My New House & Workshop

[Curious Hound]

This is what I did and was trying to describe... I'm no electrician... so don't flame me to bad.

Probably doesn't meet code but it survived a couple home inspections and has worked for the 10 years I've lived here.

View attachment 59877

The switch controls the upper outlets...

Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Curious Hound]

The guy who inspected my detached building told me that every circuit with an outlet on it has to be GFCI protected. I think it's kinda stupid... GFCIs have their place but not there I feel and it's annoying when they quit working. I just put one first in line on every circuit and used little pigtails from there... basically the hot is always connected... to keep the rest of the circuit alive if it trips, totally defeating the purpose of them but oddly enough it passed inspection.

I hate gcfi's. I understand their usefulness. I understand how they work. I have also seen and experienced places where they seem to be always failing due to lightning or something. Technically, a part of that building with a rollup door or garage door big enough for a vehicle could easily be considered a garage and require gfci protection.

 

[Shran]

Yeah...same... I had three dead GFCIs within a month of wiring my shop, one was DOA right out of the box. Smart Electrician brand from Menards. They all work at the moment but I will be very tempted to replace them with regular outlets as they die off. IMO in the bathroom and next to the sink in the kitchen are the only places that should require them.

 

[pjtoledo]

Yeah...same... I had three dead GFCIs within a month of wiring my shop, one was DOA right out of the box. Smart Electrician brand from Menards. They all work at the moment but I will be very tempted to replace them with regular outlets as they die off. IMO in the bathroom and next to the sink in the kitchen are the only places that should require them.

or the basement, any place you may be standing on concrete ???

 

[Shran]

or the basement, any place you may be standing on concrete ???

I am sure you could make the case for GFCIs on just about any surface... Around water, definitely, elsewhere, nah. There are a lot of what if scenarios for either argument, but I don't write the NEC, so my opinion is not real valid.

 

[franklin2]

The code in my area are now requiring arc fault breakers. You thought GFCI was bad. Accidentally pull out the cord on the vacuum cleaner while it's running, bam the breaker trips.

The code will let you get away without having GFCI in certain circumstances. An outlet that runs a deep freeze and is not easily accessible is one example they will let you not putting that on a GFCI. Important circuits that can't be tripping all the time.

 

[97RangerXLT]

The code in my area are now requiring arc fault breakers. You thought GFCI was bad. Accidentally pull out the cord on the vacuum cleaner while it's running, bam the breaker trips.

The code will let you get away without having GFCI in certain circumstances. An outlet that runs a deep freeze and is not easily accessible is one example they will let you not putting that on a GFCI. Important circuits that can't be tripping all the time.

all of the bedrooms in my house are on arc-fault breakers. so far no issues with them, but I have not pulled the vacuum out of the outlet while running either...

Now for the scary story...

My Grandparent's house in Southern IL was probably built in the early 1900s. My grandparents lived there from the 50s until they passed in the early 2000s. Now onto the electrical. it was 1993 and Grandma was complaining of the hall light switch not working, basically it shorted open, and would not turn off the light. No problem, me being 22 years old and knew everything, I went and got the correct type of switch and went to change it out. went down into the basement and yanked the 60 amp main fuse and went to work. pulled the switch plate off, and lo and behold... the switch was basically just set in the wall and wrapped in electrical tape.. no box what soever. went back to the hardware store and got a box. that was fun.

Now fast forward to 1995 or so... Grandma's oven went bad, and it was probably 30 years old so Dad and I went and got a new oven for her, and a new stove top. She had one of those that was mounted in the wall and the cooktop mounted in the counter. unhook the old oven... and it is supplied with aluminum wiring. same for the cooktop. that was a bit more than Dad and I wanted to mess with, so we did a half replacement of the aluminum wiring. we wired the cooktop and oven with the proper size copper wire to a new junction box before it went into the basement and hooked the aluminum wire up to the copper wire there.

Now fast forward to the late 1990s or early 2000's. one bank of outlets in the living room quit working, and due to the other issues that we have fixed, Dad decided to call the pros on that one. by this time Grandma was in the nursing home and since 4 other houses on the block have either burned down or were severely damaged due to electrical fires over the past 15 years, we decided not to mess around. Dad sold the house after Grandma passed in 2003. the new owners did a full remodel, I hope that they upgraded the 60 amp fuse service and redid the wiring as well...

AJ

 

[97RangerXLT]

oh and I forgot to mention... all of the lights in the basement were screwed into a floor joist and no electrical box, some of them with just electric tape on the wires....

AJ

 

[Roert42]

oh and I forgot to mention... all of the lights in the basement were screwed into a floor joist and no electrical box, some of them with just electric tape on the wires....

AJ

I was working in sombodies basement once, trying to find a loose electrical connection. Opened up a coffee can that was nailed to the joist, power went out in a couple of different rooms at once. I immediately left, because I didn't want to be responsible for burning their house down.

You see a lot of stuff like that around here because there are a bunch of houses that were build without any electrical at all. So you have one hundred years of electrical additions done by homeowners.

 

[Jim Oaks]

The Plumbing Saga Continues...

After paying a plumber $1,400 I'm still having issues with my sewer line holding water. The plumber suggested that the line might have a belly under the shop. I couldn't get him to come back and give me an estimate to replace the sewer line when it filled back up with water & waste again.

Finally got another plumber to come out today. They had a larger snake / auger and snakes the line. Cleared a blockage and I could hear the water drain. They ran a camera through and found that there was a 10 foot belly under the building still holding water. Said it will probably drain better now, but I'd likely have to have someone come out a couple of times a year to clean it out.

Quoted me $4,500 to replace the sewer line with about 97 feet of new line going around the building. Said it would probably be around $6,000 to replace the line if I kept it under the building. Relocating the line means I lose the bathroom in the shop. I can't afford to move it on top of the $4,500. Plus I paid them $504 today. When it's all done I will have thrown about $6,500 at this sewer problem this year.

$40 a foot in the yard. $150 a foot under concrete. They measured the distance around the building at about 97 feet which I would calculate to be $3,880. But I guess there's other fees.

I was really hoping I could get this fixed for no more than $3,000.

I really wish I knew this before I made the decision to buy this house.

 

[Shran]

Now for the scary story...

None of that surprises me... it's amazing how some of that stuff just works for so many years (until it doesn't.) The older generations were pretty good at hack electrical work too... when I was a kid I watched my buddy's grandpa tap into a power pole to get electricity in our playhouse... no breakers, no meter, straight from the overhead line into a light switch.

I've worked in a couple houses that still had functional knob and tube wiring in the attics. It is a little nerve wracking to be digging through attic insulation and find that stuff.

 

[Uncle Gump]

To bad there isn't a way to tackle the plumbing issue in smaller bites.

 

[Jim Oaks]

I'm trying to sort this out in my head.

I saw they hit a hard blockage, and then heard the water drain when the got ut open. The plumber snaked it, dis the camera, saw they were cutting a path through roots, and snaked it again.

The previous plumber had a smaller auger that would come to a stop and they would start turning it by hand to get it going again. Im thinking that they pushed the snake through more than it cut through. This one was bigger.

Im trying to figure out if my problem is really being caused by a belly in the line, or tree roots. I really don't want to spend money if I don't have to.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Just throwing it out there... and I'm not sure how it works.

But the home was inspected pre purchase... the fact the sewer line/drain issues were missed during the inspection... is there a way to turn it in on your homeowners insurance?

The other option is to just try to run it the way it is and see if it happens again... which it most likely will. But at that point you could rent a power auger and do it yourself to save money until it fits the budget better.

 

[Curious Hound]

The roots will come back until that section of pipe is replaced to get rid of the cracks that allow access to the roots. If he told you the distance to the roots and you know where the pipe runs, you can dig it up and replace it yourself. Thats just a few bucks for pipe and fittings and a whole bunch of sweat equity. The root problem is not likely to be under the slab, or at least not very far under.