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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#391

Post by jacquesm »

metadat wrote: post #388
yamtaddle wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genuin…

In the UK, yes, in lots of other parts of the world they are integrated into the circuit breakers.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#392

Post by metadat »

jacquesm wrote: post #391
metadat wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genuin…

In the UK, yes, in lots of other parts of the world they are integrated into the circuit breakers.

Would this be a regular circuit breaker fuse? Otherwise what's different?

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#393

Post by jacquesm »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #365
DaveExeter wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a good chance that if you installed GFCI in some old house it would just... trip due to shitty wiring. No, that's not true! A GFCI measures the current going in and the current going out and if they are not equal it trips.

I had a GFCI installed in my 1930s built house the other week The circuit repeatedly tripped, so the electrician uninstalled it. To install the GFCI he would need to spend 1-2 days splitting circuits to find the leak(s) so instead of ~$40 + 1 hours labour it's potentially thousands of dollars

That might still be worth tracing, you may have a fire risk or a risk of electrocution on your hand there. It really shouldn't happen. Those things are typically 30 or 50 mA and that's a lot of heat (12W worth) at 240V.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#394

Post by jacquesm »

amelius wrote: post #356
DaveExeter wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a good chance that if you installed GFCI in some old house it would just... trip due to shitty wiring. No, that's not true! A GFCI measures the current going in and the current going out and if they are not equal it trips.

> No, that's not true! What if the return current goes through a different wire that was used as a quick fix for some wiring problem someone ran into 50 years ago?

That is potentially quite dangerous, especially if that different wire is sitting on a different breaker.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#395

Post by cgh »

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…

Our house was built in 1973 and still has aluminum wiring and a 100A fuse box. So I feel your pain.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#396

Post by yamtaddle »

metadat wrote: post #388
yamtaddle wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 genuin…

Circuit breaker versus GFCI outlets (which also have breakers). I find the former far more convenient—I know they don't serve the same purpose, but the way one interacts with them is similar, except that the GFCIs are scattered all over the place and may require moving things to find.

> If it's even possible, such a wiring configuration seems like an obvious building code safety violation.

Norm in every house I've lived in in the US (except one so old it had knob-and-tube wiring... hahaha) is one GFCI for a set of outlets. Like, if you have a long vanity in a largish bathroom, you might end up with two or three outlets, one GFCI, the others following after it so they trip it, too. The only times I've seen a single one used with nothing hanging off it is when it's the only outlet in the room, or for under-sink outlets for dishwashers and disposals to plug into. This can turn into a real mess if anyone got "creative" with wiring at any point. We've had a garage GFCI kill a couple outlets in the house proper (in a nearby laundry room, not super distant), plus an outdoor outlet probably 30 feet away, all of which were evidently attached to it.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#397

Post by Spivak »

mcbishop wrote: post #351
wlesieutre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger downside is nuisance tripping because the breaker doesn't like electrical noise emitted by some device or another in your house. I don't have any AFCIs but I've heard it's pretty common. You'd rather have one circuit go out instead of the whole house, and if all you have is the one AFCI breaker you're going to have a much harder time identifying what device(s) is the culprit.

This nuisance tripping is the bane of my electrician friend's professional life.

"Oh just err on the site of extremely cautious and sensitive. More safety can't be a bad thing."

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#398

Post by tablespoon »

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…

> The electrician also needed to replace my existing ground wires because they are supposed to be cables sheathed in green.

Where was that? In my (medium-aged) American house and in some newish romex cable I bought last year, the ground wires are all bare copper cables, no green sheathing at all. I've had electrical work done in the last couple weeks, and no one even mentioned them.

IIRC (not an electricial) bare copper and green-sheathed wires are both acceptable for ground wires.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#399

Post by davidcuddeback »

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…

> 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.

FWIW, you can have the same thing with GFCIs. I recently wired my garage for woodworking and installed all GFCI breakers in the breaker box, so a GFCI trip is just like a regular breaker trip (not that either of those has happened with the new circuits). The GFCI breakers cost about $50/ea [1] and protect the whole circuit.

> 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.

I once couldn't operate my garage door for a few days. There were no tripped breakers in the box. Eventually, it dawned on me that the circuit was labeled "GFCI" so maybe I should go check the GFCIs in the house, and I found that the GFCI in the upstairs bathroom had tripped. The upstairs GFCI is nowhere near the garage (and in the opposite direction from the breaker box). Since then, I've talked to several people in the area whose houses are wired the same way. I guess GFCIs must have been really expensive in the 80s, when these houses were built.

The moral of this story is that GFCI breakers can save a lot of headache. (Plus, those GFCI outlets are kinda ugly IMO).

[1]: I see they're about $60/ea now: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Square-D-Homeline-20-Amp-Single-...

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#400

Post by jacquesm »

metadat wrote: post #392
jacquesm wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, yes, in lots of other parts of the world they are integrated into the circuit breakers.

Would this be a regular circuit breaker fuse? Otherwise what's different?

If single phase you'll notice sometimes it has a little extra ground wire connected (now mostly obsolete), for 3 phase it doesn't, in both cases it will say so on the outside (typically: the test current, and usually there is a test button which makes them easy to identify, this test button forces a small leak causing the circuit to become unbalanced resulting in a trip (if it doesn't trip when the test button is pressed the breaker is considered faulty and should be replaced).

For instance, here is an 'Eaton' 3 phase breaker with integrated ground fault protection circuitry:

https://www.omnical.co/products/eaton/1742431/2259595

Note the little yellow 'test' button. That's a 30 mA fault current device, you can have higher permissible fault currents for certain gear that tends to be a bit more leaky which would otherwise cause nuisance trips. These little things are quite the work of art inside, if you ever have a faulty one I would encourage you to pick it apart to see what makes it tick.

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