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I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

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Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#141

Post by quickthrowman »

bhhaskin wrote: post #15
socialismisok wrote: post #4

"I'd have to bring my electrical systems up to code and that's expensive for my 80 year old house" Well, yeah. I suppose it would be. I'm a bit surprised this is a surprise to the landlord. Also, many of the costs here are looming anyways. It's a matter of when, not if, the electrical needs updating to meet code.

That's not necessarily true. It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt. You also have to remember that it takes a lot of power to be able to change an EV in timely manner. It is easily the number one consumer of energy. Older neighborhoods utilities where never designed to do that.

> That's not necessarily true. It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt.

The exterior service disconnect rule added in 2020 is safety related, it’s so firefighters can kill electrical power to a home from the outside to make it safe to enter. It has nothing to do with the utility.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#142

Post by tuatoru »

Back when ICE cars first came along, owners bought cans of gasoline from their local general store and stored them in their stables (now garages). They recharged their cars at home. This seems like the era we are now in with respect to electric vehicles.

There are some EV fleets for which charging downtime is not palatable (taxis in busy cities, for example). Swappable batteries have been developed and are being used by some of those fleets.

The next step is standardization of swappable batteries, and divestment of battery swapping and maintenance into a separate company from fleet operation. The third step is the separate company offering services to the public.

As vehicles built for these fleets are sold used, they will spread to households.

Then we are back to "gas" stations/service stations.

The logic seems sound. Rather than having to build charging complexity into every vehicle, and supply tens of millions or hundreds of millions of chargers, charging can be done at merely hundreds of thousands of charging stations, with the customer having a three minute trip through something like a car wash booth.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#143

Post by rdtwo »

seibelj wrote: post #7

"Almost 1/3 of San Francisco charging stations are broken" https://www.electrive.com/2022/05/13/almost-1-3-of-san-franc... There are... a lot of problems yet to be solved in the perfect electrified future. I hope it happens, if only to move all the pollution from cars to the power plants far away. I have found it hard to discuss the negative / illogical aspects with true believers, which is normally fine, except now…

Seems low maybe the other 1/3rd are in bad locations

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#144

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #130
aynyc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To bring something up to code, it takes weeks if not months. Getting permit, construction and inspection. You can't tie up a sale until that's done. Where do you get the money to pay for that? Buyer isn't gonna wait for X months, especially if buyers want to do their own renovations. You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is). The cycle repeats again and again.

You require something akin to an FHA 203k loan, where the improvements can be financed with bank oversight. You make these specific improvements a requirement where, if not performed using the funds provided, the loan is in default. Cash transaction can still require the work be done; have the county recorder notify the permit office of the AHJ. Lots of paths to success here.

[deleted]

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#145

Post by oliwarner »

LinuxBender wrote: post #95
oliwarner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not rocket science And an earth rod, right? Anyone can stick a breaker in, run some cable, but it takes the rocket scientists to consider neutral fault conditions, causing potential between your home, charger, car and literal earth. It might not apply to you. Your charger might have built in protection (many don't) or your supply might be grounded to the literal earth… but this is why we have building regs and…

If they ran the standard 4 wire cable one of the wires will be a grounding wire that goes back to the panel. The panel should already have an earth ground and grounding rod(s). Adding a second grounding rod anywhere else would violate code in most states and potentially create a grounding loop and fire hazard. To correctly add more grounding rods in multiple locations would require a common ground bus where all groun…

For the nothing it's worth, PME is the dominant earthing arrangement here, so rods are required. It might be geographic but I'm sure you get all sorts all over the world.

Understanding your earthing arrangement is another thing you shouldn't assume. It's not a failure to engage professionals about safety equipment.

Some chargers have built in neutral fault detection.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#146

Post by aynyc »

yellowapple wrote: post #137
aynyc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To bring something up to code, it takes weeks if not months. Getting permit, construction and inspection. You can't tie up a sale until that's done. Where do you get the money to pay for that? Buyer isn't gonna wait for X months, especially if buyers want to do their own renovations. You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is). The cycle repeats again and again.

> You can't tie up a sale until that's done. Sure you can - and you damn well should , especially for outright safety issues. What's the point of a building code if it ain't gonna be enforced? > You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is). Then give the buyer a grace period to bring the building up to code.

Then you can expect even more housing crunch. It’s simply not realistic to updates homes 50-100 years old without significant cost which old retirees can’t really afford. Some of the new codes would force pre-war homes to be completely tear down. For example, asbestos sidings which would require the homeowners to move out of the house. Bubble wrap the house and do mitigation work. After that, massive amount of interior work to ensure safety. Toss in electrical, plumbing, and lead paint, you might as well do a new construction.

Reality simply doesn’t work this way. Just like we allow people to drive old ass cars that aren’t safe for the passengers but will pass emission inspections.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#147

Post by mindslight »

willcipriano wrote: post #132
toomuchtodo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You require something akin to an FHA 203k loan, where the improvements can be financed with bank oversight. You make these specific improvements a requirement where, if not performed using the funds provided, the loan is in default. Cash transaction can still require the work be done; have the county recorder notify the permit office of the AHJ. Lots of paths to success here.

Some codes would require you do things like tear down a addition that was perfectly legal and safe last year or moving a house back further from a road that the government expanded. Not everything in local building codes is for safety, there is a lot of aesthetic stuff in there. Imagine being forced to rip out a 100 year old oak tree because it isn't legal to have a tree in your front yard anymore. Pools are no longe…

It's amazing how so many people here have no clue how building codes work. There's a new version of the NEC released every 3 years. These are physical systems, not continuously deployed software being pushed to centrally-controlled surveillance company servers. They're building codes, not occupancy codes. Building codes are focused on making sure big jobs with a lot of money/effort have sane defaults, and weren't skimped on to save a few percent. A house built X years ago is still an X year old house, and everybody knows it.

The egregious safety problems (eg knob and tube, fuses, Federal Pacific breakers) are taken care of by insurance companies. Or state laws that address the specific problem (eg septic, smoke detectors, etc). One can certainly have an opinion that something specific should be added to the regulations that apply when selling, but the out of touch comments here are far from informed.

Also some of the recent changes in the NEC are actually not beneficial to many people - eg the plastic gates in TR receptacles that tend to bind up and bend plug prongs, and shoddy overaggressive AFCIs running proprietary software. That you're generally left alone in the privacy of your own home without an inspector coming around every year and making you remodel is a feature, not a bug.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#148

Post by aynyc »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #130
aynyc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To bring something up to code, it takes weeks if not months. Getting permit, construction and inspection. You can't tie up a sale until that's done. Where do you get the money to pay for that? Buyer isn't gonna wait for X months, especially if buyers want to do their own renovations. You know what people will do? Pass the buck to the buyer (Sold As Is). The cycle repeats again and again.

You require something akin to an FHA 203k loan, where the improvements can be financed with bank oversight. You make these specific improvements a requirement where, if not performed using the funds provided, the loan is in default. Cash transaction can still require the work be done; have the county recorder notify the permit office of the AHJ. Lots of paths to success here.

How can a retiree or poor middle class person get a loan? They probably have below 650 credit. The house hasn’t seen an updated in 20 years. Any delay in construction will put them under water for years. For the poor, there is no path for success, as the house is probably the only assets they have.

My old neighborhood has a bunch of 80 year olds with houses worth a million easy without any mortgages. You would think the banks would give them loans to fix things up. Nope, not a chance. The banks are waiting for them to die and make money off the next mortgage.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#149

Post by pmyteh »

sschueller wrote: post #74
alias_neo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house. My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional. This is in England

Isn't the code in the UK quite lax? From what I understand this is the reason every plug in the UK is required to have a fuse because the homes are not properly fused.

Plugs are fused because the current capacity of the in-wall wiring (and the breakers that protect it) is much higher than the safe current capacity of a single appliance's power lead. The circuits are often 32A and most appliances are rated for 13A or less. So without a plug fuse a fault in the appliance that draws, say, 25W would potentially overheat and set fire to the appliance cord without tripping the breaker. This is true of most countries' larger radial circuits too, I think, and the British practice of fusing plugs is a safety upgrade. How much risk it reduces in practice, I don't know.

The final ring circuit is an idiosyncracy of British wiring practice, where the cable goes out in a loop from the distribution board to sockets etc and then connects back to the board again. It allows smaller gauge wires to be run for a given current rating, and was introduced after WWII to reduce copper use during reconstruction. This does have some unusual failure modes, but the code is absolutely fine for this system as long as it's followed (including the testing regime after new installations, which will catch, for example, a ring circuit with the neutral conductor disconnected only on one side of the ring). Obviously bad work can happen anywhere.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#150

Post by phone8675309 »

socialismisok wrote: post #4

"I'd have to bring my electrical systems up to code and that's expensive for my 80 year old house" Well, yeah. I suppose it would be. I'm a bit surprised this is a surprise to the landlord. Also, many of the costs here are looming anyways. It's a matter of when, not if, the electrical needs updating to meet code.

They sound like a bit of a slumlord to me based on that description.
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