Re-Volting Current Events

Electricity. What a good idea.

When this house was built, it had no electricity, of course. In 1893, very few homes anywhere in the world were electrified. It wasn't until the 1920s that even one-half of American houses had electricity. Instead, Dr. Hart's house had gas. Gas lights, gas boiler, gas everything.

That seemed to be pretty much still true until about a month ago. The house originally had exactly one fuse. For the entire house. Its mounting panel is still here, under the crawlspace. Sometime later, it got a proper service entrance (electrical panel) with circuit breakers. And sometime after that, probably in the 1970s, it got a second service panel. The electrical service was split in two, with part going upstairs and part serving the ground floor. That probably made it easier to keep the restaurants' utilities separate from the living quarters. When we moved in, we almost had the two panels combined into one because we wanted all the utilities on the same residential bill. Having two electrical meters (as well as two gas meters) confused the heck out of the utility company.

Anyway, now we have four separate electrical panels and about 40 circuit breakers. A long way from Dr. Hart's day. The first two panels are still outside, but we also have a new one upstairs in the kitchen that mostly serves the third floor, and there's a panel out in the garage. That one handles the garage lights and it has 220V service for a possible car charger, welder, or electric lift. We'll see.

But even with four panels, we don't have enough circuits. The older circuits in the original panel are overused, in my opinion. There are too many ground-floor receptacles and ceiling lights on the same circuit, so I've spent the last few months separating them into individual circuits. That means crawling under the house and cutting old wires, creating new "home runs" with Romex, and deciding what stuff goes on which new circuit.

And hey, as long as we're at it, why not add a few additional circuits, too? There were some unused positions in the breaker panel that just begged for new breakers, so why not?

The trouble is, adding new circuit breakers means reaching into the breaker panel and pulling wires... right next to all that lovely 110V and 220V wiring that's already there. To be safe, you have to shut down power to the whole house, and that's a nuisance. I've also worked around electronics long enough to know that some systems can retain power long after they're shut off. Call me a sissy, but I wasn't eager to reach my hand into that rat's nest of wiring. So we called an expert.

Lucky for us, our neighbor's son is a licensed electrician. Better yet, he's a former safety officer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, so this guy lives and breathes safety regulations. He's very friendly, but also very by-the-book. And he offered to come over and wire up the first few breakers for cheap, and then supervise while I did the rest. Deal!

He also taught me a neat trick about spreading Vaseline on the wires before you try to feed them up into the service box. I was having a hard time forcing the Romex up through six feet of conduit, but once you grease it, it slides right through. Nice!

Bottom line, we've now got a half-dozen new 15A and 20A circuits feeding the downstairs lights, receptacles, ceiling fixtures, and appliances. No more sharing of circuits. It's not that the old wiring was a problem or anything, but I feel better knowing that it's now over-designed instead of under-provisioned.