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New Re: Electricity question
1) Every home single-phase AC power circuit should have 2 wires (hot and neutral). Something sounds off about your description. If it really only has one wire, then they must be using the conduit as the neutral?? It may "work" but I'm pretty sure it's dangerous and not code compliant.

It would be best to have someone local who knows about home wiring look at a picture and offer advice.

2) Yes, you should always turn off the relevant breaker, and check to see that it really is unpowered (using something like this - the neon lamp glows when AC power is nearby) when working on wiring.

3) When the power is off, you can do what you need to with it.

HTH a little.

Be safe and be careful - you don't want to burn the place down to try to save a few bucks.

Best wishes,
Scott.
New It's not the money
Even though of course, I don't want to waste any. It's next to impossible to get an electrician out here without a 6 week to 3-month wait. And if they have a problem then it's another 2 to 4 weeks. Or forever when they never come back. Which is what happened in my shed.

No thanks.

I double-checked everything and I turned it off. I have no need for anything on that circuit, it's a few wall outlets and it's two ceiling lights that I hate.

My newly installed outlets are obviously different and I run some high power distribution out of them to make sure everything is balanced correctly. I already don't use those original outlets. But I will cover the plugs and label the circuit breaker accordingly to make sure nobody gets too confused.

I have ordered a 10 pack of LED lights that look kind of like a 2-ft fluorescent light that I can string together anywhere I want.

I made sure they were directional. It's a long strip of single LEDs facing one direction. That gives me the ability to aim it without any backlight or scatter, which means no indirect light being caught in the corner of my eye. The current ones blind me all the time.

But I won't just string them together. I will intersperse them in such a fashion with remote control that one and then three will be on so we can have the gentle indirect to the corner of the ceiling ambient lighting or where the wall meets the ceiling or we can have the holy shit it's bright find something on the floor lighting. While still being indirect.

Now do that to two more sets of lights and you have total coverage with the various levels of ambiance and remote control required to replace everything from the previous lights.

How much would three sets of this cost from an electrician?

You and I have a different idea of what a few bucks is.

It'll take six remote plugs to have the level of control I want, which I already have, spare. It will take a few remote put anywhere simple switches on the walls, which I'm happy to buy.

We've had the remote plug discussion before so you know all the things I can do once it's in.

The 10 pack of lights was 80 bucks. I'll have them tomorrow and I'll have everything except the remote switches installed since they require the hub which is ordered and on its way. But I know how to program other plugs to trigger things to turn on and off. So I have the switches here as well.

I'll hide the wires tight white flat as possible rectangular conduit and it will be lovely.

This will all be done for about a total of 150 bucks when you include all the possible remote control stuff and it'll be done 90% of the way in the next two days. All while someone else is anticipating spending a few grand with an electrician to deal with the wiring in the difficult to reach places, if he ever shows up at all.
Expand Edited by crazy Jan. 18, 2025, 11:52:47 PM EST
New 👍
New Disconnect at the first outlet, use wire nuts.
Remove the outlet. Replace the outlet cover plate with a blank cover. That takes care of the basics. Also consider removing and capping the downstream switch so that thing doesn't cause confusion down the road. On the other end, use e.g. red electrical tape over the breaker in the off position to make things obvious.

But Scott is right: there should be a white(ish) neutral wire [and hopefully a bare copper ground wire...]
New Hehehe hahaha bend over, gasp
So I used to have a kitchen wall and an oven and a bunch of cabinets and now I have wide open space with some rolling carts filled with various cooking gear and stacks of microwave and huge pizza size toaster oven and the coffee maker AND the toaster and the 1800 w induction hot plates, plural, and the lights, oh my God the lights that I've just (over the last 4 hours) plugged in and programmed via the various plugs and wall switches, and the heaters, I pulled out a massive 240 v wall heater that I'm about to cut and cap off. We're not using that anymore. These little plug-in radiators and tower oscillating heaters are just for us. And I could put two of them on high simultaneously on one of the lines I just gained. I have another line that just came out of this deal from that oven. Plus I have the three Hi amp lines already.

And you think I had to pull a wall plate? And play with a plug?

Also, can you tell I've increased my tramadol relative to my Soma, which are daily medications, which in turn pushed my norepinephrine a bit so I am moving along nicely on multiple projects.

I turned off the circuit breaker. I clipped the big fat flat multi-wire hard to bend cord. We got black and we got white and we got wrapped by paper.

I solidly wrapped those wires in clear Gorilla tape. I love that stuff. T-Rex is actually better but gorilla is cheaper and can be used for 90% of the stuff that I needed for, and then I'll move to T-Rex and use that if I want to pay some more. I then wrapped them all tight in a bundle and shoved them back in the soffit. I cut the wires to the lights and I shoved them back up there as well. I might reuse that.

Wire nuts? That's for people who might ever turn that circuit on again. I don't trust the wires in these walls. I want conduits wrapped around my house for all wires in the future. I already have four of them wrapping around my house and popping right out the wall where I want them.

The plugs are all wide blade and have a light and have a circuit breakers built into the outlet as well as back at the circuit breaker box so if I ever trip one I know which one immediately and I hit it and I can redistribute accordingly. This is rare. This is exceptionally rare.

I will turn off every interior circuit that I haven't installed myself/ with the electrician of course. Actually, the heater is a new install right before I moved in so I might trust that line as long as an electrician blesses it. That's 40 amps already on the circuit breaker. The other line that I just turned off is 20 amps. That gives me 60 amps to play with, 40 amps already wired.

I saved the old outlet and a chunk of the counter I ripped out as a souvenir. I'm going to put them on a shadow box on the wall.
New You taking pictures along the way?
--

Drew
New How many megabytes of attachments do you want?
New Okay, several emails sent with lots of pictures
Please let me know if you got them. I'm never sure. I've got at least half a dozen emails that should be in my sent folder and people get them, at least they tell me they do, but they're not in my sent folder.

So I'm a bit annoyed and I think it has to do with when there's large attachments.
New Gmail or Yahoo?
Don't see anything in Gmail, got to reset the Yahoo password to check it.
--

Drew
New Neither
Cooking like your grandmother

Does this mean the last several emails I sent you went off to /Dev/null?
Expand Edited by crazy Jan. 23, 2025, 10:53:52 AM EST
New Not null, but I don't check that one often
Since I haven't been posting to the blog I haven't been checking that one.
--

Drew
     Electricity question - (crazy) - (12)
         I'm killing the circuit - (crazy)
         Re: Electricity question - (Another Scott) - (10)
             It's not the money - (crazy) - (9)
                 👍 -NT - (Another Scott)
                 Disconnect at the first outlet, use wire nuts. - (scoenye) - (7)
                     Hehehe hahaha bend over, gasp - (crazy) - (6)
                         You taking pictures along the way? -NT - (drook) - (5)
                             How many megabytes of attachments do you want? -NT - (crazy)
                             Okay, several emails sent with lots of pictures - (crazy) - (3)
                                 Gmail or Yahoo? - (drook) - (2)
                                     Neither - (crazy) - (1)
                                         Not null, but I don't check that one often - (drook)

Just give me credit in the Garamonde-Flighty footnotes.
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