And the people who did all that work wrong probably saved the current equivalent of $100 by taking all those shortcuts.
It’s amazing how much cost a little bit of scrimping can impose.
And the people who did all that work wrong probably saved the current equivalent of $100 by taking all those shortcuts.
It’s amazing how much cost a little bit of scrimping can impose.
I’m sure. The weird panel was like that when I found it. Of course no home inspection gets into that level of detail to make sure things are actually correct.
I had the weather head and conduit repaired when a tree branch fell on the service line, and pulled the conduit and meter box away from the wall. I don’t remember if the weather head was installed as badly before it was repaired, but my guess is that it was. I remember the repair was not too expensive. It would have been a great time for the electrician to up-sell me on the additional work.
Waking this up again after a new development. TLDR: still don’t know what is wrong.
This morning I found the car didn’t charge overnight. Tapped the app to start it charging, and got a message to check the car. Checked the car and found (surprise!) a charging error.
I reset the charger, and told the car to start charging, and everything in the garage freaked out. The lights started flashing, garage door opener beeped and flipped on and off battery multiple times, the status light on a GFCI outlet was flashing, and the WiFi went down.
Finally a repeatable way to cause my brown out problems. A few hours later I get everything ready to measure voltage at various points, tell the car to start charging, and it charges without any problem.
Also, I’m putting off replacing my panel and all that, because there is federal money allocated to modernize that kind of stuff, but states need to implement the rules on dispensing the money. It’s worth the up to $4000 rebate to wait until the rules get sorted out before doing anything.
Assuming the wiring or panel problems don’t result in a fire that destroys everything.
How quickly everything changes!
Last night we completely lost one leg. It was mostly off, but would come back enough to make lights flash occasionally. All the way off would have been better.
The primary panel was making a sparking noise, so I turned off the main breaker. I removed the cover, turned on the main breaker, and it became obvious the problem is in the connection from the primary panel to the subpanel.
There is a short line from the breaker for the subpanel which is then bonded to the lines which actually run to the subpanel. One of those bonds is making noise, and the tape, which looks like masking tape but is hopefully just ancient electrical tape, is burned. Turning off the breaker to the subpanel stopped the noise.
The subpanel is powered off, which means most of the house doesn’t have power. I have three 15 amp circuits which are on a covered porch and come directly off the main panel. I’ve run extension cords to power the refrigerator, freezer, and internet.
I got an electrician out this morning to investigate rebonding the wires, and he didn’t want to do it. Basically, everything is such a mess that he doesn’t want to partially repair it, so we’re going to do the whole thing.
So for the price of a good used car I’m going to get a new panel and weather head, the subpanel fixed, a code compliant ground, whole house surge protection, a 60 amp circuit for EV charging, and a new 20 amp circuit for the garage. State and utility incentives should cover about half the cost of the EV and garage circuits, and a discount on installation to do it all at once makes it worth the added expense.
I hate it when my (usually unjustified and exaggerated) worst-case imaginings turn out, and I’m glad there wasn’t any real damage.
I’m sorry the old panel couldn’t tough it out, but I’m glad the electrical issues will be all behind you soon.
It was a bit sobering when a few hours after dealing with our electrical issues last night a house down the street caught on fire. There was smoke, firetrucks, and unfortunately an injury (but they rescued the dog). So definitely had the worst worst-case scenario in mind.
The electrician knew the right way to sell to me, which is to be an area expert (not a salesman), and talk to me like I’m not an idiot. Really, I didn’t need much convincing that doing everything is the right, if expensive, move. I already had a few quotes from earlier, so no need to put anything off, and they should get started tomorrow.
All’s well that ends well. Hooray for a clear diagnosis and a comprehensive treatment. And for not including any actual house fire.
This is important, and I wish it were more prevalent.
I want this experience to go down like a doctor diagnosing a sick house and proposing an effective course of treatment.
Work has started, and the plan is to have at least the secondary panel running by the end of the day.
For the moment the internet is being powered by an inverter plugged into the cigarette lighter in the car. That uses about 12-15 watts, and I have about 38 kWh left in the car battery, so I should be good for working from home. When the lawnmower battery running my laptop dies, I might have to take it to a neighbor’s to fast charge.
Wow, that’s ugly.
Yep, that’s bad now that we can see it. I was wondering exactly what you had since to me “bonded” is a specific term in electrical wiring. That’s just a connection. I can’t even tell what is in there. Is it a copper split bolt clamp or just twisted together or a wire nut?
Yeah, I hate when something intended as a generic term is actually a domain specific term.
It looks like it is a split bolt clamp. Ignore the dirt, because it was lying in a flower bed, but it does appear to be corroded.
So I could’ve just replaced this for $10, and gotten another 40 years out of it? (Joke, the whole system so obviously needed repair, I swear the electrics in this house are by Lucas.)
Yeah, that’s a split bolt which is a perfectly good connection when properly torqued. But it looks like you have aluminum wiring which requires a connection rated for aluminum and each individual wire needs to be scrubbed with a wire brush and coated with a special paste to prevent oxidation.