Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Consumer unit is the thing with the breakers/fuses in.

A new socket would be added in the ring or a spur taken from a socket. I personally wouldn't chop into the ring main to add an extra spur using twist nut and tape. That's just me though, I'm no electrician, I'm just going on what I've been told is best practice.

I gotcha. It's a bit hard I think because we use different terminologies. Maybe twist nut over there means something different than what it means over here? I believe the consumer unit, over here, we just call them panels. Like a 200-amp panel. That's where the wire from the meter goes to. If you run it to another panel after that, I believe that other panel is called a sub-panel. For ring, I'm guessing you're meaning just a circuit, right? From the breaker to where ever the lines go? Not sure what a spur is.

Normally, if I can, I'll just jump from one outlet / light switch to the next, within reason. I try to figure out how much load each outlet will have at one time and not go over a limit. But there's times when there's no outlets to jump off of. When you want to run a new wire and yeah, you could open up walls or dig up ground or just splice into a wire. That's where wire nuts come in handy here.

[diif]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.
Yes, what you call the panel we call the consumer unit.
The electric is done in rings, lights upstairs is one, lights downstairs is another. There was one single ring main for all my sockets (excluding cooker). I now have 3 ring mains for my sockets since i made downstairs open plan. One for the sockets in my lounge and bedroom, one for my computer room and the original ring that's now smaller that covers the rest of the house.
A spur is a wire that is taken from a socket on the ring if another socket is required somewhere.

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

[dmill89]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.

Yes, these:


They are the standard way of joining wires in a junction box in the US.


Note: these images don't show tape being used with them. Unfortunately many "professional" electricians (especially "tract" builders) don't use the tape (can't waste a few seconds for safety's sake), but I always make a point of using tape in addition to the nuts to ensure they don't come loose, I also like to tape the screws/exposed wires on outlets/fixtures (after the connection has been made of course), especially with metal boxes, to prevent possible shorts.

Like this:

and this:

[budm]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Wirenuts in UK?
http://www.idealindustries.co.uk/ind...rticleid=10819

http://www.idealindustries.co.uk/ind...pk=18070&fk=57

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

not on mains.

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

twist-nut?
damn your "safety standards" are low!
if i ever caught someone using those i would hurt them!

I'm glad you don't live around me I would hate to get hurt. What would you do solder the wires?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

that would be illegal in the u.k. anyway.

no twists, no tape, and no inline splices or couplers.
if you break the ring, you need to wire from each nearby original socket to the new one with a single length of cable to re-create the ring.
.

When you guys say ring, you just mean the circuit right? The receptacle would be the midpoint of the ring, right? The juice is going down the black wire (or white if we're really old) and then it returns through the white. That's what you guys mean when you say ring, right?


So, just so I have this right, you guys only go from the outlet / switch / load / whatever to another outlet / switch / load / whatever from the breaker back to the breaker? It's always one continuous wire from the breaker to whatever load, it never splits or anything, and then if you need more, you always run off another device? You never just splice into a wire, throw up a junction box and go from there?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Twist nuts are those coloured domes i see them using in China electronics for joining wires ? definitely not used by electricians over here.
Yes, what you call the panel we call the consumer unit.
The electric is done in rings, lights upstairs is one, lights downstairs is another. There was one single ring main for all my sockets (excluding cooker). I now have 3 ring mains for my sockets since i made downstairs open plan. One for the sockets in my lounge and bedroom, one for my computer room and the original ring that's now smaller that covers the rest of the house.
A spur is a wire that is taken from a socket on the ring if another socket is required somewhere.

Thank you for explaining that to me! I understand now!

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

like in the foto.
power exits the panel , passes through all the sockets in series, then goes back to the same breaker.

it means you have less risk of arcing or fire from a loose wire, and you can draw more current from a socket than the individual wire is rated at. (not that you really should - but it can happen)

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Yes, these:


They are the standard way of joining wires in a junction box in the US.


Note: these images don't show tape being used with them. Unfortunately many "professional" electricians (especially "tract" builders) don't use the tape (can't waste a few seconds for safety's sake), but I always make a point of using tape in addition to the nuts to ensure they don't come loose, I also like to tape the screws/exposed wires on outlets/fixtures (after the connection has been made of course), especially with metal boxes, to prevent possible shorts.

Like this:

and this:

I thought taping the receptacle was considered amature. Is that not true? A person on an electrical DIY blog once told me this. I was under the impression he was a "professional". I just wanted some clarification on this. I think the general train of thought goes something a bit like this. A properly installed receptacle will not require electrical tape and now-a-days, most work boxes are plastic. This isn't the first time I've seen where people have claimed taping the outlets was considered amature for some reason. I just never questioned it until now.

Thanks!

[rhomanski]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

When you connect a coax plug on, say an antenna on an airplane, you are supposed to tape it to keep moisture out and to keep it from unscrewing, then put tie chord around the tape to keep it in place. Regulations, you know.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

like in the foto.
power exits the panel , passes through all the sockets in series, then goes back to the same breaker.

it means you have less risk of arcing or fire from a loose wire, and you can draw more current from a socket than the individual wire is rated at. (not that you really should - but it can happen)

So hold up, your black and red are hot and your green is neutral? There's no ground? Here, the picture would be similar, but I don't ever remember making the wire go back to the breaker! We generally deal with 120 and sometimes 240 and even in more not some common in the house situations, 480. But we have a black, white and bare wire for the normal 120 outlets. The black is hot, the white is neutral and the bare wire is gnd. Sometimes, the ground wire is green. Because the white is generally neutral, we can just wire it to the receptacle. If we don't want to go off of it, we don't have to and we don't have to wire it back to the box. The white wire is what completes the circuit.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

When you connect a coax plug on, say an antenna on an airplane, you are supposed to tape it to keep moisture out and to keep it from unscrewing, then put tie chord around the tape to keep it in place. Regulations, you know.

Is that a reason to tape the outlets / switches / etc? What's the general consensus here?

We should start a poll! Tape the receptacles / switches or waste of tape? What do you guys think?

Also, I remember the first time I played with a 3-way switch. Normally, are the hots on different breakers? This one had one hot on one breaker, one hot on another breaker. It was my buddy's house. Our friend who he paid to fix it (a proclaimed master electrician) didn't have a clue what he was doing and after he rewired it (he was hired to replace the old wire with the new romex style), they flipped the breaker and there was smoke, but it didn't trip, which was good. Anyway, they called me. My buddy who owned the house, he said they flipped the breaker because of the smoke. I said let's see what we got up here. I'm not sure if there ever was any smoke or not. I'm not sure how something could smoke like that and not trip a breaker. I ended up getting it all hooked up correctly but while I was working on it, one of the wires, the red one I think, was live. I grabbed that and it knocked me off the chair! The guys came running out because of all the swearing I was doing but man, that 120 really wakes you up! You don't really remember how much until you touch it. But that's got a nice tickle to it, I'll say that much!

I've heard stories of old people who used to test 120 with their fingers. Not sure if it's true or not, but that'd be insane if it was, wouldn't it?

[kaboom]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

When you guys say ring, you just mean the circuit right? The receptacle would be the midpoint of the ring, right? The juice is going down the black wire (or white if we're really old) and then it returns through the white. That's what you guys mean when you say ring, right?

Their "ring ckt" is the equivalent of most POCO's "loop feeds."

Loop feeds aren't allowed by the NEC- first, they create parallel paths, second, you can have two hots/ungroundeds (and cross section of both) but only one neutral/ungrounded (half the return path ampacity of the hot side), which won't be obvious til the ckt is fully loaded. The side (neutral/ungrounded in this case) with reduced ampacity will burn up and the breaker won't trip til there's a dead short (after insulation/house burns up) or ground fault if ckt fed by a GFCI.

Imagine a 15A ckt with #14 CU at 60 degrees C. Typical lower power circuit. Now imagine that same #14 CU, but on a 30A bkr. Take the ckt out of the panel, around/to the load, then without dead-ending the circuit, bring the same cable back to the panel. Once back, tie both blacks from this ckt together and tie them to that 30A bkt, and land both whites on the neutral bus. Land both EGCs on ground bus (if subpanel) or neutral/GND bus if main panel.

If one of those #14s opens on one side (bad backstab, etc), the circuit will still "work," but its now-limited ampacity will not be obvious!

OTOH, on a "branch" (spur if you must) circuit, if any current carrying conductor opens up, the circuits simply goes dead.

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

Yes, these:


They are the standard way of joining wires in a junction box in the US.


Note: these images don't show tape being used with them. Unfortunately many "professional" electricians (especially "tract" builders) don't use the tape (can't waste a few seconds for safety's sake), but I always make a point of using tape in addition to the nuts to ensure they don't come loose, I also like to tape the screws/exposed wires on outlets/fixtures (after the connection has been made of course), especially with metal boxes, to prevent possible shorts.

Like this:

and this:

So one can see the incorrect way of putting wire nuts on the above wires. Twisting the wires around and around each other is not what one wants to do. The one with the yellow wire nut with tape is how the final look is suppose to be. This is done by stripping the wire first to length that can then be twisted with a pair of Klein Linesman pliers and only the bare ends should be twisted. One can hold the wires by the insulation when the wires are twisted on the bare ends. If the end result is to long to fit in the plastic housing then using the Klein pliers cutting edge and cut the extra off. The wires should be twisted around each other a least two full turns best is three turns. Very tightly done. Then the wire nut is screwed on to the wire and the threads of the wire nut will cut into the wire and tighten as you hold the insulation of the wires near the wire nut You tighten to a point that one can not tighten anymore without causing the insulating wires to twist while holding the insulting wires with your other hand.

[kaboom]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

I've had wires twist outside the wirenut like in the middle pic (not to that degree), but that can work in your favor when pushing them back into the box. The main thing is to have the bare ends twisted together first, then tighten the wirenut onto it. The "pre" twisting is the actual splice; tightening the wirenut "preloads" the splice, as you're actually tensioning the spring inside- the wirenut "keeps" the splice together.

When you've "run out" of spring when tightening the wirenut onto the wires, and overtwist the wires outside the wirenut, you are not further tensioning the spring; at this point, you're no longer tightening the actual splice.

If you really get carried away, you'll break one or more wires off inside the wirenut. At this point, since they're all twisted together outside the nut, you can't pull to see if they're tight; load up that broken-off-inside wire and watch it heat up...

That taped yellow with three black wires doesn't look "pretwisted." See how each wire comes out at a different angle? Not casting aspersions, but every non-twisted bunch I've taken apart looked that way.

The internal spring isn't there to "dig into" the wires and carry current, it's typically steel (poor conductor) and of little cross section; the splice should be what carries current. Again, the wirenut is just a "keeper" and insulation.

[keeney123]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

you combine wires traditionally with a ceramic terminal block or bakelite junction box.

although now, you can do low current (under 25a) with helacon.

So from what I see is the connection is relying on a piece of metal coming in contact with the bare wire such as to pierce into the wire by spring tension. I find a problem with this as it is relying on one plane of the metal to contact the wire and each wire is done in this fashion. Wire contacting any metal connector will oxidize between the metal and the wire. This will create a hot spot and each connection in the connector will have this problem. Even copper wire wrap on other copper wire will oxidize to some extent. With the wire nut the screwed on effect pushes the copper tightly onto itself with 2 turns on has 720 degrees of contact of copper wires on copper wire held in place by a metal screw that then is black taped to secure the wire not to the insulation. And if done to a point where there is no air to get to the connection it will insulate and also protect.

Kaboom The problem the I have with the middle picture is it is a pain to undue and to some point you are creating a magnetic field. And I suppose if one is a moose one could twist the wire nuts to a point of over tightening.

[stj]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

If one of those #14s opens on one side (bad backstab, etc), the circuit will still "work," but its now-limited ampacity will not be obvious!

yes, but if the cable is rated the same as the breaker, the ring can handle twice that unless it's interupted.

so it's better - if you dont use it as an excuse to cheap-out on the cable.

[kaboom]

Re: Adding a bigger panel for a new house.

yes, but if the cable is rated the same as the breaker, the ring can handle twice that unless it's interupted.

As it always should be, branch fed or loop fed... but that brings us to:

so it's better - if you dont use it as an excuse to cheap-out on the cable.

Does that seem to be a problem "over there" by you? I hope not- almost as bad as continuing to use higher rated fuses til it "stops blowing."



Though I'll say that a loop fed 15A ckt with #14s at 60C could have less voltage drop than a 15A branch ckt fed with #12. Depending on total length of each. Two parallel #14s have more area/circular mils than a single #12.

One use I can see is addressing an overly-long #14 ckt with excessive voltage drop, where load calc wasn't done or impedance of #14 ignored for "stupidity" reasons. You've no longer got access to re-run that #14 (building finish, etc), but you do have access to the last box on the ckt and can get back to the panel from there. So you could (in theory) turn the branch/spur ckt into a loop/ring ckt, by looping from that last box to the panel and originating ckt bkr.

But loop/ring ckts are rare under the NEC.