The lights work but is the wiring safe? or How do you know they’ve improved the taste of dog food?

I have been a professional electrician since 1971. When it comes to residential wiring, there isn’t much in the way of bad, worse, & horrible wiring that I haven’t already seen or fixed. I’m known to say “Now I’ve seen everything”, but my assistant reminds me that I say that fairly often. I am usually called into service because an electrical problem has arisen and the home owner can’t fix the problem simply by flipping the circuit breaker. Nine times out of ten, the problem is due to poor workmanship and / or cheap parts. I hate to say it, but the condition of the service van is usually directly proportional to the quality or lack thereof, to the material & workmanship used on the job. I find that if a technician arrives in a very nice, neat, clean service van, chances are that he uses more expensive parts and takes pride in his work. There are many, many rules that govern the way wiring is installed, fastened, connected, spliced, sized, and how many wires and devices are allowed in so much confined space. There are rules that apply to the size of outlet boxes. Rules that govern the size of a circuit breaker in direct proportion to the size of the wire connected to it. These rules are referred to as the National Electrical Code and are underwritten by the people who oversee fire prevention. The electrical code book is updated approximately every four years. It is a thick book and complicated to comprehend. The owner of Cheap, Non Licensed, Crappy Guy Electric Service probably doesn’t know the rules in this book. He’s probably never even read it. I had to pass a very extensive, comprehensive, difficult electrical exam to obtain my electrical contractor’s license. But more than that, a person has to have heart and passion and love of the job to be a great electrician. I have witnessed firsthand the workmanship of some licensed electrical contractors whose work was horrible. But it was hidden to the paying customer and nobody was the wiser. This contractor has no pride in his work or himself, much less providing a fair and safe job to his customer.  

What constitutes poor workmanship? Sloppy wiring comes to mind. When my wires are exposed, say for example, in a garage, I staple them across the joists or down the studs without any twists in them and keep them as straight as possible. This is not necessary, but the way I see it, this is an example of my work, in plain sight. When someone sees my work, I want them to be impressed. This is called ”Pride in Your Work”. When the same wiring is going to be covered with drywall or some other wall board, I still keep the wires straight and neat, but a few twists here and there don’t matter so much. It doesn’t affect the quality of the installation or the flow of electricity. Another example (and this is a pet peeve of mine), receptacles that have no side termination screws. The cheap, cheap ones. The only way to connect this type of receptacle is by sticking the wires in holes in the back of the receptacle. And 99 times out of 100, if the electrician or handyman (unlicensed contractor) uses this type of receptacle, he also does not splice his wires together first and tail off the splice with one lead wire to the device. He uses the holes in the back of the receptacle as a means to splice the wires through to the next outlet. This is called ”Speed Wire” and has been used on every new home, apartment and townhouse since I began my apprenticeship in 1971. This method of using the device holes to continue the circuit wire to the next outlet box is my number one cause for service and repair calls. I was taught by my father to physically splice all the hot wires together and all the neutral wires together first by twisting them. Then, off the twisted splice, add a lead wire about 8″ long (pigtail) and connect it to the SCREWS on the side of the more expensive switches and receptacles. By doing it this way, the receptacle can be removed from the wires, but because the wires are spliced together, the circuit still continues to the end of the line. When the speed wire holes are used as a splicing means, removing the receptacle opens the entire circuit. Everything beyond that point is without power and all the lights and plugs go out! And that’s why I get so many calls. It only takes ONE wire in ONE speed wire hole to become loose causing the rest of the power to go out throughout the house!

Do you ever go up into your attic / crawl space above the ceiling and look at what the electrician did up there? Do you ever go under the house into the dirty crawl space and see what he did down there? I do. Whenever I send my employees up there or down there to do any wiring, I go and check the work. If the wires are not stapled and supported to the joists, someone’s in big trouble. Especially under a house. Electrical wires cannot be laid on the ground. They have to be stapled to the floor joists. I am amazed by how many electricians do not bother. Did you know that any electrical wires 120 volts or higher, that are to be buried in the ground, have to be buried at least 18″ deep? Did you know that to bury an electrical wire, it has to be a very specific type of cable? Did you know that by burying PVC conduit instead of “direct bury” wire you can replace the wire whenever you wish by pulling the old wire out of the PVC conduit? Did you know that electrical conduit, which is used primarily on the exterior of a structure, or under the ground, with no other way of getting a wire under, over or through the walls from point A to point B, can be bent no more than 360 degrees total bends? If more than 360 degrees of bends are required, then a junction box must be installed. Then, you can begin again up to 360 degrees of bends. I have seen conduits with six 90 degree bends, a 45 and a few other small bends in 10 feet of conduit. The guy had to have run the wire in the straight conduit first and then bent it. A wire will not go through a conduit that is bent more than a full circle. Did you know that an electrical outlet box, no matter what the purpose, cannot be covered over? Every single electrical outlet box has to remain accessible. If there is ever to be an electrical problem, it will be in the outlet box that was dry-walled over and nobody remembers where it was located. Did you know that indoor electrical wire, called Romex, cannot be installed below 7 feet unless it is to be covered by wallboard, or has been put inside a protective conduit? I see exposed Romex wire often running through closets or book shelves and cabinets. This rule applies only to living areas. Did you know that when you had your meter box upgraded to 200 amps, and the electrician left the old sub-panel active inside that closet, that your electrical system is still only limited to the size of that old panel in the closet? Did you know that? The easy, slam-dunk meter upgrades involve putting the new meter / panel box outside and hooking it to the power lines. Then, the old feed wire going back to that old fuse box or ancient breaker panel is placed on a circuit breaker in the new panel, usually 30 or 40 amps, and simply re-feeds the old fuse box. You now have 170 unused amps (in a way of looking at it) outside. I eliminate that old closet panel and extend the old circuits in it out to the new box. It defeats the purpose of the meter upgrade if you don’t.

To the average homeowner, if the lights are on, the electrical work must be ok.  Unfortunately, just because your lights are on, you cannot be sure that your home is properly wired or safe.  Once again I ask the question:

How do we know they’ve improved the taste of dog food?  How do you know your wiring was done properly and meets electrical and safety codes? 

When Renters Do Electrical

I was recently called by a lady who told me that her commercial rental building near downtown San Diego was being converted by the city to an underground utility system. The utility poles along Imperial Ave. and 24th Streets are being removed. This is part of the on-going work by the city to remove the utility poles since 1967. The lady went on to explain that a city code enforcement inspector had visited the building and informed her that the electrical wiring, meter box and circuit panels inside had to be brought up to code before any undergrounding to her building could be completed. So, being an underground utility specialist, she called me.

What I found was something that words could never properly describe. So I took photos! Lots of photos. I had never seen electrical wiring done in such an unsafe and unprofessional method in my 38 years as an electrician. I’ll try to describe what I saw. There are 2 electric meters in this automotive brake shop with machines everywhere. Each electric meter consisted of a single glass meter mounted in a single meter socket. From the socket (meter base), there were 4 separate single open wires running in open air to the breaker panels a few feet away. Someone had even cut into some of those wires in the middle and tapped into them with splices capped with wire nuts to send power to some machines without the protection of circuit breakers. There were some twisted open splices without any wire nuts covering the twisted bare copper wires! They were just bare. The other electric meter fed a circuit panel with a #10 piece of Romex wire. That’s only rated at 30 amps. Whoever did this work has also never heard of Romex connectors. Every cable on this job entering a panel or leaving a panel, switch box or receptacle outlet simply passes through a knock-out without the use of any connectors. No wonder the code enforcement inspector almost condemned the building. The owner advised me that the tenants did all the bad electrical work themselves. I won’t even get into what the lights and wall plugs looked like. Most weren’t even attached to the structure. They just hung by the wire. The tenants have been in this building for years and years.

My customer was given a notice by the city of San Diego to complete repairs within 30 days or the building would be shut down. Because there are 2 auto repair shops inside, she needed to do something fast. I called the city and told them that I had been hired to do the upgrades. The inspector told me that all that was required for the city to allow SDG&E to proceed with the undergrounding of the electrical conversion, was to upgrade the meter boxes and the circuit breaker panels and get them ready to be energized once SDG&E was ready to remove the poles. I was to provide a new 400 amp, underground fed, dual meter cabinet. From this cabinet, or pedestal, I was to install (2) 2″ metal conduits (EMT) into the building and terminate them each into (2) new 200 amp circuit panels mounted to interior walls. But first, the meter pedestal had to be installed on a new level cement pad, which I had to form, mix and pour. Because the entire building is considered a “non-stable structure”, the meters had to be installed inside a free standing pedestal instead of being mounted on the side of the building! If you push on any exterior wall, the entire building moves. This is not a small building either. So, long story short, new meter pedestal mounted on a new cement pad 12″ tall, (2) new 200 amp panels located inside very close to the old panels and connected to the meter pedestal with hard metal conduit, fed with (3) 3 ought copper wires (not Romex) and each panel containing a 200 amp main breaker. Once completed, the city backed off with their threat to shut down the businesses. And now, nobody can tap into the wires between the meter and the panel through hard metal conduit. I was surprised to learn from the code enforcement inspector that although the lights, switches and receptacle outlets were also breaking every code violation there is, they would not require repair. There was a rear building as well with the same problems. This one required a 200 amp meter / panel box also mounted away from the unstable structure. This single meter box was mounted on a post sunk into the asphalt with (1) 2″ EMT conduit from it to a new 200 amp panel mounted on the wall inside. All in all, it was a great job to do with a few challenges thrown in. We decided to do the work on Saturday & Sunday so we could work without all the cars trying to get in and out of the small lot. I didn’t know they were open both days…Plus, we had to keep a sharp eye on our trucks and tools. Most of the pedestrians were pushing either shopping carts or pros-ti-tarts! It was the hood.

Is Your Electrical Wiring Safe?

Each day, I’m called upon to come to a residence and try and locate the reason that there are electrical issues or outages. I drive what I refer to as a rolling supply house. I stock over 10,000 residential electrical parts on my truck so that I am prepared to fix any problem on the spot. Getting back to the title question, residential wiring is usually still safe after many years of service. However, there are many different types of residential wiring, depending on the age of your home. Some of the very first electrical systems in houses and apartments was called Knob & Tube wire. It worked well at the time it was installed, pre 1920′s and into the 1930′s, but is no longer considered safe. Many insurance companies will not insure a home that still uses Knob & Tube wiring. During the 1930′s, steel conduit became the standard method of residential wiring. The conduit began at the fuse box and traveled from outlet box to outlet box, from wall outlet to light outlet to switch outlet. Wire was pulled through the conduit to each needed location for switches, lights and receptacles. In my opinion, this was the best method ever conceived, even to this day. During the 40,’s & 50′s, many homes were wired with a spiral steel jacketed cable called BX. Inside the spiral steel jacket were either 2 or 3 conductors, or wires, usually copper or sometimes steel. Steel was used often during WW2. After the BX stage of wiring came Romex. Today’s Romex is a plastic jacketed cable containing 2 or 3 conductors (wires) similar to BX. Romex and BX are very similar in that the outer jacket is stripped where it enters the outlet box so that the conductors can be spliced or attached to the switch, light fixture, or receptacle from inside the outlet box. Both the BX and the Romex were stapled by hammer to the joists & studs. BX was difficult to strip. Romex was much easier and faster to strip. A sharp knife is my preferred tool, whereas BX requires a special tool that cuts through the steel jacket. During the late 1940′s, there was Romex in existence, but the outer covering was a cloth and oil based substance. It changed to various types of outer coverings until the early 1970′s when it became the standard plastic covering that we continue to employ today.
The safest residential wire, in my opinion, is the type that is protected best from critters, nails, and any other means of cutting into the wire. Knob & Tube is definitely not safe. Early Romex tends to shred where stapled to studs and attic joists, causing the potential for a shorted circuit (when a hot wire comes in contact with the neutral wire or ground wire). A short is supposed to trip the circuit breaker or blow the fuse. If the breaker does not trip, the short will continue to get hot and can very easily start an electrical fire. If you own an older home, have a professional licensed electrical contractor come out and evaluate your electrical system. Did you know that in many older homes, the kitchen light fixture has burned up the wires in the outlet box above it? Most older kitchen lights use a sealed drum type of light fixture. The maximum wattage of light bulb for a sealed drum fixture is 60 watts. Many people over the years have installed 100 watt bulbs in their kitchen fixtures to make the kitchen brighter! The fixture becomes an oven.
The best wiring methods in my opinion are post 1970 Romex and also early steel conduit. With steel conduit, it’s so easy to completely rewire the entire house. Just connect new wire to the old wire and pull it through the conduit! And if you still have glass plug fuses instead of circuit breakers, it’s time for a meter upgrade or a panel change-out. Just today I went on a service call and quickly found the problem. However, I came across something inside the panel that had I not looked inside, the potential for a fire was possible. Someone had added a 15 amp circuit into the box. Instead of placing that 15 amp, 14 gauge wire on a new 15 amp circuit breaker, the electrician doubled it onto another breaker with a wire already attached. It was a 20 amp circuit breaker! Good thing I checked.  This had to go!

Old Home Week

I just completed work on an older Point Loma home that began as a service call and ended up a 75% rewire. Every single outlet that I opened turned into a can of worms. The owners wanted some new receptacles, switches and dimmers installed. I also suggested installing GFI receptacles where necessary. Not only was every single outlet box only an inch deep, but every single wire was spliced at an inch long with solder and tape. Not so uncommon to see solder, but to see the wires only an inch long was not a good thing. By the time I was able to get to good wire after removing the solder joint, there was not enough good wire to splice onto for receptacle leads. The Romex type cable was probably the first made. It was a mess to work with and very hard to strip. The owners decided that they wanted me to rewire most of the house because there were open circuits in that end, and that’s unusual when all splices are soldered. Because every single outlet box was only an inch deep, I had decided to remove them and replace them with Carlon 18.0 cu. inch boxes. This created yet another problem. These boxes have brackets on the side that are at right angles. Meaning that they are face nailed to the stud and side nailed to the stud. Removing them without destroying the wall was not going to happen. I had to do all the rewiring under the house with junction boxes so that each receptacle outlet had only a single Romex coming into the bottom. Because there was no attic (flat roof house), getting new wires to the only 4 light fixtures was not possible without a lot of drywall cutting. The switch legs seemed fine, so I left them in place. Somewhere in the original wiring, the electrician ran a 3 wire split circuit to the dining room sending (2) 20 amp circuits out. The problem is that the red wire was capped off in the panel. It had a 120 volt back feed on it, so apparently the person who did the splicing tied them together somewhere. I did find it in a kitchen receptacle outlet later on. I ran (7) new 20 amp circuits throughout the house for kitchen appliances, bath GFI, stereo / entertainment system, and computer. It gets better. The owners then asked me to demo the old spa wiring which was run in EMT, horribly installed by someone who does not own a level, where it ended at a time clock in an outdoor closet. Once I demoed the conduit, I lost all power to the garage. They had run the spa wires in 14 gauge, 240 volt and tapped off for the garage lights and receptacles. Soooo, I had to run a new circuit to the garage as well. The job wouldn’t go away. I’m not complaining! I’m always happy for work. I did get to leave my tools in the garage all week though and keep my chargers all plugged in for a whole week. All in all, it went well. But what a can of worms! Oh, today the owner called to make payment arrangements. She noted that “Now the doorbell doesn’t work”. So I went back over, checked power at the outlet box in the pantry where the transformer is mounted. I have 120 volts. I check the transformer. I have 16 volts. I remove the door button and touch the wires together. DING DONG. So I go to HD and get a new button. That did not do the trick. Somewhere between touching the wires together and installing the new button, the system quit working. The wires were ancient single strand pair wire, brittle as can be. After disconnecting every single wire and separating each wire, I still had continuity on every one! I still haven’t figured this one out. Maybe the rats chewed them up while I went to HD shorting them out! I wound up completely rewiring the entire door bell system, free of charge, since I had the invoice in my hand. 3.5 hours and 50 feet of 18 gauge wire. Oh, when I pushed the ceiling up in the pantry to try and follow the old transformer wire, about 19 gallons of rat poop rained down on us. I think my new employee is a little dismayed with service work…

Knob And Tube Wiring

Knob and Tube Wiring in a 1930 home

 

From Wikipedia  

If your current home wiring looks like this, call Point Loma Electric   to discuss your older San Diego Homes wiring.  This out dated method of wiring may not only result in your insurance company not insuring your home, but it is a fire hazard.  See the list of the other numerous disadvantages below for more information.    

Knob and tube wiring (sometimes abbreviated K&T) was an early standardized method of electrical wiring in buildings, in common use in North America from about 1880 to the 1930s. It consisted of single insulated copper conductors run within wall or ceiling cavities, passing through joist and stud drill-holes via protective porcelain insulating tubes, and supported along their length on nailed-down porcelain knob insulators. Where conductors entered a wiring device such as a lamp or switch, or were pulled into a wall, they were protected by flexible cloth insulating sleeving called “loom”. The first insulation was asphalt-saturated cotton cloth, then rubber became common. Wire splices in such installations were twisted for good mechanical strength, then soldered and wrapped with rubber insulating tape and friction tape (asphalt saturated cloth), or made inside metal junction boxes.    

Knob and tube wiring was displaced from interior wiring systems because of the high cost of installation compared with use of power cables, which combined both power conductors of a circuit in one run (and which later included grounding conductors).    

Disadvantages:    

Historically, wiring installation standards were less stringent in the age of knob-and-tube wiring than today. Compared to modern electrical wiring standards, the main shortcomings of knob-and-tube wiring are: knob-and-tube wiring never included a safety grounding conductor; did not confine switching to the hot conductor (the so-called Carter system places loads across the common terminals of a three-way switch pair); and it permitted the use of in-line splices in walls without a junction box (and thus exposing a potential fire hazard of an uncontained spark caused by arcing following mechanical failure of the splice).    

Knob and tube wiring can be made with high current carrying capacity. However, most existing residential knob and tube installations, dating to before 1940, have fewer branch circuits than is desired today. While these installations were adequate for the electrical loads at the time of installation, modern households use a range and intensity of electrical equipment unforeseen at the time. Home buyers often find that existing K&T systems lack the capacity for today’s levels of power use. Household power use increased following World War II (because more appliances were produced, and in use at the same time). First-generation wiring systems became susceptible to abuse by homeowners who would avoid repeatedly blowing fuses by using fuses with too large a current rating, thereby overfusing the circuits, thus subjecting the wiring to heat damage due to higher levels of current.    

Knob-and-tube wiring may also have been damaged by building renovations. Its cloth and rubber insulation may be dried-out, thusbrittle when handled, or it may have been damaged by rodents or carelessness (for example, by hanging objects from wiring running in accessible areas like basements).    

As existing K&T wiring gets ever older, insurance companies may deny coverage due to increased risk. Several companies will not write new homeowners policies at all unless all K&T wiring is replaced or unless an electrician has certified that the wiring is in good condition. Also, many institutional lenders are unwilling to finance a home with limited ampacity (current carrying capacity) service (which, as noted above, often goes hand-in-hand with K&T wiring), unless the electrical service is replaced.

More Power!

What is up with all the recent meter upgrades I’ve been asked to do? I did 5 during the week before and up to the 2nd of July. Then, on the 3rd, I was asked to do another 200 amp meter upgrade and a new 20 amp kitchen refrigerator circuit. I finished that job on Monday the 5th of July. I actually took Sunday off the watch some of the firework shows around town. After the 5th, it became very busy again as another customer needed a 200 amp upgrade. We did that one Tuesday the 14th and Wed. the 15th. Now, Friday, July 17th, I began another one on Pt. Loma. I had to hire a new electrician. One of my electricians is off getting married in No. CA and has left me short handed! Okay, he has a good excuse. So, I hired a 3rd electrician on Monday. I have another meter upgrade to look at tomorrow (Saturday) for the underground utility conversion program. Did I mention that we do meter upgrades??

Meter Box Upgrades!

Last week, June 30 to July 2nd 2010, we did (2) 200 amp meter upgrades on Tuesday and (2) 100 amp meter upgrades on Thuesday. Then we did another 200 amp meter upgrade on Saturday July 3rd. In my 22 years as a contractor, I have never done 2 meter upgrades in one day and never 5 in one week. I’ve never done 5 in one month. I hope this is a trend that keeps going. Guess it’s safe to say that Point Loma Electric probably does more meter upgrades than anyone in San Diego.