The Front Porch Swing

[Blooie]

Blooie, Ken and Sam would have so much to talk about! It sounds like he would have some crazy stories.

Just as long as Sam doesn't ask Ken about wiring occupied hog barns!

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Hmmmm My story sense just got triggered.....

 

[Alice28]

Ya

Hmmmm My story sense just got triggered..... 

You and me both Deb!

 

[bruceha2000]

Oh man, don't do electrical stuff yourself! My husband went to do an emergency job on a Sunday at a friends house (my husband is very popular

lol) the lights in half the house were out and the plugs were overloaded! The house could have burnt down. It's one of those things people think is easy and simple and it's not. I'm scared of electrical stuff too! Shoot, I'm scared watching my husband add plugs and put up lights and he's an electrician and a good one with a good reputation and it still freaks me out. Poor man, he needs a nicer wife!

Yes ... and no

With deference to the electrician husbands, it doesn't take a whole lot of training to run Romex outlet to outlet. And the electricians around here charge $100/ fixture. The box and fixture are what, $5 max? It is like the emergency room. You are paying for what they COULD do, not what they DO do. When the north building of this house was 95% rebuilt a year ago, I paid licensed electricians to do it. One master (company owner), one 4th year apprentice, one new apprentice. When it was only the 2 apprentices working, $65/hour. The master was more than that whether he was installing the new conduit and boxes out to the barn, dealing with the outside 240V 200A service panel or running wire in a wall. I originally had a GC who bailed part way through and I didn't even know the job wasn't a set price as it should have been given what the electricians had to work with was 100% new, 100% open wall work. No surprises to be found.

I rewired the original building while they were doing the rebuilt part. Must have gotten electricity here in the 50s because there was only cloth covered plastic coated copper, some of it in metal cable, no ground. The other house had surface mounted wiring when I bought it and the old knobs and tubes were still in the attic (no wire) so they had electricity a LOT earlier. The nice thing about MUCH of the '50s wire - no code requirement to staple it every so many feet and I could use it to pull the new grounded wire.

There were a few "phantomy" things when we bought the house. I figured out why when I rewired. The prior owners "rehabbed" the north building and moved the panel from somewhere down into the basement. Stupid move #1, especially considering some poor slob had to belly crawl a 200 Amp service cable ~35 feet under the building to get to the basement under the original house. There were a TON of Romex wires going from it back to the north building and one that went into a junction box feeding a metal cable conduit. That ONE wire fed the ENTIRETY of the original house save for the furnace and well pump (which didn't exist until ~25 years ago) through a metal cable conduit. I'm sure there weren't many appliances back when the house got service and probably only a couple of fuses. The wire went to a regular OUTLET box in the ceiling and wires for the light, 1 outlet per wall and one for the NEXT light spidered out from there. Each subsequent ceiling light was the same. There were some junction boxes buried in the ceiling between the first and second floor which made tracing things impossible. And the previous owner (or his "electrician") connected some stuff into convenient "not stuffed" full boxes on that one circuit. Oh look this box "only" has the transformer for the doorbell on it. Yeah that and EVERYTHING DOWNSTREAM!

And yeah, you CAN do it wrong. I also found a few three prong outlets added by the prior idiot, err, owner, fed by that single ungrounded circuit. Illegal unless they are marked as ungrounded. He also put a workshop in the barn. I presume an electrician put in the sub-panel and he did the rest. Not only were MOST of the outlets reverse polarity, he didn't connect the ground wire to the first outlet (just above the service panel), just left it hanging loose in the metal box ... AND cut the ground wire for the follow-on Romex cable right at the edge of the jacket so NOTHING downstream was grounded even where the ground wire was connected to the outlet.

Here is one for Ken and Sam. In the bathroom upstairs (installed during the prior owners tenure in the now RE-rebuilt part) was a 2 gang box with 2 3-way light switches in it .... and two 3 wire plus four 2 wire Romex cables VERY NEATLY tucked inside. Which codes does THAT violate??? I gotta say, it WAS a work or art of genius to get it all in there.

And one reason I like to do things MYSELF. The electricians labeled one breaker "hall", one "mudroom" and one "downstairs bath" so when I decided to put the lights that were in the upstairs bath down stairs, of course I flipped off the bath breaker. Still hot. HUH? The one marked "hall" was really the mudroom and the mudroom was the hall except that the "hall" circuit also has the bathroom mirror light on it. So there are TWO breakers for that bathroom, the mirror lights being on the "hall" breaker and another one for the outlets and light in the shower. I asked the electrician about this "discovery". The "hall" circuit is actually the hardwired smoke detector circuit with one "hall" light and the bathroom mirror light. They said they do that so you notice if the circuit with the detectors goes because the lights don't work. Also said they should probably have mentioned that to me. Ya THINK?????

I suspect that five grand would only be for the electrical work. any demo or patching would be up to me unless I hired them to do the whole thing.... I am good at demo... just tell me what to take out and I can do it with a minimum of damage.... Just a one story one bed one bath it started out as a one bed mobile home complete with wheels... they built a house over the top of it.

I would only want it to be inspect-able... not necessarily inspected the house was just "built"... Matter of fact I only bought land when I bought the place.... I only want it safe and functional. My electric guy knows this.

I suspect it would cost me about a hundred grand to bring the house up to code... I have considered this but its not necessary for me. unless I wanted to recoupe any investment... The place is paid for... so I am good to go.

deb

Is the mobile home still inside the house shell? What a rig.

Definitely sounds like you have a lot of bad wiring in there

 

[Tomtommom]

Y'all would have a field day with this house.

I didn't think nothing of it, but when my husband moved in with me he was under the house at 1am redoing wiring because he said the house could go up in flames the way it was. Apparently we have 30 amp wire on 15 amp breakers or something? I have no idea what it meant but it was bad. I've got two breaker boxes. The original in my kitchen with 4 of the screw type thingies and a box with switches outside. The kitchen box would always be very warm to the touch, before he fixed it. The kitchen light always burned out quick.. Little stuff like that, that I just ignored.

Apparently there's life wires hidden in walls and the attic. Open junctions in the walls. Wires taped together in walls etc.

Let's just say he's had a few jolts in unexpected places in the house.

None of the breakers made any sense either. Front porch on the same circuit as a room at the other end of the house... stuff like that.

I have ONE outlet in my kitchen (aside from the one the fridge is plugged into and the stove). Yay 50s! I have to unplug the toaster to make coffee

I had a splitter but hubby yelled at me, saying I couldn't run 2-3 appliances at a time or trouble would ensue.

Sad... sad.. house.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Yep.... found out when we rehabbed the bathroom.... The only thing keeping me from falling through the floor was the linoleum. So when I cashed in my 401k Yep blew that wad... just before the stock market crashed though.... I cashed it in and got the green house room a new roof and a new bathroom...

When we rehabbed the bathroom we took it down to the studs in the shower stall. The wood was wet but not rotted thank goodness. The exterior walls on this house are at least a foot thick... So when we dug into the bathroom stall the insulation was only four inches thick... Behind that was Tin... Yep Tin mobile home siding... We looked through the rotted floor joists and found they were being supported by big honking I beams.... Mobile home... OLD mobile home too. The Crawl space shows those i beams are mounted on leveling jacks.... not a foundation.

So as far as I can determine the original was Wide single Probably as far as the crawl space shows... about 40 feet long.... One bed in the front a dining room/living room after that A Kitchen/laundry furnace room after that and a bathroom/utility room to end. They added on a Living room ON built up grade and slab because the floor doesnt bounce there.... then they added on a Laundry room next to the bedroom at grade to the car port. Thats all on the north side of the house. All those exterior walls are a foot thick and any interior wall that would also contain mobile home wall is a foot thick.

Then there is the Green house and Art studio built on the south side of the house. The art studio uses the same one foot thick walls.... It is built on a slab but the kitchen window looks out into the studio... as does the bathroom window. that wall has exterior siding on it. There is no insulation in the green house room. It in of its self was a piece of work. Swamp cooler on one end and a spot for regular window cooler on the other end.... Flourescent lighting as well as a misting system All set up on a humitity sensor and a temperature sensor... he was doing some serious growing in there.... 140 degrees in the summer time.... of course without AC. There is one breaker dedicated to that room.

The art studio is my bedroom.... Nice linoleum floor and lots of space. The light switch is one of those metal kind that is water proof. Exterior.... And a good thing too because water runs down that wall when ir rains AND blows... There is a wall heater.... but NO on off switch for it... Its electric and the only way I know to shut it off completely is at the breaker box... but I am not sure which breaker is for that room because I think the green house breakers control the light switch.... So I just turn the switch on the heater till it only comes on if its around 30 degrees.

Then there are all the exterior lights.... One is above my bedroom sliding glass door. Halogen... It fell off its mounting about four years ago and is hanging by its romex... I cant get to it to change the bulb much less fix it. Then there is the Tpost in the yard next to a sewer dump outlet.... for possibly a mobile home there.... That Tpost has an outlet on it with 220 prongs. out of curiosity I took a tester out there to see if it were live.... Um no... but when I turned the booster pump breaker on.... It became live... So the only thing I could do is keep the breaker off and cap the whole post with a piece of four inch diameter PVC. THAT needs to be dealt with.... The same breaker also controls the carport light.

Then there are the outlets in the yard. One works and it is in a water proof box.... Yay good for weed whacker use. The other is on the fence near the Sliding glass door that doesnt have a landing under it.... the box broke free of its anchor point and is dangling by its wires. It is NOT live thank goodness.

Ilove my little tester but dont have another person with a walkie talkie to help me search out all the outlets....


What I want is to fix it all make it safe and easy to access. Mark the breakers even install more breakers or another breaker box... the one in the utility room is at its max. IT needs to have a cabinet to cover it because there is water in that room. OR needs to be moved to a better spot. Even flip it around to be mounted on the exterior wall of that room I plan on doing a pantry there.... it would be a good spot nice and safe.

Then I need a line run from the house straight out to the Storage container. From there I can provide emergency lighting for the horse corral plus power to run clippers and a hot pot.... The chicken coop would be along that rout too so I could have power in the coop for lights and maybe a brooder/incubator area.

Sigh I can dream.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

Y'all would have a field day with this house.

I didn't think nothing of it, but when my husband moved in with me he was under the house at 1am redoing wiring because he said the house could go up in flames the way it was. Apparently we have 30 amp wire on 15 amp breakers or something? I have no idea what it meant but it was bad. I've got two breaker boxes. The original in my kitchen with 4 of the screw type thingies and a box with switches outside. The kitchen box would always be very warm to the touch, before he fixed it. The kitchen light always burned out quick.. Little stuff like that, that I just ignored.

Apparently there's life wires hidden in walls and the attic. Open junctions in the walls. Wires taped together in walls etc.

Let's just say he's had a few jolts in unexpected places in the house.

None of the breakers made any sense either. Front porch on the same circuit as a room at the other end of the house... stuff like that.

I have ONE outlet in my kitchen (aside from the one the fridge is plugged into and the stove). Yay 50s! I have to unplug the toaster to make coffee

I had a splitter but hubby yelled at me, saying I couldn't run 2-3 appliances at a time or trouble would ensue.

Sad... sad.. house.

I use splitters for small appliances just as long as I dont try to run more than two at a time on one outlet. You dont want to know how many I have plugged into the outlet this computer is on..... but its a new er house.

deb

 

[Tomtommom]

I use splitters for small appliances just as long as I dont try to run more than two at a time on one outlet. You dont want to know how many I have plugged into the outlet this computer is on..... but its a new er house.

deb

I think we have 15 amp wire.. so yeah, can't run much on it. Basically when you turn something on the lights flicker for a minute

 

[Blooie]

There is absolutely no reason for posting this video! I found it this evening while cleaning up my photo files, and just had to share it. Like I said on another forum, if you don't giggle yourself at least once, better have someone check your pulse!

 

[bruceha2000]

Y'all would have a field day with this house.

I didn't think nothing of it, but when my husband moved in with me he was under the house at 1am redoing wiring because he said the house could go up in flames the way it was. Apparently we have 30 amp wire on 15 amp breakers or something? I have no idea what it meant but it was bad. I've got two breaker boxes. The original in my kitchen with 4 of the screw type thingies and a box with switches outside. The kitchen box would always be very warm to the touch, before he fixed it. The kitchen light always burned out quick.. Little stuff like that, that I just ignored.

Apparently there's life wires hidden in walls and the attic. Open junctions in the walls. Wires taped together in walls etc.

Let's just say he's had a few jolts in unexpected places in the house.

None of the breakers made any sense either. Front porch on the same circuit as a room at the other end of the house... stuff like that.

I have ONE outlet in my kitchen (aside from the one the fridge is plugged into and the stove). Yay 50s! I have to unplug the toaster to make coffee

I had a splitter but hubby yelled at me, saying I couldn't run 2-3 appliances at a time or trouble would ensue.

Sad... sad.. house.

Wow. LIVE wires (presuming that means not connected to a fixture/outlet) in the walls and attic? Grab the kids and get out fast!

What I think he is saying is you have 30A of load on a 15A breaker/fuse. Regular 12-2 wire (12 gauge, one hot wire, one neutral/common and a ground wire) can handle 20A total load at "normal distances" within a house. If you had bigger gauge wire (smaller 1st number) it could handle a 30A load so that is not what he is saying. That would not be a fire hazard, it would be proper wiring.

The fact that the fuse box was warm means the wires were overloaded. Wires carrying too much amperage are PHYSICALLY hot wires (which is different than when we say a wire is "hot" meaning live). Think of it as trying to push more water through a hose than can flow through that diameter and the hose stretches until it rips a hole. Usually what happened was a house was built with maybe a 50A service, a fuse panel and ungrounded 12 gauge wire back in the 40s/50s when there weren't that many appliances, mostly lights and maybe a radio, small refrigerator. Everything was fine.

Then more and more appliances were added. Need the microwave, coffee maker, toaster oven, electric stove and burners, BIG refrigerator, washer, dryer, big stereo system, TV, then bigger TV, then BIGGER TV. WAY more than a 50A circuit can handle. In fact, an electric range should be on its OWN 40 or 50A circuit as should an electric dryer! The refrigerator should be on its own circuit because you don't want it to lose power if it shares a breaker with something else that might trip without you knowing it. But "in the beginning" as new appliances came out people just put bigger amperage fuses in the box when the appropriate sized ones blew frequently. I bet that happened in your house glad it didn't burn down and your husband is working on it!

What the electricians told me they do in a "rewire in place" scenario is cut a horizontal strip out of the drywall so they can drill holes in the studs and pull new wire. Drywall is "easy" to patch up (though I suck at taping drywall) and it is a lot easier and faster than drilling a lot of smaller holes in the drywall near each stud then patching those. That way you can not only replace old suspect wire but you can get more outlets in the kitchen on properly sized circuits. Current code says you need an outlet every 2 feet at kitchen counters. Why? To keep people from running a bunch of extension cords and splitters

And a LOT of counter top appliances now come with REALLY SHORT cords so you HAVE to use extension cords in houses built to old specs when the cords might be 4' long or move each appliance when you want to use it. PITA I tell you.

I suspect the box outside is your main service with a single wire going to the original fuse box in the kitchen. The main panel SHOULD have a single main breaker above the rest labeled with amperage and you can see what service you have now. Typical today is 200A though I wouldn't be surprised if yours is 100 A or 150A depending on when it was put in. You can put ANY size breaker in that main service panel from 15A for general lighting and outlets to the big 50A ones for the appliance that draw a lot of current AS LONG AS YOU USE THE RIGHT GAUGE WIRE for each circuit. You might want to get an electrician to replace the fuse box with a breaker panel and if necessary run a larger gauge wire to it.

I suspect your husband already ran a larger wire from your description. If he can do that (sorry licensed electricians) he can replace the fuse box himself, he already did the dangerous part with the big wire and if, as I suspect, it is coming from a breaker in the main panel, it is easy to shut off the power for safe work without de-powering the whole house. But this is NOT a place to "save" $$ if you don't know what you are doing. IDEALLY, you would get rid of the fuse box in the kitchen all together and run new wire from the outlets, switches and large appliances back to the main service panel.