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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#381

Post by greedo »

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.

This is not correct. I finished my entire basement, and nothing outside the basement needed to be updated to the current NEC.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#382

Post by Symbiote »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #361
Symbiote wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Americans quote large appliance current at 220V or 110V equivalent? From the EV it seems the former, but in that case I'm horrified at how power-hungry your appliances are. A typical new oven sold in Europe is 3.6kW, 16A @ 230V. A new tumble drier is 600W, so about 2.5A at 230V. There's such a range of hot tub and AC sizes I can't compare these.

My small, or at least unremarkable, oven is 4.8kW, also 230V. It's from about 2006, iirc. Electric tumble dryer is 5.6kW at 230V. It's from 2017. Maybe yours is gas, and 600W is the motor? I have a smallish 1900sqft 1950s house with average or smaller appliances. I love doing appliance comparison with European houses, though.

New heat pump tumble dryer, 600W: https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/uk/productlist/laundr...

New condensor tumble dryer, 2600W: https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/uk/productlist/laundr...

My dryer is 8 years old and similar to the second one -- half the power of yours, and I'm still not sure what the 24A from above would mean.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#383

Post by VLM »

frankus wrote: post #109

I'm curious if there is some productivity-improving tech for electricians waiting to be invented. The following will be super North-America-centric, but: Right now you have to fasten a box to the wall structure, cut the wire so that about 8" can make its way into the box, strip the outer insulation and insert it into the box, strip at least some of the individual conductors, and then splice (by twisting and using wir…

So, essentially "power over thicknet ethernet". Nobody liked that tech. "Worked in the lab, and whenever it breaks we can blame the user for improper abuse" was such a fiasco it resulted in the world being re-networked in twisted pair, which ironically is installed very much like legacy power outlets...

Also the only way to replace the outlet would seem to be to rip out the entire wall and splice in new cables like a complete do-over which seems a bit extreme although profitable, or do a high resistance fire causing re-crimp. This is "OK" for receptacles that last the life of the house, if the life of the house is short enough, but wall switches would be essentially unreplacable.

One idea that might save money is giving up on copper switched wall switches. Feed the wall switch 12 volts and let them speak zwave to control things.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#384

Post by Symbiote »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #338
Symbiote wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Americans quote large appliance current at 220V or 110V equivalent? From the EV it seems the former, but in that case I'm horrified at how power-hungry your appliances are. A typical new oven sold in Europe is 3.6kW, 16A @ 230V. A new tumble drier is 600W, so about 2.5A at 230V. There's such a range of hot tub and AC sizes I can't compare these.

2 4 0V circuits are simply both legs of the 1 2 0V split phase connected together, so the amperage is measured at 120V. The circuit breakers for 120V and 240V circuits are the same, except 240V circuits use two breakers with the handles tied together[1]. Electric resistive heaters like ovens and clothes dryers are always perfectly efficient, so I'm not sure how you even thought it would be possible to have an ineffic…

As well as using a heat pump, a more efficient dryer can be better-insulated, or make better use of the heat produced in drying clothes, however that might be done.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#385

Post by treeman79 »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #195
dml2135 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

President is currently trying to ban gas stoves. Also I imagine save the tree groups would lose their minds on burning wood in more areas of the country. Air quality folks probably wouldn’t be happy either.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#387

Post by t-writescode »

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.

While potentially true, this does not speak to the biggest part of their statement, which was that a predicted small cost project becomes an enormous cost project so regularly to the point that the smaller cost projects are altogether ignored, to the detriment of all.

$150, $1000, all of these are smaller than $15,000. One is a surprise laptop breaking and needing replace. The other is a surprise car purchase and cash purchase.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#388

Post by metadat »

yamtaddle wrote: post #379
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…

I hate the damn things. If a breaker pops, it's easy. You have a box, maybe two if you live in a really huge house. Go there, look for the switch that's not quite lined up, toggle switch, done. GFCI, you gotta figure out which one popped. If the wiring's not great, it may well be in a totally different room from the outlet that stopped working. On top of it, they seem to outright fail (get stuck in a broken state, st…

What are you talking about? GFCIs are integrated into the outlet. Did you mean something about chaining GFCI plug wiring? If it's even possible, such a wiring configuration seems like an obvious building code safety violation.

For example:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oGJ0LxRFZ9FNcRtpABAlXPnUApM=...

Edit 1: If you're in Europe, my apologies - I have no experience with the wiring outside of the US. It sounds genuinely annoying and a bad user experience indeed.

Edit 2: Thank you all for your replies!

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#389

Post by jacquesm »

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…

> shop around and to get multiple quotes in order to make sure I wasn't being taken advantage of

But you were taken advantage of. It's just that with the level of collusion in North America regarding electrical work and plumbing you are not going to be able to avoid it. I've seen the weirdest requirements which only a particular person with a particular license was able to perform and doing it yourself would be an automatic fail on an inspection even though the work was identical. I've also had some of these people make outright dangerous suggestions because they knew how to read their rule book but they didn't actually understand enough of what caused the rules to be written in that particular way to see when an exception to those rules needed to be made (case in point: someone wanted me to ground a 60' windmill tower at the house instead of at the base of the tower, which in case of a lightning strike would lead the lightning into the house).

Really, don't get me started, I've seen way to much of this to have anything but really bad memories of electrical inspectors, I'm sure there are good ones but I just haven't seen any. What I have seen is a bunch of little people with a lot of power to inflate costs resulting in no change or improvement.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#390

Post by jacquesm »

yamtaddle wrote: post #379
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…

I hate the damn things. If a breaker pops, it's easy. You have a box, maybe two if you live in a really huge house. Go there, look for the switch that's not quite lined up, toggle switch, done. GFCI, you gotta figure out which one popped. If the wiring's not great, it may well be in a totally different room from the outlet that stopped working. On top of it, they seem to outright fail (get stuck in a broken state, st…

Ground fault interrupters are life savers. The minor overhead of figuring out the cause is well worth the price of admission: without them you might not be around to figure anything out.

In the UK, where ground fault interrupters can be part of the sockets it can be hassle, but then again that is strictly optional: in most other countries the ground fault interrupters are always integrated into the circuit breaker at the distribution panel. The upside of that it is that it also protects the wiring.

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