Electrical goofs

 Just when I think I have a grip on how to wire residential outlets and lights I do something that makes me think again.

I think of electrical as a big loop. There is Hot...which is always hot because it's coming from the panel and is searching for a path to ground...which is supplied by an appliance or lightbulb that completes the circuit. I think of Neutral as only carrying current when the circuit is completed by an appliance. If a light is off or an appliance is not plugged in then I tend to think of the Neutral wire as carrying no potential current. This is contradicted by the nature of alternating current as a back-and-forth loop, but I ignore that to make the physical installation easier to visualize. The loop begins at the hot leg of the circuit panel where the breaker is. The neutral bar also leads back to the transmission wires so it's also a source of current, but I like to think of the hot wire as the 'start' of the power.

Lime Plaster

There's definitely an argument for leaving everything alone, like this wall that I know is drywall framed over a plaster wall because someone decided to hide problems rather than deal with them.

But the electrical wires are back there, and the drywall had been wet once before, and it's easy to replace but the drywall is currently in the way of my project, so I had to get rid of it.

Time to tear down this drywall

what a mess. 40 years of neglect just falls from the wall.  If I wasn't careful I would've dug a hole right onto the alley.

Although that looks like modern Romex wire, it's actually 12/2 WITH NO GROUND WIRE. I don't know why they manufactured residential Romex without a ground, but I guess they wanted to make sure it was useless to me.

The big question is what is this made of? I determined the wall is 

adobe or compressed mud, covered with a basic lime/sand mortar. It's not modern plaster and the moisture caused the mortar to crumble. The dirt wall is basically in good shape.
 

Do, I buy Type S Lime and some sand...

Mix up a paste of lime...then add sand until I get something like plaster consistency.

This is not easy to do neatly, and I'm not very neat when it comes to plaster in the first place. I'm dealing with a dirt house on an alley and as long as the mortar stays in place and dries up and keeps the dirt inside the wall, I really don't care if there are variations in the surface. So far, it's working. The lime/sand mortar hardens and adheres. I plan to tint some limewash to paint the surface and let net nature take its course.   

The main priority is replacing the wiring with modern Romex. I was recently able to replace all the exterior wiring to the first outlet or junction box inside the house...so all the circuits are independent for the first time in a year. Previously, someone ran 3 white wires from the panel for the hot wires, and a single white wire for the neutral wire. And then at the last junction box before a split of the three circuits they simply spliced into the single neutral with 3 wires to create the neutral path from the circuits. This means that when I shut off one circuit breaker I still have an active neutral from each of the other two circuits that is connected to the circuit that I shut off. Perfect! I did test the circuit and found no current but I didn't totally trust that a spliced neutral would not accidentally choose my fingers as the shortest path to ground rather than go back to the breaker box.

So, now I have modern wires from the breaker, in conduit, the correct color and independent for each circuit, AND there are no frivolous splices in junction boxes where I know I will never need a splice again. Previously, I had a splice in 3 different junction boxes for no reason. It was just splicing two short sections of wire, which is something I can't live with. And it was stranded 12 gauge wire, which I'm not sure is even correct for interior residential.

In the rafters is Classic knob and tube 10 gauge aluminum wire from the 40s or 50s. And I'm in a town with the biggest copper mine in America, and they used Aluminum wire. Some bitter irony right there but I think it was WWII that caused a shortage of copper wire so they used Aluminum before they realized this mismatch of aluminum and copper was a bad idea.

 I have to cut a hole next to each light and then pray I can fish or pull new wire from each switch leg back to a new junction box and then to the light. I think the worst that needs to happen is I cut into the ceiling drywall to facilitate pulling the wire. I'm not a fan of destroying drywall while I'm living in a house. I don't believe in sanding drywall mud when I repair it due to the dust it creates, so the best thing is to avoid using drywall mud by avoiding cutting any drywall. Irregular surfaces on obvious drywall joints is not a detail I care about now or ever. The trick is to make the joints so obvious it looks like it was on purpose. Or just cover them with some trim so it looks fancy.

Continued Progress

It took a battle to get this far. Wooden shutters, old plastic interior shutters, trenches, gas line collisions, pex, washing machine, sharkbites, sub-panels....on and on. It reads like a keyword seminar for home improvement. 

Oggy elected not to jackhammer into the foundation of the house, which is actually a wall since the house is 2 feet below the dirt. So, the PVC comes out at a 45 degree angle. I put a rock there in case someone gets careless.

Yep, a wired back-fed main breaker. And some branch circuits. You electrical geeks will say, "Where is the required retaining clip on the back-fed breaker??? That's a code violation!" Well, those things are hard to come by in ghost towns, so clam down. I ordered one and it's on the way and I'll install it asap.

Light! And a dryer that works. The last stage is the water for the washing machine.

Here's some photos of where I have water and how I have to get it to the garage.

conveniently placed water line is out of sight down an alley.

Any reservations about working around gas lines?

Breaker Panel Blues

The funny thing about seeing three circuits with a single Neutral returning from the house and 2 ground wires is that the house has zero grounded outlets or lights.  So do those ground wires go to some magic land where magic lamps need magic grounds?
I was puzzled by the single red wire going to the first breaker. It's 110v so why is it red? I figured they ran out of black wire, but that's not the reason and the real reason is staring me in the face. What happened is that the electrician who moved the panel and upgraded to 100amps replaced the wires 'in kind' and the original wiring shared the three neutrals. Yes, all the neutrals (1 for each of the 3 branch circuits) go to one wire nut and then a single white neutral returns to the panel. That seems shady but it was actually approved of long ago. Why a modern day electrician is allowed to replicate this method is a mystery.



I've figured out some of the mysteries about this Main Load Center, but there must be others. Please advise.

The first puzzle was the red wire to a 110v branch circuit. Did they run out of Black? No, all 3 of the neutrals are in a wire nut in an exterior junction box. Only one neutral returns to the panel. The red wire is a 'warning' that there are shared neutrals. But I thought one could share neutrals only on opposite breakers due to split phase, but by sharing all 3 neutrals #1,#3,#5, doesn't that mean breaker #1 neutral could indeed be live because it's linked to #3 even though I turn off breaker #1 since they are both on the same phase? 

I thought a modern electrician getting a permit to do a service upgrade to 100 amps would not be allowed by the inspector to omit AFCI breakers simply because the original breakers were not AFCI, but I'm wrong. I talked to the inspector and AFCI breakers were not required even though the house has no grounded equipment. Why? All the two prong outlets will need AFCI protection so what is the point of installing regular breakers in a house with no equipment ground? Those ground wires in the panel stop at an exterior junction box around the corner where all the cloth covered wires come together. The upgrade went no further than the wall.

What is with the bare ground wire directly to the neutral bar? That bare wire goes directly to an exposed water spigot in the lawn and then to the natural gas manifold. Doesn't that bare wire belong on the ground bus? 


I'm curious if anything is 'good' about this load center work?

The house is part adobe late '30s build. All plaster walls...2 feet thick in some places. My plan is to rewire the entire house by taking the ceilings down since it appears all the branch junctions were made in hidden boxes in the ceiling. 

But immediately I want to add the 2 neutrals so the branch circuits are independent. There is space in the EMT but they used THWN 12 solid and I can only find THHN locally. It's not exposed wire but the conduit is exposed before it enters the house. (Gives me an idea that the new entry point should be right behind the box and not through conduit around the corner.) I think 25 ft of THHN wire instead of THWN is the least of the problems here but others might disagree.