Wait, what? I can understand having the electrical meter outside, for the convenience of the meter reader. But why does that mean that the electrical panel (the one containing the main breaker, and perhaps the individual breakers) need to be outside as well? In the houses I’m familiar with in the northeastern US, the electrical panel is indoors. Typically in the basement. Which is why we kept a flashlight someplace convenient so that we didn’t have to find our way to it in the dark.
Shift-Option 8 on a Mac.
The main oddity I notice in Holmes’ show is that Ontario apparently has no licensing system for contractors. The stuff he has to come in and fix wouldn’t be done by even the lamest home handyman down here.
Never seen nor heard of a toe tester here. I just put my hand in the shower stream. And if I want to wash my dog, I use the dismountable hose attachment (which has other uses too, I understand)?
The main issue on the Holmes show is shoddy workmanship. Lots of licensed contractors just jam things together unbeknownst to the homeowner, because homeowners are not familiar with code or building practices. One of the big things that most people don’t know is that electrical junction boxes, like octagon boxes, are not allowed to be covered in a wall. The homeowner never sees this stuff because once the work is done it’s covered by drywall. If permits are not taken out by the contractor, no officials come to inspect the work so as long as it looks good cosmetically most people never know the work is not up to code.
Horizontal panels are usually done because Canadian electrical code says that:
26-402 (2) Panelboards in dwelling units shall be installed as high as possible with no overcurrent device operating handle being more than 1.7m ( about 5’6") above the finished floor level.
Electrical requirements are always increasing, meaning the need for more circuits, especially during rewires and renos, that most now go with 40 circuit panels. These things are usually about 3 feet long, that leaves the bottom of the panel at about 30 inches above the floor, closer if it’s installed first then a subfloor put down in a basement. Also the horizontal configuration puts all the breakers at the same relative height.
IMHO, your ‘home builder’ didn’t give you your ‘moneys worth’. 
That newly installed electrical panel should have all of the breakers numbered and labeled, so that you don’t have to “run back and forth trying to find the right one” or “randomly kill power to parts of the house”.
Personally, I would be calling whoever installed that breaker box and [DEL]requesting[/DEL] demanding that they come back and ‘finish the job’. :mad:
But, that’s just me…
And thanks, Heracles for that info on the degree ‘thingie’. 
That was the first thing we did when we bought this place. Well, we bounced around and were very happy first, then I stood by the panel with a sharpie and mrAru wandered around with one of thosethingies and numbered the outlet and told me what the number was when I flipped the correct breaker. When we hired an electrician to install whatever we needed to run 100 amp service out to the barn the breaker panel in the barn got labeled.
I went to look - out of 42 breakers in the panel (Federal Pioneer, room for 60 breakers) there are 10 labelled in rough handwriting “lights and plugs” and 2 labelled “bedroom plugs”. The rest are pretty specific - dryer, sump pump, furnace, A/C, etc. 2 breakers labelled garage circuit 1, garage circuit 2; or the pair labelled counter 1 and counter 2- moderately useful. I remember looking and saying “oh, they labelled the breakers”; if I’d looked more closely, I probably would have said something. It’s mounted on a piece of chipboard over the studs, the wires come out the bottom and then disappear between the studs into the insulation. Pretty standard for the USA or Canada.
The current municipality is a bit more strict about building permits, licensed electricians and plumbers, etc than the previous municipality I lived in. When I bought my first house, the bank only asked for proof of title, and a land survey for title purposes. This one, we had built in a new subdivision so inspectors were crawling all over the neighbourhood, the door was plastered with various inspection notices and permits, and the builder and all subcontractors were fully licensed and accredited.
New houses here are built to bare minimum, since the new owners often spent their last dime and into hock getting possession. There often is no deck (a substantial savings, since decks can run you tens of thousands depending on size an height; landscaping is left to the owner and done a year or two later. Only the driveway is required to be installed. You often see cheaper, under the table contractors doing the follow-up work. A bunch of college kids and a rented bobcat to spread topsoil and lay sod… easy money for someone, especially if it’s cash and no GST/PST/HST (up to 13% or more) by a handshake. Toss in underreporting the income for income tax, and there’s a substantial savings to both contractor and homeowner. (We paid our landscaper by cheque, so he’s an idiot if he didn’t report the income) Our builder remarked that he saw a lot of decks going in afterwards with no permits, you could tell by the shoddy work (some visibly leaning, insufficient support posts…) either cheap contractors or DIY.
I have not heard of the cities or banks here being as anal as in the USA. When my step-sister in the USA had to buy her house from her (ex) husband, the bank gave her grief because room behind the garage was finished but there was no permit for finishing it on file with the city. If they did that where I used to live, three quarters of the houses would have compliance issues. Most of them, even the electrical and plumbing was done by unlicensed amateurs.
The person who bought my old house did so without a home inspection (as did I years before - I’d never heard of home inspections at the time, before the HGTV channel). Good thing, because the entire basement bathroom, I’d ripped down to the bare concrete, even jackhammered the concrete, re-arranged the layout and redid the plumbing and the entire basement electrical. Permit? I needed a permit? Who ever did get one? Almost every finished basement in this medium-sized town was done that way.
My upstairs bathroom, I paid a real plumber to come in and re-do the entire piping to the bathroom, including toilet. He never said the word “permit” either. But, they were damned good and their work was excellent.
I suspect a lot of the contractors work Holmes ran across were only mildly more competent than me.
The panel has the main house breakers in it. That has to be accessible to fire-fighters. We do not want to electrocute them as the try to put our house fires out. I suppose that one could put the main house breaker outside and the rest of the breakers inside the house if one wanted to. That option would be more work and thus, more money.
Of course, if you think about it, this is why “Holmes on Homes” exists. I guess it’s good for him there isn’t such a licensing system.
You gotta keep your huskies clean!
Also the alt key and the zero key (which makes a slightly larger degree symbol, which might not be a degree symbol, but it sure looks like one). 
40! My house in Melb. Aus has 7 circuits taking 10 positions in a 21-slot panel. I don’t remember the old house in Arizona having more than that either. (Incidentaly, the old house in Arizona had an external fuse board)
Even allowing for bigger houses and different lighting customs, 40 seems a lot. Do you have a seperate cricuit for every individual power point?
7 circuits in a new house would be insanely under code, just off the top of my head (for a house w/out gas, common in some parts of the country, unheard of in others - I know this isn’t exactly how they would run the wires, but I am just trying to ballpark):
- Dryer - 2 slots (for 240V)
- A/C, Furnace - 2 slots
- Stove - 2 slots
- Dishwasher - 1
- Hot water heater - 2 slots
- Kitchen - at least 2 single breakers for refridgerator/microwave/outlets
- Garage - 1, maybe 3 if you also run 240 for a welder, etc
- Living Room, Dining Room, 3 Bedrooms, 1 each = 5
- Bathroom - 1 each = 2
- Basement - 1, maybe 2 if you run the sump pump separately
You are already at 20 ish slots, without going into hot tubs, pool heaters, sidewalk ice melters, and anything else I could think of that you might need for expansion.
in new construction having 200A and a 40 breaker panel would be ordinary.
using 20 breakers, easily done, would leave no room for expansion in a 20 breaker panel. adding circuits as basements are finished or outdoors developed is common. even putting in 21 circuits means a 40 circuit panel (with what is commonly sold).
Yes, if I recall what the electrician said 5 outlets per circuit? Code says an outlet every 10 feet along the walls. In my 12x14-foot master bedroom 
I count 6 outlets plus the light fixture. You can see how fast the circuits get added.
In Canada the fridge is supposed to be on a separate circuit and a lot of people are using split plugs in the kitchen, not sure if this is code now as I have been away from it for awhile.
I had three separate circuits in my garage for plugs alone, plus two for a welder, one for the furnace and two for overhead lights (maybe not necessary for the 24, 4 foot fluros). When done properly it does not take long burning through circuits.
I would guess that the breaker panel would be inside the house so that it’s inside the vapor barrier and doesn’t get wet from dew all the time. Canada can have wild temperature swings. Electrical meters are outside, but then they’re designed to be out in the elements.
I’ve never seen a horizontal breaker panel either. Nor have I ever seen a ‘toe tester’ or even heard of one before this thread.
Your breakers should be labeled - but do NOT trust the labels. If you need to work on a circuit, ALWAYS test it with a circuit tester before touching anything with your hands. Just last year I installed a new dishwasher, and I went to the basement and flipped off the breaker labeled “Dishwasher”. Then before I touched the wiring of the old one I put a voltage tester across it… And what do you know? Live wires. The original electrician was sloppy and labeled the wrong breaker.
Another good practice is to cover the breaker with tape marked “Don’t touch!” if you’re going to be working on a circuit for more than a few minutes. Especially if lots of people are coming and going in your house. The last thing you need is for someone to try a light while you’re away for a few minutes, then go and turn on the breaker to ‘fix’ the problem.
Does the fact that Australia works off 240v power as opposed to the US 110v system make a difference to the number of circuits needed?
We have 10A sockets for 2.4KW loads, so yes, our wiring is different, but I don’t think it’s just that.
The standard number of sockets is still quite low – the house I am living in is 15yo and has 1 double socket in each bedroom – but each circuit does a whole area. The back bathoom, lounge, laundry and 3 bedrooms are on a single circuit for power, and another single circuit for lights. This house was built on the cheapest posible plan, but it does not break any building code.
°
Thanks.
I imagine that Australia is similar to the UK. There are rigorous standards here for electrics and no one can do work for payment without being registered. I can do minor work, such as adding a spur to a circuit, on my own house, but that’s about it.
My distribution board is in the garage next to the meter, which is pretty standard here. There are ten slots but two are not used. The only item that needs its own breaker is the 30 amp cooker circuit, all the rest are 20 amp for power and 10 amp for lighting.
The circuits are just that - a complete ring connecting a series of outlets and returning to the DB