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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#411

Post by mturmon »

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…

Not an electrician, but an observer of tradespeople at r/electricians.

There are definitely bad feelings about these AFCI breakers. The feeling is that the code mandate for AFCI got out front of the reliability of actually-produced AFCI's, and actually-in-use products like blenders that may have small "arcing". This results in expensive call-backs from unhappy customers who are getting nuisance trips.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#412

Post by dionidium »

anikom15 wrote: post #144
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…

My mom doesn’t live with me (the bulb inside the fridge is LED anyway), I don’t have a baby (babies don’t carry metal forks), and I live on the second floor (but the power would be out long before the first floor floods). I don’t want whole house GFCI.

> I don’t have a baby (babies don’t carry metal forks)

Your second claim could only be made by somebody for whom the first statement is true.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#413

Post by jacquesm »

OJFord wrote: post #407
jacquesm wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the UK, where ground fault interrupters are part of the sockets it can be hassle Did you mean US? I've never seen that, and searching 'ground fault interrupter UK' images all look like US sockets. They're usually called RCDs (Residual Current Devices) in the UK, and they're fitted in the Consumer Unit.

No, I meant the UK, for instance:

https://internationalconfig.com/icc6.asp?item=72300-S-10MA

or

https://www.screwfix.com/p/british-general-900-series-13a-2-...

It's the only place where I have seen these.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#414

Post by greedo »

nemo44x wrote: post #183
greedo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction compatible cookware doesn't have a heating coil. They just need ferrous metal in them. They can be clad in aluminum, with a ferrous core etc. A cast iron pan works fine, and most stainless steel cookware is fine. It's just the cheap teflon stuff that's out of luck.

> It's just the cheap teflon stuff that's out of luck. And copper and aluminium. Some stoneware too as well as glass when needed.

Copper and aluminum can be used as a cladding around the ferrous metal core just fine. I guess you could do the same with some of the ceramics/stoneware as well.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#415

Post by treeman79 »

flavius29663 wrote: post #281
digitalsushi wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NH and my town was part of it ... a 70mph single gust of wind at the boundary of a storm came through and knocked down around 60 or so trees in our 4,000 person community. Many, many pathways were simultaneously interrupted. It is incredible that the power company got power restored in a 36 hour window, when half of it was Christmas Eve.

"rolling blackout" is a very specific term used when grids are overloaded (usually when not enough generation is happening), which means that the operator is intentionally cutting power to some areas to save on energy. The areas keep changing (such that each area is out of power for just a few hours at a time), hence the name "rolling". The OP said that the eastern storm is proof the grid is not resilient enough beca…

I don’t think you would accept any proof. As your own definition is good reasoning on why grid is over whelmed.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#416

Post by Freak_NL »

londons_explore wrote: post #172
bityard wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let know when GFCIs and AFCIs are robust enough against spurious tripping and I will readily install them everywhere. GFCIs are notorious for tripping on certain appliances like refrigerators and freezers, and can trip due to RFI from other devices in the house. AFCIs do not like anything with a brushed motor, especially power tools and sufficiently large vacuums. I have personally experienced all of these just in th…

European GFCI's are 30mA, and don't false trip. US GFCI's are 5mA, and frequenty false trip. lots of info here[1] TL;DR: The US regulations prevent small electrical faults into things like swimming pools from causing people to drown. The european regulations will stop you getting killed by electricity directly, but won't stop you drowning if you happen to be in a pool while touching some wiring. [1]: https://diy.stac…

This thread is really baffling to this Dutchman. All houses have a house-wide residual-current device here; it is not a topic for debate at all. And indeed, these don't false trip.

US electrical wiring always weirds me out. Cables run through walls without pulling them through hard plastic conduits and sockets that look like something designed seventy years ago. It's probably a matter of perspective, but it seems like such a completely different approach.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#417

Post by jly »

quickthrowman wrote: post #230
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…

> 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? Your fridge scenario is.. fantasy. What is the path to ground? There isn’t one.. you can hold onto a live phase conductor all day and not get shocked if the circuit isn’t completed. Refrigerator only n…

> Refrigerator only needs a GFI if it is within a certain distance of a sink.

Not anymore. NEC 2023 requires GFCI for every 120 or 240V outlets in the kitchen, regardless of their location or proximity to the sink. This was a big change.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#418

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

mmmBacon wrote: post #78

I think it’s more than just electricians that we need. We need additional training for electricians so they understand how some of the newer technologies work. I bought a high end LED light fixture that had a more modern dimmer that ensures the LEDs won’t flicker when dimmed. The dimmer wiring was completely different but well defined and standardized. I had a hard time finding an electrician that understood how to w…

I think the solution here is standardization - if you don't force a company to abide by some standard then they'll all create their own. We have the same issue with software - many programmers describe their job as creating the interface for different existing things. I think the issue here is that this isn't really the job of an electrician - they make sure the wiring in your house is safe but it's someone else's job to make sure their device complies with those expectations and is easy to plug-and-play with. Otherwise they'd need to train technicians to do the installation and most people don't want that

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#419

Post by antonjs »

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?

Circuit breakers trip when there's too much current going through the circuit (enough to melt the wiring for example), and so protect from short-circuits: hot and neutral touching each other, or a short in equipment.

GFCIs protect against current leaking to ground, by detecting if the current flowing on a hot and neutral leg are different. If they're different, the current must be going somewhere else: to ground, through you, etc. The GFCI breakers do this in the breaker, the outlets do it at the outlet. As someone else mentioned, you can also have other non-GFCI outlets chained to a GFCI outlet, so that upstream outlet is the one that pops if there's a fault.

TL;DR they detect and protect against different fault conditions.

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