Electricians

The 2 best Youtube vids re electricity for me –

y2u.be/bHIhgxav9LY

y2u.be/oI_X2cMHNe0

I graduated electrical engineering in 2015 and I didn’t know the energy flow and the surface charges that Derek explained. Maybe I didn’t listen closely when my electromagnetism mentor taught Poynting vector. But I'm sure no mentor of mine talked re surface charges. These wow me –

1. In the Poynting vector simulation, the energy flowed outside the wire, not in the wire.

2. The cross product of the electric and magnetic fields is the key thing. The electrons in the wire don’t carry the energy.

3. Energy can flow even if we don't have a loop of wire.

4. The 🔋 is the shepherd. The surface charges are the sheep dogs. The electrons are the 🐑. (The electric field accelerates the electrons.)

5. Ohm’s law, mesh analysis and nodal analysis are 👍 but don’t cover all the cases. You must use Maxwell’s equations if you want or need a high level of accuracy. I wonder if using quantum electrodynamics is better. Or no since we’re not dealing with a quantum system?

Location: USA:MN

To preface, I'm a refrigeration mechanic, so I only know just enough about three phase power to ~~get into trouble~~ hook things up and make sure they work.

I'm working on a large remodeling project in my home durring which I want to future proof as much as I can (because foam insulation makes changing things later a bitch). I'm going the full 9 yards running conduit and everything. As part of that future proofing I am planning on upgrading my service from 100A to 200A. However, since I'm upgrading my service anyways, I am also strongly considering getting a three phase service. If I ever wanted to stick an electric car charger or other big piece of equipment in then a three phase connection would be handy to have. It also seems like the kind of upgrade I want to get done while the house is mostly gutted rather than trying to shoehorn it in later. So my questions are as follows.

1. Do I go with a 120/208V 4 wire service or a 120/240V 4 wire service? My provider offers both to residential customers in my area. There are additional restriction on the service drop for the 240V option. None of those appear to apply in my case but it might make 240V a bit more of a pain to get.

2. Do I need to worry about phase balance? Since this is for a single family home most of my power draw is going to still be 120V between a single phase and neutral. Obviously I want to split circuits up between the 3 phases to try to draw on them evenly, but it's never going to be split perfectly evenly. Is drawing on the phases unevenly going to cause any sort of issue?

3. Are there any other footguns to watch out for here? For example, is having three phase power going to mess with my home insurance rates or anything like that?

I've just had a new house built in Atlantic Canada. This morning I noticed a bit of a tingle from my coffee machine when I touched it with wet hands. The machine has a grounded (3 pin) plug and I checked - it has 0V between the parts I touched (the entire metal outer case) and the ground socket in the outlet. So, I got curious and did some more measurements. It turns out there is 20V AC (and about 300mV DC) between the ground in my outlets and me when I'm standing on my floor (sealed concrete slab) with bare feet.

I assume this isn't good?

I'll be calling the electrician that wired the house in the morning, but I'd appreciate any insights you might have.

I want to know what do you think?

What was probable cause?

Before that, for last 2-ish years I must replaced 5 LED bulbs.
No other symptoms.

Right before failure, one or two LED bulbs started blinking. I heard "scorching" sound.
And smell of burned electric/electronic (isolation).

Then I disconnected all circuits and opened all surrounding boxes...
Over-current breakers or RCD/GFCI didn't tripped.

Extra photos:

(ignore temporary jumper - fixed now)

I need to replace a faulty breaker. Here's a picture of my main breaker box. There's no master switch that I can see that shuts off power to all of the breakers.

Following the line up and out of the box, it runs along the basement ceiling and out through a hole in the foundation.

Let me know if you need to see something else.

Edit. Resolved! I found a master switch on the outside of the house in a panel adjacent to the meter. Weird that anyone can just walk up to my house and turn all of the power off.

Hello, and with the disclaimer that I'm no electrician whatsoever,

I had this three-way light switch in my room, which only controlled one light - and its pilot lit when the light was set off. Unfortunately I had to break the wall it was onto because the neighbor had water issues. Left the switch connected to the wires as I thought it wasn't necessary to unplug it, but the person that fixed the wall unplugged it nevertheless.

The thing is I can't remember how it was plugged. I can plug hot and ground (at 0 and 1, or 0 and 3) so I can turn on/off the light, but the pilot won't work in any case.

Here's a picture of the back of the switch, the numbers at each connector and the little diagram (tried to recreate it at the right side) that is engraved there. Not even sure why it's 0, 1 and 3 but no 0, 1 and 2 - nor what the little "m" means:

So how can I connect this so the pilot works as before (it's lit when the light is turned off?) I'd really appreciate any help about this from any electron wizard around here.

Hello, I would like to identify this plug & socket in order to get replacement parts ! This comes from my electric cook-top from my apartment's kitchen. Obviously something when wrong... I suspect the plug got nudged loose when the handy-man came to replace the dishwasher, causing one contact to have poor connection, heat overtime and destroy itself. I noticed something was wrong because of the plastic smell when I was using the cook-top for a long time at high power.

The white plug was part of a cable with a Schuko on the other end, I cut it off. The black socket was part of the cook-top. Both were pretty much melted together at this point.

I have a GFCI in the garage that tripped and keeps tripping. I traced it to an outlet in the basement but there is something weird going on. I'm not an electrician, but I've done a bit of wiring, but I don't know how to interpret this.

In the picture is the basement outlet pulled apart and the power is on and the GFCI is reset and working. This basement outlet has 3 14/2 cables coming in. I think one is power from the garage, and the other two lead to outlets outside the house. I checked the wires until I found 120V and then marked them with yellow tape, which is what is shown in the image.

However, if I connect the multimeter to the black/yellow and one of the other whites I get a reading of 101.8, and the other white reads 0.7. This shouldn't be happening, right?

This is an outlet at my in-laws’ house which was built in the 1960s. I’m not sure if this is just some paint that was put on an outlet and has worn off over time or if this is some residual evidence of sparking/minor electrical fire. The walls are wood panels painted white, so it seems to me someone might’ve just thought they could paint the outlets as well (there are some parts of this basement that don’t have the wood painted and the outlets/switches are dark brown, which might be what I’m seeing). The outlet seems to work but I don’t feel totally comfortable plugging something more expensive like my laptop in, even though I suppose the charger would be more likely to die than the actual computer. The house has a fairly new electrical panel with breakers that seem nice, but it was also built initially as a duplex (with a later addition making it useable as a triplex) and each part has its own old sub-panel that still uses twist-in fuses. I’m still not sure if whoever put in the new panel said the rest of the wiring/outlets was fine or my father-in-law just decided upgrading the rest was too expensive.

Hello, I bought an electric fence kit for some goats and horses for a plot of land which requires grounded power outlet.

I wonder if a TT ground connection for the outlet (or fuse circuit the outlet belongs to) would suffice or if I need to redo the whole barns electrics since it's all ungrounded at the moment except for a 3 phase outlet connected to the garages electrics.

I just want to know what I should ask an electrician about when I ask for quote and time. If I need to redo the whole wiring I need to hold until next springto so I really hope for a smaller job :)

If I use wrong terminology Im sorry since English is not my first language

Can I put an additional load before switches on a dedicated circuit?

The example circuit goes from the service panel to a two-way (SPDT) switch at the house back door. From there the circuit goes to another two-way switch out in the garage. The circuit then powers the garage lights.

The goal is to add additional lights on this circuit near the service panel so that the same switches would also control the new lights.

How wrong would it be to add this new load between the service panel and the first two-way switch? This would save the (huge) effort to run wire from the garage back to the house.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/55669

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/55668

cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/664462779759271734

If you use enough electrical tape, that counts as a junction box, right?

I'm a hack myself, so I get it, but jeez. A wet application like a dishwasher installation really isn't the place for this sort of carelessness.

The second picture shows how I remotely open a circuit breaker.

This post is a follow to my previous dishwasher install post (https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/664264701761318465).

#diy #dishwasher #linoleum #electrical

@[email protected]

Sorry if this isn't the right community. I'm adding blinkers to a side-by-side and I have the blinkers working. However I can't understand how to connect the hazard switch to the blinkers without losing the blinker functionality. When I connect them it makes both blinkers go off when I try to use the blinkers. Is someone able to point me in the right direction? Thanks!

I’m wiring a type 2 surge protector and want to surface mount it on the drywall here with the cables going into the drywall and then into a breakout in the panel. What kind of conduit elbow can I get to hide the wires entering the drywall that will screw onto the threads on the surge protector? Thanks

Feel free to roast me if this is idiotic. Thank you!

Hey guys, Im in the process of moving to a new place. The wall where I want to mount TV doesnt have any power socket, but there is indoor A/C unit just next to it. Can I just connect a power strip cable to A/C unit terminals and use it as a socket for my LCD TV? Is there any risk Im not aware of?

I live in EU and have 220V AC mains. AC is ~1kW indoor unit and also ~1kW outdoor unit. TV is just regular 43" LCD.

I have a general knowledge about electricity (high school), but have no experience with A/C units.

Cheers

So a circuit in my home is dead. It covers a couple lights and a couple outlets. I plugged a microwave into this circuit and it was more than she could handle. Before this, the circuit worked fine for years, but the lights would noticeably dim when the load from the toaster was applied.

The breaker is not tripped. I replaced the breaker. This particular breaker was different from the others, not labeled on the panel, and the romex enters the panel from a different direction than the other 20amp circuits; I suspect this circuit was added after initial construction.

There is no GFCI on this circuit. The fixtures and outlets are all standard with no obvious fuses. There are no scorch marks, and there was no smell when the circuit cut out.

I worked as an electrician's assistant when I was a teenager. I have basic skills and basic tools. I don't have an outlet tester or a mutimeter.

I'm a helper and worked with an old time electrician and he did something a year ago that still troubles me. We wired a 50 amp 220 volt circuit for some heat pumps. he brought the wires into the panel, hooked them to ground and the breaker and left the white wire capped with a wire nut. He told me it will work fine and forget about it. Did we leave somebody with an open neutral? Is the ground wire the neutral now? Should I try and go back and fix this?

Hello! Think this will be my first actual post so hopefully I don't miss anything.

We recently bought a house which needed some electrical work done, but it turned out it needed a lot more done than we thought... We haven't moved in yet but basically, the overhead lights barely work and if you plug anything into an outlet then all of the lights turn off. The lights also flicker a lot -- but that comes and goes.

We've been in touch with the 3 closest electricians (the home is in a town under 1k population) and one was nice enough to go to the house for free and look at the outside "meter can." He provided this estimate (copied and pasted exactly), along with a price of $2,102 USD.

The house was built in 1920.

"Included labor/materials (install):

1. 10ft-2inch PVC conduit.
2. 2inch weather head.
3. 20amp Meter panel combo.
4. 4/0 THHN service wire.
5. 1-2pole 60amp breaker (AC unit)
6. 1-2pole 30amp breaker (water heater)
7. Upgrade grounding system."

I thought the grounding system upgrade meant he would turn all of the 2-prong outlets in the house into 3-prong outlets but he told me that doing that would double the price.

(The other two electricians I constacted didn't see the meter in person but quoted "$1750" and "around $500.")

Could anyone explain what upgrading the grounding system would do? Also, does it sound like all of this will fix the problem I've described? I've never dealt with electrical work before and I'm just worried as this is a huge amount of money for people in rural areas like ours, and if it doesn't fix it then I won't be able to afford another try or move in...

Hi all,

I accidentally bumped into this charger and now the bottom prong in this picture can wiggle left to right (relative to this angle). I wanna say it moved about 10° from its original position and you can see the bunched up plastic from where it moved.

I bent it back into position and it's still very stiff... just wondering if it's still safe to use.

Thanks for your help!

Lutron makes the L3T251 which is a combination dimmer and timer for a bathroom fan and light combo in a single range switch.

It does not require a neutral wire because it pulls power from the light circuit, but as a result, I have to use an incandescent bulb in it. LED bulbs don't provide a low current resistive path for the parasitic power draw. I've tested this and if I put a known good LED bulb in, the switch is dead.

Now that incandescent bulbs have been banned, what are my options. If there's a similar product out there that uses a neutral and works with LED, I haven't found it. I imagine you could make a parallel high resistance circuit that would provide power to the switch when the light is off, but I have not found anything like that.

Any suggestions?

Hello! I bought this enclosure to install a sprinkler timer. It comes with a GFCI outlet, and where I want to install it is next to another GFCI outlet mounted in the wall (outdoors). I thought it would look better to run some wires in the wall, off the GFCI, and into the back of the box so I don't see the power cable on the outside of the house. What is the correct way to run that wire through the wall?

Definitely over the weight limit once the apprentices stuff their toolbags inside.