My New House & Workshop

[Curious Hound]

A little time and paint goes a long way towards improving the looks of the house. Here's some before and after pics of my kitchen. I painted the walls, trim, cabinets, added cabinets handles, and switched out the light fixtures, switches and outlets.

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Beautiful! Well done. I like the farmers market sign, too.

 

[Curious Hound]

I always get myself in trouble when I use absolutes:

@ericbphoto is 100% correct, black, red and blue wires are all acceptable for use as hot wires on 115v circuits. But for purposes of this discussion, where @Jim Oaks is working with x/2 and x/3 wires, he will should have a black wire for the hot circuit. As a result, there is no reason for Jim to connect the red as a hot wire. I wouldn't want Jim to accidentally wire a circuit 230v or to attempt to use black for one circuit, red for a 2nd with the white as "common" neutral.

If Jim finds a roll of x/2 with red, white and copper, or if he installs conduit and pulls red, white and copper, then connecting red would be acceptable.

But that is not how the box is currently wired.​

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If he feel patriotic, and pulls red, white, blue and copper, he can use red and blue as is 230v power, white as neutral, and copper as ground.

Apologies for attempting to simplify without explaining why.

Wait til I get out the brown, orange, yellow and gray.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Jim...

Your kitchen makeover looks fantastic. I plan to show the wife when she gets home. We just bought a somewhat older fixer upper and I was thinking I would do something very similar. Just give it a cleaner updated vibe. Well done sir...

We're going from way to big to way to small. It's going to be a challenge. I don't want to put much into this place... it really is temporary.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

A little time and paint goes a long way towards improving the looks of the house. Here's some before and after pics of my kitchen. I painted the walls, trim, cabinets, added cabinets handles, and switched out the light fixtures, switches and outlets.

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All the "Fixer Upper" you are always watching clearly paid off!

I always get myself in trouble when I use absolutes

Only a Sith deals in absolutes...

 

[97RangerXLT]

A little time and paint goes a long way towards improving the looks of the house. Here's some before and after pics of my kitchen. I painted the walls, trim, cabinets, added cabinets handles, and switched out the light fixtures, switches and outlets.

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come up to Indiana and do our cabinets.... man that looks awesome!

 

[Jim Oaks]

Welcome To My Breaker Box:

I made a diagram to better show how someone has wired this breaker box.

All of the Romex is either 12-2 or 12-3.

The red wire in the top right 15 AMP breaker is missing the screw that holds the wire in place.

As you'll see, an outlet was added to the top left 15 AMP breaker and is hanging below the breaker box.

Also note that the Romex that you can see running down the left side of the breaker box and going in to the bottom is being used like a 12-3 Romex. The bare ground wire is being used as the neutral.

So from what I can see, I have (4) Romex wired up to run 230. This is puzzling because I only have (2) 230 outlets. Why the hell are there some many Romex's wired up for 230???

Otherwise I have normal outlets and 8-foot fluorescent lights. I plan to convert those to LED tubes to reduce power consumption.

I might have to purchase a wire tracer to try and figure out where these Romex go, and what is on what circuit.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Also saw this today:

There's a ground strap coming down from the shops electric meter that's broke.

 

[Jim Oaks]

I'm going to have to pull some outlets and see if any have a red wire. I'm wondering if whoever did this wiring split the top and bottom outlet on to their own circuit?

 

[Roert42]

I'm going to have to pull some outlets and see if any have a red wire. I'm wondering if whoever did this wiring split the top and bottom outlet on to their own circuit?

That's a pretty good idea.

 

[Curious Hound]

That system is dangerous to operate until that ground wire is replaced. You could end up with weird voltages. I really want to encourage you to replace the whole mess.

 

[Jim Oaks]

That system is dangerous to operate until that ground wire is replaced. You could end up with weird voltages. I really want to encourage you to replace the whole mess.

Define "whole mess".

 

[Curious Hound]

Define "whole mess".

Breaker panel, ground wire and connection (often supposed to be a solid wire for that purpose. Not stranded unless it’s the huge ones for big commercial or industrial buildings.) and make sure supply is big enough for the service. Might be wise to drive a new ground rod so that you know it is good.

We really can’t evaluate the rest of the wiring in the building without seeing all of it. From the condition of what we do see, there is reason to be suspicious.

To the inexperienced, this sounds like a lot. But the bulk of it can be done in one day by someone experienced. This is a small project. This is insurance. Bad wiring can ruin your day either through personal injury, death or loss of the building and contents due to fire.

 

[Jim Oaks]

I was wondering if I could just cut off some of the conduit for the ground and attach that ground strap to a rod.

I wouldn't mind rewiring the building. The wires run up through the ceiling but there isn't much space to crawl around up there. There's also insulation up there. The wiring comes out of the ceiling in conduit down the wall to the outlets.

All light fixtures are 8-foot fluorescent. I actually think I want to more a couple of them. The front section has a 12-2 wire sticking through the ceiling where a fluorescent light fixture was. The fixture is gone. There's another spot where I can tell there was a fixture and a hole for the wire to come through the ceiling, but the wire is gone.

Believe it or not, the power was on in there when I bought the place. None of the fluorescent lights worked, but the outlets did.

 

[Curious Hound]

I was wondering if I could just cut off some of the conduit for the ground and attach that ground strap to a rod.

Probably not. Like I said, they will probably require a solid conductor now. Many places also specify the top of the ground rod needs to be below ground level. Some if these things vary by local codes or local interpretation of codes. There are places here that now require two ground rods. You need official advice from a good local electrician before you waste too much time and money guessing or rigging something that seems like it should work. Any of us who know this stuff can only tell you generally what the code requires and what works for us locally. We’ll get you close. But there could be weird little things in your area that we don’t know about.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Probably not. Like I said, they will probably require a solid conductor now. Many places also specify the top of the ground rod needs to be below ground level. Some if these things vary by local codes or local interpretation of codes. There are places here that now require two ground rods. You need official advice from a good local electrician before you waste too much time and money guessing or rigging something that seems like it should work. Any of us who know this stuff can only tell you generally what the code requires and what works for us locally. We’ll get you close. But there could be weird little things in your area that we don’t know about.

Have I mentioned that there's no permits or inspections here?