Yes the wire needs to be at least 14 gauge before you can change the breaker safely. Once you have the 15 amp breaker in place as I said before simply count up the total wattage on your bulbs and / 120 and that will give you the amperage. on a 15 amp breaker you want to keep the amperage at 12 amps for your 80% rule

And 10 bulbs would give you about eight and a half amps so yes you would be fine on that

I'm pretty sure the wire is 12 gauge (not at the house rn), so I should be good

One more question - the basement's unfinished, so the joists are bare; is it code to drill holes thru each joist to run the line thru? I see a mix of that and stapling the wire to the underside of the joists. It would mean me drilling more holes, not enough space in the existing holes

If wire is number 12 you can put a 20 amp breaker in safely again keep it at the 80% rule which is 16 amps maximum load

(If you haven't picked up on it, I'm a complete novice; just bought my first house in April)

Gotcha

I'll go with 20 amps then

Code now tells us not to strap to the bottom of the floor joist. I guess that's in anticipation of finishing out an area further down the road. So if it were being inspected yes you would need to drill through the joist. The way you decide to do it is up to you it is an existing home with a mixture of both styles of wiring so it's kind of at a decision call on your part

Not sure that I'll end up finishing, but if its code it's worth the extra time to go ahead and do it

No problem that's what we're here for. You'll find a lot of this stuff is just common sense. You just need to exercise safety anytime you get into a live panel. If you're unsure of what you're doing you can always shut the main breaker off and use a flashlight or a headlight of some type to perform the work

^i did that twice already replacing all the outlets; I have a pretty healthy fear of getting zapped

Thanks again for your input, it's much appreciated 👌🏻

Yes I can be difficult because you have to kind of visualize how the circuit works a lot of times in order to work and safely. Anytime someone with limited experiences working on something they should be energized the circuit

* de-energize

I concur with greg 100%

@Izat - VA keep an eye out for broken tabs on outlets. They may be switched

As a rule of thumb on a 120v circuit a 100w is around 1a

And dimmer switches can only handle usually around 600w. So if you plan on dimming that area you may need to divide the load across two dimming switches

Good to know, luckily no dimmers here but I may do some on the main level eventually

Anyone ever make an alternator?

That is, convert physical energy into electrical?

It is not the easiest thing to do. You basically have a motor that is working backwards. You have to have quite a bit of copper windings inside the frame and you would have to spein it very quickly. If you had it attached to a bicycle or other of means it would not be so bad

Electric lady would not be that difficult to build the difficult part is when you have to do the spinning!

*electrically

Seen them on sail boats. Was also thinking sewing table pedal.

Yes you have to get the ratios in the windings right and then have a set RPM to keep the voltage at a set level. I'm sure there are simple units I'm talking more along the lines of a consistent voltage output of 110v or higher

Any way to do it without copper? Practically I mean.

The two components of a motor or generator do not actually touch. It works off what is called induction. Copper or gold would give the best results. Some type of metal has to be used other metals do not work as well

Yeah is it basically a spinning core inside of coils?

Rotor and stator

Yes sir and giving what you're trying to do using steel or something of that nature just wouldn't work for the induction

Keep in mind when building this that it will always take more energy to make energy than the energy produced. Heat and friction are energy losses

^^^

This is the equation that prevents perpetual motion

Ugh im at a negro house giving an estimate

Literally a chimp out on tv..... and the smell....

slave art?

Hahaha

@Lebens What is a "R&R commercial 225A single phase panel?"

Remove and replace a 225A single phase panel

Ah ty

@Lebens so you basically disconnected all the wires from the old panel, tracked them, and required them to the new panel?

How long does that take?

Im on my 10th hour

Still not done

Tomorrow i have another one to do

Holy feck

Wednesday im installing a lighting control system

2.5 days work and ill clear $6k

Contractor life

That's awesome.

@Lebens that panel/meter combo in that last picture is the second one of those I've seen you post. It's similar to what I would call a meter bank for a multi dwelling bldg. Is that something that is common for your area. Is that what the utility requires? I'm in Louisville and all of the services that we install have a meter Base outside and then a panel beneath it or just inside the wall from it. I was just wondering if that is something that you personally prefer or is that something that is common to your neck of the woods

@Deleted User east coast vs west coast. Out here we use all in one enclosures, i hate it. You guys have the better version

@Deleted User this building wanted a way to work on the panel without shutting down the substation also. With the meter socket they can monitor usage and have a means of disconnect for swapping main breaker

I was getting ready to run an outlet off this existing outlet. First tree ground wasn't connected and three was a jumper you can see in the pic. It's this normal practice. I've never seen it before.

It looks like the wiring was a two wire system. For a while they decided that grounds were necessary and did not pull a ground conductor. The neutral wire which is the white wire is at Ground potential in the panel so basically it is grounded just like a ground wire would be so they are putting a jumper between the neutral screw and the ground screw so as to ground the outlet. This is not cold legal. The proper fix would be to go buy a two wire Outlet which is an outlet that has the two vertical slots but no round ground hole and put that back in. People change and put 3 wire outlets on so they can plug things like plug strips and other devices with ground prongs but it is neither safe nor legal. If there is a green or bare ground conductor in the box then you can use that to bond to the green screw and use a 3 prong outlet otherwise it should go back to the old to wire original scenario

* unnecessary

I see this all the time and it is a scenario that will work and provide both a neutral and a ground but like I said as per your electrical code there should be a wire for the hot a wire for the neutral and a wire for the ground.

@Placidseven - MO ^^

Agreed

The jumping of neutral to ground is to trick an inspectors plug tester. This is a hack job "electricians" work

The ground isnt even wrapped the right direction

It's weird because there were 2 ground wires in the box they just weren't connected. Which makes me worry there is a bad ground.

I'm going to buy a cheap circuit tester and do some investigating.

Well all the grounds are good on that circuit. Unless anyone can think of something I should check, I guess I'm going to hook it back up.

Do a resistance check from neutral to ground. The grounds and neutrals typically are bonded at the panel. Sometimes you will find floating neutrals which means its isolated. However the xo bond coming from the secondary side of transformers creates ground aka your zero reference point

Yes go ahead and make it all up include your new wire that you were going to run twist all your light colors clockwise under a wired nut with the short jumper wire to your individual device and It will give you best results

Here is a splice with 3 nm cables and the jumper wires to the outlet. Twist wires clockwise as this is how the wirenuts tighten

So after testing all the outlets on that circuit ( and the rest of the house which is ok), the receptacles on that breaker all have an open ground. Looks like I get to spend some quality time in my attic tomorrow.

@Lebens I'll give this a try tomorrow too

@Placidseven - MO run a new feed

@Lebens i most likely will. I already have the dry wall cut away from running stereo wire and cat5.

@Placidseven - MO and rebuild the ckt like greg sharded a pic of

Yeah I'm using that on all my receptacles for now on. Very clean.

This method also changes the ckt to parallel. In parallel ckts the device can fail and usually will not disable the whole ckt as it will in series

Very cool

Just wanted to give a thanks to @Lebens and @Deleted User. I got my issue resolved. It was a ground that had been painted over.

Crazy stuff. Glad to help. Hope to see u in cville!

Anytime

@Lebens u going to cville

No sir. During the summer i work non stop. Feast or famon and ive got plenty of mouths to feed brother

Installing a furnace today

out with the old

in with the new

I know its not electrical but my skills are diverse..... and diversity is our strength goys

👌

Any of you guys know what this is. It was wired up to a light receptacle in my basement.

Low voltage step down transformer

@Placidseven - MO are you remodeling your home?

@RevStench more like fixing a poorly remodeled home

Oh haha Well I guess you know some things are done right now.

For the doorbell @Placidseven - MO

@Lebens finishing up HVAC school in Feb (18 months). U have any general advice for me? Any areas of the trade i should stay away from, go toward? Im getting straight As but there is just so much to know, areas to go, I feel disoriented. Any advice id greatly appreciate it

@REVNAT/PA bro general advice from another tradesman, I went to trade school for machine tool and now I'm a carpenter, and I specialize in historic preservation. Try everything in your field, and find what you enjoy then find the guys who will pay you the most haha

I recommend targeting residential service companies

Start as an installer. Move up to tech.