says "ok this needs to be done like that...".

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#200

Post by dboreham » Wed, Jan 11, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #165

nemo44x wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, there are also requirements for example that kitchens have an outlet every N feet (I forget the exact number) in order that the short cords supplied on toasters, kettles etc can reach every part of the counter surface without an extension.