Builders Share

Wiring the Bath

I finished up the wainscoting on Sunday after having run out of material on Saturday.  That job is done. The pictur e on the left is two photos stitched together which means that weird bend in the wall is not an architectural feature.

With the carpentry done, is was time to don my electrician's cap and get to work hooking up the receptacles and the radiant floor heat with its programmable thermostat.

If you remember from a previous post (No Cold Feet), I had to fish wires through the wall for the radiant floor heat since it wasn't part of the original plan for the bathroom.  Now I needed to grab power from a nearby box that contains a GFCI receptacle and a switch for the vanity light.  The receptacle and the vanity light were the only services on the bathroom circuit (the overhead light and exhaust fan are on the upstairs lighting circuit) so adding the radiant heat mat on that line was okay.  The mat is a small one that only draws 1.5 amps.  The instructions recommend a dedicated circuit but grabbing power is okay as long as the mat is protected by a Ground Fault Interrupt (GFI).  The thermostat that came with the kit is has a GFI built into it, so I'm all set there.  If I wanted, I could have used the GFCI receptacle as the interrupt as well.

Getting everything hooked up is easy enough but it's often a challenge to get the wires all shoved neatly back into boxes so the switches and receptacles aren't popping out.  If you're not careful getting the wires pushed back in, you're likely to nick the insulation or dislodge one of the wire nuts.

Once I had the thermostat, receptacle, and switch wired, it was time to connect the circuit to the main panel.  This is where the stress level for the DIYer goes up a notch.  I wouldn't even attempt this if I hadn't been given a good hands-on lesson by an electrician friend. One misplaced poke, and that's all she wrote.

Connecting the circuit to the main panel is a matter of hooking up the leads to the neutral bus, the ground bus, and the breaker, all the while keeping it as neat as possible and staying well clear of the main.

It's remarkable how many individual circuits are required for a smallish modern house.  At this point, I'm up to 20 and I still haven't hooked up the range hood, microwave, or dishwasher circuits.  It's getting pretty crowded to work in the main panel, but I'm nearing the end of having to add circuits and having kept it neat, I've kept it accessible.

When I was done adding the bath circuit to the panel, I was ready to try out the heated floor.  I turned the circuit on and went upstairs to check things out. The GFI on the thermostat was tripped and when I reset it, it tripped again. I reset it again hoping that the second trip was a fluke but the interrupt tripped again.  My worst fear was that the radiant heat mat, that was now buried under porcelain tile, had a short in it somewhere.

When installing the radiant heat mat, it's important to continually test the leads for shorts so that you don't end up tiling over a mat that's defective or has been damaged.  I was diligent and did test it throughout the process, but something can always happen, and this time I was afraid it did.

I took a deep breath, however, and pulled the thermostat back out of the wall to re-inspect the hookup. It turned out that I had mistakenly combined the line and load neutral wires.  That would have been okay in another instance but not with this thermostat.  Once I separated the neutral leads, the thermostat and the heat mat worked fine. Whew!

The nights here are getting cool but with the programmable thermostat dialed in, I've got a nice warm tiled bathroom floor to greet me in the mornings.  When the temperature goes to -20 in the dead of winter, the upstairs bathroom might become a popular spot.

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Time for Hot Water

Having done a weekend repair job on the hot water heater reminded me to take care of something I've been wanting to do for a while... Add a timer switch to the unit.

The electric hot water heater keeps a tank full of water at 110+ degrees 24 hours a day while we use it only a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening if that.  It's always felt like money ill spent to me.  It was especially frustrating when I'd wake up a 2am to go use the bathroom and in the quiet of the night listen to the hiss of water being heated for use by no one.

Adding a timer was not big job but with so many other tasks waiting, I was able to put it off.  But  at the building supply store the other day, I was picking up receptacle face plates and ran across the shelf of Intermatic Timers.  Now, with the parts in hand, I had one less excuse for not getting to the task.

As I mentioned in "Hot Water Detour," the water tank is an heirloom from a power company lease deal which means it's on a separate electric meter and has its own main line coming into the house.  A switch box with a single double-pole breaker controls the power source.  Adding the timer switch simply meant interrupting the circuit between the breaker switch and the water tank.  The problem I had was where to mount the timer.

I wanted to avoid having to replace the entire run of cable between the breaker and the tank, but that meant I'd most likely have to add a junction box along the way in order to splice into it.  The only logical place to mount the timer switch was next to the breaker box, out of reach of the existing cable.

After mounting the box for the timer switch, though, I realized there was just enough room in the small box that held the breaker, to make the splice there.  That worked out well, however, I found working within the confines of that little breaker box especially stressful.  The 100 amp live main was always within a few inches while stripping wires and making connections.  Working in the large breaker box that serves the whole house is stressful enough, but the main is easier to avoid just by virtue of the size of the space.  The little box seemed to be shrinking while I worked, trying to remain extra conscious of every move I made with strippers, pliers and screw driver.

After a few days of using the timer, we've found we only need the power on from 6-8am and 5-8pm, 19 fewer hours per day.  There's a manual override on the timer switch for convenience but I don't expect we'll be using it.  Even when I come home in the middle of the day, the water from the tank is still plenty hot from its last heating cycle in the morning.

Installing a hot water timer switch is helping to shrink my carbon footprint but what I'm really looking forward to is comparing our electric bills after a couple of months.

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Electric Finish

You would think that installing receptacles in a bedroom is a small task that one might knock out in an hour or less.  It's just a matter of stripping wires and screwing them onto terminals right?

The task is not difficult in terms of skill but it has a high nuisance factor.  First of all there are the 12 guage wires.  If working with this stuff is not something you do everyday, your fingers get mighty tired bending solid copper this way and that to get it lined up, attached, and then stuffed back into the box. Our master bedroom needed 9 receptacles to meet the code; by the third one I was already feeling it.

Then there's the task of getting the receptacle screwed into the box.  Again, no big deal except that the wires are acting like springs trying to push the receptacle out while you try to keep the driver blade from slipping off and drawing blood from your finger that's trying to guide the screw into hole that's hiding in a blind spot.

Oh, and then, because you decided that veneer plaster would be more appealing than plain old sheetrock, you now have to chip away at the excess plaster to make room for receptacle.  Oops! Chipped away too much!  The faceplate's not going to hide that. Damn!

Am I complaining?  Actually, installing the receptacles was pretty satisfying.  A task with a clear beginning and end, and a nice pay off: power when you need it and where you need it.

And while I had the electrical toolkit out, I figured I should install the ceiling fan and finish wiring the three-way switches that control the lights and the fan. My plan was to have two separate three-way switches control the fan and fan's light individually. I had it all worked out some time ago, and the wires were all in place.  All I needed to do was to hook up the fan and the switches. 

Well, when I consulted the instructions for wiring the fan, it looked as if I didn't have enough wires going to the ceiling box.  Mild panic set in as I followed my instincts of second-guessing my prior work.  "Oh no!  Am I going to have to fish another cable through the wall?"  "How could I have screwed that up!?"

The answer was, I didn't screw it up.  The wiring diagram for the fan was based on the "optional wiring kit." My original plan was sound. After confirming my existing wiring layout, I hooked up all the switches and the fan and was in business.

Installing the A/C powered smoke detectors was held up briefly, however, by the annoying lack of mounting screws.  You would think that for $50 the manufacturer could include a couple of #8 screws for attaching the mounting bracket to the electrical box.  I was able to install one and run it on battery power in the interim.

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Central Nervous System

In order to install a new breaker box, I needed to disconnect power from the main coming in off the street. My friend Alex is a licensed electrician so he was able to remove the meter from the side of the house which provides the link to the power company.

Once the link was broken, we were able to install a new main feed from the meter into the basement (the old one was damaged), and then connect that main feed to a main cut-off switch in the panel.  With the wiring complete to the main cut-off, we were ready to re-install the meter and begin sending power to the circuits in the house.

I needed power in the house to keep the project moving along, but it wasn't convenient to complete the wiring at the time I was getting help from Alex.  We had pulled wires for all the downstairs circuits and pulled the necessary feeds for the upstairs circuits, so it was safe to start closing up the walls downstairs.  Alex showed me how to neatly wire the panel and completed wiring for one of the downstairs receptacle circuits up to the first outlet in the line.  Now I had both knowledge and power--a potentially dangerous combination--and was able to send Alex on his way.

Once the drywall work was done on the downstairs, I was able to complete wiring the remaining receptacle, lighting, and smoke alarm circuits.

A word of caution: Even the most experienced electricians are susceptible to potentially life-threatening mistakes.  While we were drilling holes and pulling wires, Alex drilled right into the old main feed that was still providing power to the old panel.  Thankfully the outlet that the drill was plugged into had a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupt so that in the instant the drill contacted the Main, the Interrupt tripped.  How did he happen to drill into the main?  When the Foam-Tech guys sprayed their poly-urethane magic on the foundation walls, they covered the old main.  There was no way of knowing where the main went once it disappeared into the foam. In hindsight, we should have made sure of the main's path before drilling, or even better, the Foam-tech guys should have flagged the path of the main before covering it with foam.

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p.s. The book Complete Wiring (Stanley Complete Projects Made Easy) has been indispensable in helping me through the maze of house wiring.

Planning the Operation

Being the General Contractor for my own renovation project was nerve-wracking at times but also gave me a lot of control over the costs.  As it approached time to start re-wiring the house, I was making calls to various electricians to feel them out on whether they would be willing to let me work alongside them while getting the house wired.

As it turned out, around the time I was getting ready to start wiring, I was acting in a play and met another actor, Alex Cherington, who worked as an electrician to pay the bills.  Alex agreed to help me after visiting the project and realizing that I would be capable as a co-worker.

The first step in rewiring Chez Melendy was making a plan.  I needed to map out all the circuits. This included specifying the locations for all the lighting fixtures, receptacles, and switches, and determining the amperage for each.  Mapping out the receptacles was easy enough but designing the lighting for each room, was more difficult. I realized that in order to do the work myself and in a reasonable amount of time, both in terms of design and installation, I wouldn't be able to get too fancy.  Leaving out the bells and whistles of a 21st century lighting design was not a problem in my mind.  My intent in renovating Chez Melendy was not to create a super-modern home with an historic shell but to create a comfortable living space that was up to code.

Mapping out the circuits took some time, and there were many revisions along the way. (The picture above is not the final plan.)  Alex's experience was indispensable in the planning stage, especially in keeping things within the local code.  And even despite all the planning, when the wiring got under way, there would be some necessary changes on the fly, like moving a switch from one side of a door to another. 

The best planning couldn't prevent a change in use later on. In an earlier post, I mentioned the outlet dedicated for the microwave that somehow ended up in a cabinet behind some wine glasses.  Even with considerable planning there's always the possibility of change.  In that particular case, I had to decide on the placement of the outlet before we had completed a cabinet and appliance design for our kitchen.  As it turned out, we decided to get rid of our microwave altogether.  Our kitchen is small, and given the amount of space a microwave takes up compared to the amount of use it gets, we opted for more cabinet space.  The dedicated circuit is still there if we change our minds and want to go back to using a microwave (and eating food that's rubbery and has cold spots), but for now the wine-glasses take precedence.

When the planning was complete, I could go around the house and place the boxes that would hold the receptacles and light fixtures.  Since I knew that my exterior walls were going to be thicker than the standard 5/8" sheet rock, I used adjustable boxes there.  These have turned out real handy for setting the boxes at the proper depth for mounting the receptacle and face plate.

When the boxes were all placed, we could start pulling wires, first by determining where to drill holes and then by pulling the proper gauge wire from the basement at the point where the new breaker panel would be, through the walls, and to the first outlet or fixture in the circuit.  Once the wire was at the first box, we stapled/secured it in place along its run, working backwards from the outlet/fixture towards the spool lying in the basement.  Once we established that first run, we could then take the spool to the first box in the circuit and feed the wire to the next one, again stapling/securing the wire along its run working back from the new box to towards the spool sitting at the previous.  This method saved us from having to estimate the length of the wire for each run; there was always more to pull from the spool if needed.

More wiring to come...

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Power (part 2)

The earliest remnant of Chez Melendy's wiring was knob and tube.  None of this wiring was still in use but knobs and tubes are scattered throughout the house on the framing members.  Knob and tube wiring is a system where exposed wires, held in place by porcelain insulators, are run along the house's framing members to reach light fixtures mounted in the center of a room. Wherever the wiring has to penetrate a beam or wall, a porcelain tube is used as an insulator. This style of wiring saw wide-spread use in the early 20th century because it was a safe and easy way to retrofit existing homes with electricity. 

It isn't always necessary to replace knob and tube wiring if it's in good shape, but the exposed wires have to be protected from coming in contact with anything such as blown-in insulation or fiberglass batts. Because modern living often requires use of attics and basements in ways they weren't used back when knob and tube wiring was installed, it's probably best to replace it.  It's also likely that any rubber or cloth that was used as insulation for this kind of wiring is now degraded and would have to be replaced anyway.

In the last post I said that the patchwork of wiring that we found in Chez Melendy wasn't a crime.  I should clarify that splicing new and up to date wiring to old circuits is risky.  It's possible that the old section of wiring may have degraded to a dangerous state even if it was originally designed to handle the amperage designated at the breaker box.

The next generation of wiring I encountered in the Chez, and the oldest that was still in use, was the two-conductor, cloth-insulated wiring surrounded by flexible metal conduit known as Greenfield.  This was all in pretty good shape.  It ran throughout the ceilings in the house providing service to light fixtures at the center of every room.  On each floor, within the ceiling, junction boxes radiated conduit like tentacles of a giant metal octopus.  It seemed  a shame to pull all this stuff out, but even though it was in good shape, Greenfield doesn't provide the continuous ground the same as modern Romex does and the likelihood for failure of the cloth-insulated conductors is a fire hazard.  I did, however, use some of this old stuff to wire a couple of light fixtures where the wiring is exposed -- a sentimental nod to Chez Melendy's electrical pedigree.

At some point the owners of the house decided to add receptacles to their electrical service.  This was accomplished by running an early version of Romex from the Greenfield junction boxes down through the walls to outlets mounted in the baseboard.  By adding receptacles, the owners provided both a doorway into the convenience of modern residential electric but also set the stage for a hazardous situation down the road.

The old Romex that was used to service the wall outlets was ungrounded and made of two-conductors surrounded by an asphalt impregnated cloth insulator.  This material was severely degraded by the time I discovered it in the walls.  It was dried and cracked and an accident waiting to happen.  I was happy to pull this stuff out and, if for this discovery alone, I was glad to have decided to gut the house and rewire it.

The next step in the evolution of Chez Melendy's electric service was the addition of a breaker panel and  a new circuit for kitchen appliances.  It was probably the need for the new kitchen circuit that prompted the addition of the breaker panel, and some might argue the Melendys would have been better off saving themselves the expense and just adding the circuit.  The panel may have cleaned things up a bit but for all the other circuits in the house, it was simply a new link in a weak chain.  The fuses that controlled the old circuits were probably safer for them than the new-fangled breakers.

This was the state at which I inherited the wiring. A 60's era breaker panel with 14 gauge Romex (smaller gauge grounding wire) feeding into older circuits of Greenfield.

Next time I'll get into my foray into re-wiring the entire house.

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We Got the Power

Reaching for a mug in the kitchen cabinet this morning, I was reminded of one of the large improvements I've made to Chez Melendy.  Behind the wine glasses in the cabinet is an electrical outlet that's dedicated for a microwave.  Why behind the wine glasses?  Well, that's another story, but the fact that the house now has modern electrical service is significant.  When Chez Melendy was built, residential electrical service was merely a dream for the future, and the closest thing to a microwave oven was a 900lb cast-iron behemoth that was powered by wood and doubled as the furnace.

When we bought Chez Melendy, the electrical service had the appearance of being just barely sufficient.  There were two ungrounded electrical outlets in every room and there was a breaker panel in the basement.  It looked as though the service had been upgraded sometime in the last 40 years because the cable running out of the breaker box was all NM thermoplastic coated Romex of an early vintage.  There was also some older BX cable (flexible metal conduit with 2 cloth-insulated conductors running inside) that ran out into the barn, so without breaking into any walls I knew that there were at least two generations of wiring in the house.

The plan was to gut the house. Besides giving us the opportunity to insulate the walls, gutting would allow us to install up-to-date electrical service.  Modern living runs on electricity. Using power strips and extension cords to supplement available outlets is frustratingly inconvenient and down right dangerous. 

As we found to be the case in Chez Melendy, the "upgrade" to early vintage Romex was really just replacing one section of a weak chain.  In most every circuit, the Romex would be joined at a junction box further down the line to either the old BX cable or an even earlier kind of ungrounded 2-conductor Romex that was insulated using asphalt impregnated woven cloth. 

And for all the circuit breakers that appeared in the electrical box, the distribution of power was a joke compared to today's standards.  One circuit fed the entire upstairs, lighting and outlets.  Another fed the entire downstairs, lighting and outlets.  Another fed the refridgerator and a single outlet near the dining area.  Another fed the furnace--and this one had been tapped into to provide service to a bathroom that was added on the first floor.  And finally, a 220V circuit fed the well pump.

Actually, my guess is that for an old house this scenario wasn't too bad.  As long as the breakers aren't overrated for the circuit, a patchwork of wiring may not meet todays code but doesn't constitue a crime either.  And the further I got into the demolition, I realized that the wiring in Chez Melendy was a study in the evolution of residential electrical service. I'll write a little about that evolution next time and compare the old service to what replaced it.

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