Weekend Update 8/11/19

[DKS]

Forgive me for butting in, but there are multiple serious code violations evident here. First, a breaker sub-panel must be in an approved box having easy, unobstructed access. There must be wire clamps on all wires entering the box. Ground wires must all be anchored to a grounded bus bar. All breakers feeding outlets or lighting must be arc-fault protected. And, that bank of light switches has two independent circuits feeding the same box, which is a huge no-no; any fixture box must only have a single circuit feeding it. Also, wires entering a box that has no built-in strain reliefs must be secured within 8 inches of the box. Finally, while there's no code about neatness per se, any electrician will explain the safety advantages of wiring boxes neatly. If that wiring arrangement was inspected, it would fail instantly.

I'd hate to see an electrical fire ruin your layout... or your house... or your life. (I have the latest NEC code book, in case you have any questions.)

 

[Specter3]

 Cool, this is exactly what I hoped from the combined knowledge here. Two breakers can’t feed one switch? Ok I can fix that. DKS the panel is in a clear spot with respect to other things on the wall. The box is a GE panel meant for flush mounting. I will put strain relief on the lines. On the individual boxes isnt the strain relief the sprung little “door” on the hole where the wire enters? I bought a ground bus so I will get that installed. There are arc fault outlets installed for each circuit. Those are the GFi outlets with the buttons correct?

Thanks guys!

[CRL]

I would strongly recommend you hire a friendly electrician to fix that wiring, or teach you how to fix it where it will meet code. I say friendly, meaning one who won’t rat you out if you’re entire house is wired that way.

Electrical problem can kill you.

[Maletrain]

The OP will have to reply to DKS, but, isn't that a "a new 4 space sub panel" and the OP says that one of the 3 circuits "powers the room and layout lights on separate switches at the door", so I am not seeing two breakers feeding the same wall box of light switches.

Yeah, the wires exiting the box should probably have strain reliefs on the exit ports, rather than just staples within 8" the of the box, since the edges of the metal box are pretty sharp, sometimes.  And, the ground wire connections look unacceptable for a lot of reasons. 

On the other hand, having messed with wiring previously installed by licensed electricians and supposedly inspected by the county, I have seen worse.

Buying (or these days, downloading) your local or the national electric code is a good idea for anybody messing with house wiring, especially if it gets into 220 VAC or connections between aluminum wires and copper wires or connectors.

[DKS]

The OP will have to reply to DKS, but, isn't that a "a new 4 space sub panel" and the OP says that one of the 3 circuits "powers the room and layout lights on separate switches at the door", so I am not seeing two breakers feeding the same wall box of light switches.

Re: two circuits feeding one box, he admits to as much here:

Another powers the room and layout lights on separate switches at the door. The third breaker powers the third switch at the door that controls the second outlet in every box for non lighting layout power.

Yeah, the wires exiting the box should probably have strain reliefs on the exit ports, rather than just staples within 8" the of the box, since the edges of the metal box are pretty sharp, sometimes.  And, the ground wire connections look unacceptable for a lot of reasons.

My reference to staples 8 inches from a fixture box was not in reference to the breaker box. This box must have strain-reliefs to protect the wire at the raw steel openings. Meanwhile, not all blue boxes have built-in strain reliefs; I commented on this because it was impossible to tell from the photo if the blue box had them.

There are arc fault outlets installed for each circuit. Those are the GFi outlets with the buttons correct?

Arc-fault breakers and GFIC breakers (or fixtures) are two very different things, and new basement outlets would require combined arc-fault/GFIC outlets or breakers. Please, look them up, or better yet, hire an electrician to do this. You can run into a lot of trouble otherwise--many municipalities require following current code for renovation, even though it's not required to retrofit existing systems to bring them up to code ("grandfathering"). Also... do you have a permit from your township, or local authority, to do the wiring? It's not always required, but it is usually, particularly when you're doing things like installing sub-panels, which isn't trivial "just adding another light or outlet" stuff. Need to look at things like load balancing to make sure this will function properly--you just can't throw this kind of stuff together. And even though The Railwire is a good source of information like this, it's not the kind of thing to depend on! You really need to know what you're doing before starting a project like this. Sorry to be adamant about this, but I'm especially anal when it comes to electrical safety.

 

[Specter3]

The house is 4 years old and thankfully much better built than my last place. The last one every time I had to open up something to fix an issue it was truly a head scratching moment where I went “Who the heck signed off on this?”. The list of shoddy corner cuts was a long one. I have gotten ahold of a buddy who is an electrician locally who is going to come bless my work when it is finished. I will be sending him pics and updates as I correct the deficiencies.

DKS thanks for taking the time to point out the issues. Your depth of knowledge in so many things continues to amaze me. I just read your housing saga about a month ago. I love your place in the woods. Put together with screws no less!


Thanks!

Ryan

[C855B]

I keep telling myself I'm not going to get involved... I'm not going to get involved... I'm not going to get involved.... Yet here I am.

Resolve these real soon, in order of immediate danger:

• One circuit per outlet box. Period. Your concern here is 3rd parties. If they were to put a tester in one outlet and turn off the corresponding breaker, they will assume they've removed power to the entire box. I would generally assume this, too, but now that I've heard justification for splitting the box this way, I will no longer assume that. It's OK to have one switched and one unswitched socket in the same box, but they must be on the same circuit.
• Proper, positive grounding to the breaker box. Wrapping around that post isn't kosher, your enemies here are normal oxidation and dissimilar alloys not intended to work together. You can either create a pigtail screwed to the box and then twist the grounds together, preferably secured by a properly-sized wire nut, or install a second bus bar for grounding screwed to the box - they're very cheap.
• Strain reliefs at the box entry points. Vibration - even from traffic passing on the street - will over the long term cause the insulation(s) to cold-flow where they touch the edges of the box.

OK, with the immediate OMG!s out of the way, we can talk about GFCI/arc sensing. GFCI/arc-sense breakers are expensive, and complicate things slightly by requiring their own connection to neutral inside the box. MY recommendation in this retrofit situation is somewhat old-school, leave the breakers alone, put a GFCI outlet in the first box in a circuit, and let it protect the downstream boxes. If you have a lighting-only breaker with no outlet boxes in the string, you can either install a box with a socket-less GFCI somewhere convenient before the switch (maybe in the same box with the switch), or pony-up for a GFCI breaker in the lug panel ("lug panel" being the technical term for a subcircuit box like this).

If it were me, I'd be throwing away that breaker box... ahem, lug panel... and starting fresh, including fresh breakers. But that's me. However, I have to add the one and only time the local code guy saw my work he commented "I don't have to worry about you," going on about having bigger fish to fry, so aside from civic social functions and "Hi, Bobby!" in passing at city hall I never see him.

Arc sensing is up to you. IMO, and purely IMO, it is belt-and-suspenders, and that it is a recent addition to code leaves me to question the motivation; the code authority of late tends to pile on the requirements trying to achieve absolute perfection at any cost, as long as it's you bearing the cost. OTOH, I install arc sensing in my own new work even though it is not required in our area.

Don't bother with your own copy of the Electrical Code. It's not exactly an entertaining read, you'll drive yourself crazy with the minutia, and until you know what edition of the code is mandated by your local code authority you won't be sure what prevails. Plus! - some local jurisdictions add their own requirements. There are decent D-I-Y books at the home improvement stores, so following their advice will keep you out of trouble.

... having messed with wiring previously installed by licensed electricians and supposedly inspected by the county, I have seen worse. ...

A lot worse. It took only about 10 minutes of poking around in our then newly-acquired layout building to come to the conclusion that the entire structure's electrics were to be gutted all the way to the utility's pole. Then there's this, from our now-demolished apartment building:



Yeah, it was an old building. The problem was it turned out that only one of those fuses actually went to something in use, but the rest of the branches remained live with cloth-covered Romex cut off willy-nilly in crawl spaces, with and without tape. That I know was done by commercial electricians...

[peteski]

I'm not an electrican, but that looks scary to me  -- don't forget the strain relief at the top where the wire enter the box ..

Not an electrician either, but I play (an anal one) at home. The way the ground wires are bundled also look iffy to me.  Ground is a safety feature - I would want to make sure it is the most reliable connection.

[DKS]

In truth, the only difference between me and a licensed electrician is the license. For several years I worked as an electrician's apprentice, and at the time I was also studying to be an electrician; the stopping point for me was the cost of liability insurance. Continued working on occasion to help friends or other electricians over the years, and I've lost count how many houses I've rewired. And I've seen some really scary botch jobs. Example: I was renovating a family room for a friend, and found that a string of daisy-chained outlets was connected to one breaker at one end, and to a different breaker at the other. Nearly killed me. My first house still had live knob-and-tube wiring. And then, I bought a brand new condo and found a half-dozen outlets wired backwards (hot wire attached to the neutral side), so yeah, you run into all kinds out there, and you've got to wonder how much the inspectors are getting paid to look the other way. A close friend of mine worked as a general contractor, and the stories he tells would curl your hair. Ah, but I ramble on...

Anyway, I agree with Mike about getting a brand new sub-panel. I'd also shell out the $ for combination GFIC/arc fault breakers, rather than rely on daisy-chained outlets. This will put a smile on any inspector's face, and it'll also make future changes much easier since you have the safety issues addressed once at the sub-panel. But, that's just me; as I said, I'm really anal about electrical safety.

 

[BCR 570]

A successful Saturday afternoon and evening project - a dozen new speaker enclosures for current and upcoming motive power projects:




Tim

[Specter3]

The sub panel is brand new. What should I be looking for to get instead?

[mu26aeh]

76 pieces of flex, 184 feet of track.  And it's ALIVE !

[DKS]

The sub panel is brand new. What should I be looking for to get instead?

Something like this:



It may look like overkill, but it gives you room for GFIC/Arc Fault breakers (which are twice the size of standard breakers) plus room to expand. And it's less than $20. Most boxes smaller than this only hold two breakers, and are usually too small for anything but standard breakers.

[John]

76 pieces of flex, 184 feet of track.  And it's ALIVE !

Nice ... just remember -- don't put the centerbeams in front

[davefoxx]

Nice ... just remember -- don't put the cargo beamers in front

FIFY