Is There an Electrician in The House?

[abunaitoo]

I almost sure most of the breakers in the box have not been changed.
Must be over 60 years old.
I know we did change the box out once to have more breakers.
That was about 30 years ago.
I filled up the last three open spaces around 10 years ago.
Maybe I should have them checked.

Anyone still see those glass fuses?????

[bangerjim]

I almost sure most of the breakers in the box have not been changed.
Must be over 60 years old.
I know we did change the box out once to have more breakers.
That was about 30 years ago.
I filled up the last three open spaces around 10 years ago.
Maybe I should have them checked.

Anyone still see those glass fuses?????

You do NOT want to go back to screw-in glass fuses. Magnetic breakers are so far superior there is no comparison. Sure, you may have to change a breaker out ever 10-15 years, no big deal. Glass fuses, even the "slo-blo" kind, are so easy to pop. and with today's appliances that love to draw 1800-2500+ watts each, you could easily be popping glass ones on a daily basis. They are NOT forgiving to surges like breakers are.

Just go out ever 2 years or so and cycle each of your breakers off for 10-15 seconds and then back on. That gives anything on that circuit a break from you fast cycling the power. You will have to reset all your DVR's/ovens/clocks in the house, but no big whoop..That re-seats the contacts in the breakers and will show up any weakened ones.

I got rid of all glass fuses 30+ years ago when I helped my Dad rewire his "fuse" box to a modern "breaker" box. Not too bad. his old house only had 8 circuits. Our current home has 28 circuits......all breakers, of course!

banger

[popper]

Yes, breakers do go bad and with the lousy China ones, more so. They have both thermal and magnetic break actions.

[Elroy]

Yea,but them old glass fuses had the great advantage of being able to be screwed in on top of a penny...Just kidding .I figure a lot of homes burnt down,and people have even died because of that bonehead decision.

[Scrounge]

I believe LED lights have to be wired correct.
I've never tried switching the wires around to see what it would do, but I would check on that.
If the LED works find in another outlet. it could be the switch or outlet.
I think.

You only have to worry about correct polarity on the LED's if you buy the components, and wire the light yourself. If you buy an LED "light bulb" it's already done. Bought a pack of these the other day, we'd run out and had a bunch of bad CFL's to replace. https://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart...UL18/303574541 Something like this, if you're making a custom lamp, you'd need to wire it correctly. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...QQWddQIQ%3D%3D and it takes DC power, so you have to provide a source of that in the correct voltage and current.

For household lighting, you don't need to build your own lamps anymore. Unless you want to. Some guys do for things like a spindle light on a small milling machine, or a ring light for a macro lens on a camera, maybe a DIY bore light. Haven't seen one of those online yet, but I have seen several of the spindle and camera lights.

[Scrounge]

Yes, breakers do go bad and with the lousy China ones, more so. They have both thermal and magnetic break actions.

They sure do! I've had 3-phase breakers loose just one phase of a breaker in equipment I've worked on three times. Gets interesting troubleshooting those, too. Back when I first started working on such things, lock out/tag out wasn't a thing yet. It could take a while to realize that only some parts of the equipment were getting power.

[Drm50]

There is nothing wrong with a good fuse box that is the proper size for the dwelling. Trouble is most of them in older homes are overloaded and spidered out to other fuse boxes. Some all electric homes built in late 50s had some modern fuse boxes built to handle modern appliances and electric heat. If fuse box is in good repair it is safe as breakers.

[375RUGER]

I have not read through this 3 pages.

Do you have arc fault circuit breakers in the system? they will cause outages on circuits where there is no fault.

[jonp]

Did you pull the outlet and check the box and the switch plus the lights?

The two outlets behind the washer kept kicking off for some reason. I reset them a few times and yesterday I finally pulled the plate off. It was full of ants. They were in the outlets and the nest kept tripping them. I pulled both, threw them and sprayed the box and behind it replacing both with new ones.

[jonp]

I almost sure most of the breakers in the box have not been changed.
Must be over 60 years old.
I know we did change the box out once to have more breakers.
That was about 30 years ago.
I filled up the last three open spaces around 10 years ago.
Maybe I should have them checked.

Anyone still see those glass fuses?????

I was just looking at some in Lowes the other day. They work fine as long as the wiring is good but breakers are better I think.
LED's do have to be wired right and in the correct order to work. I was in a tire shop years ago in North Bay, ON and a guy was putting LED chicken lights all over his log truck and trailer. Was having a time of it until I pointed out he wasn't wiring them quite right as I had just read about them for an off the grid solar system. He ended up giving me a couple of pounds of caribou jerky as thanks for helping him

[MaryB]

You only have to worry about correct polarity on the LED's if you buy the components, and wire the light yourself. If you buy an LED "light bulb" it's already done. Bought a pack of these the other day, we'd run out and had a bunch of bad CFL's to replace. https://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart...UL18/303574541 Something like this, if you're making a custom lamp, you'd need to wire it correctly. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...QQWddQIQ%3D%3D and it takes DC power, so you have to provide a source of that in the correct voltage and current.

For household lighting, you don't need to build your own lamps anymore. Unless you want to. Some guys do for things like a spindle light on a small milling machine, or a ring light for a macro lens on a camera, maybe a DIY bore light. Haven't seen one of those online yet, but I have seen several of the spindle and camera lights.

If you want to play around building your own LED lights these are fun to play with, equivalent to a 40 watt incandescent bulb. Need a DC supply, thermal epoxy, and a hefty heatsink to keep them cool(heat is the enemy of LED's). I use surplus computer heatsinks that I get cheap off ebay https://www.mpja.com/400-Lumen-5-Wat...info/32076+OP/ a pair of these on a heatsink will light a room up. And draw very little energy in the process!