electricity - wiring a house

Here, were not suppose to touch electrical things, for safety purpose. But I have some basic knowledge about, so I do lot of electrical works in my houses. I have a 200 Amp. service box. We use 14/2 wire for 110 volts, and 12/2 for 220 volts. Black is live one and white is neutral. Plus the ground (nude wire). A 3 way switche is 2 switches in parallel feeding the same appliance. It's a OR logical state.

gotta house problem... our wiring is all funky methinks. You absolutely cannot run the dryer and ANYTHING else, if you turn on a light downstairs the upstairs ones dim but if you turn on an upstairs light, the downstairs lights get brighter. Brandon tried to run an electrical edger while the dryer was running and it fried the UPS for the computer and now if you plug the UPS in (to recharge) even when everything is off, we hear these big BOOMs going on in the walls. (I know... scary stuff). Today I shut off all the lights to run the computer but it refused and flickered back and forth (we have NEVER blown a fuse... scarier!). Finally I turned the basement light on to fiddle with it and the computer came on no problem. But, if I shut the light off, the computer restarts itself. ANYONE have ANY ideas beyond, "your wiring is screwed"???

You need heavier duty breakers (one possibility). Maybe even a bigger distribution box.

and the cost of some such venture?????

Breakers are $5 to $20 or thereabouts. You'd swap 'em in one by one. Open the door of your electric panel and tell us what you see there.

we saw a BIG mess and $2100 later, it could all be a bad memory

You had to replace your panel?

shall have to... haven t yet (for financial reasons)

Well the panels are dirt cheap, it's the labor to wire them, I've been paying about $100 to have my electric crew wire it up from scratch.

well, and to have licensed electricians do ANY work, they have to bring the house up to code... we are up to 1953 code NOT 1998. And so they'd have to replace the box, the aluminum wiring, move the box far enough away from the house... etc.

I am up to 1726 code. That means the electricians have stored me in a fireplug near the center of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in front of a store run by Eric the Red. This is miles and centuries away from my house. My TV signal only picks up Robin Hood singing Dartmouth campus songs written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The panel in my fireplug is a self-styled ampere that never really passed the electric Kool-Aid acid test, at least I don't think it did. Well, maybe it did. I could be wrong. Right now I'm on a grain elevator in Funafuti, Tuvalu, with a freaky guttersnipe who's really turned on by the topping on my icecream cone, and we're like going down 5 feet at a time before I have to push the button again. It's a pretty long ways to the ground, actually.

Yours is one house I'd love to see, Jim!

It was built by 3 giants who kept bonking each other's heads when they'd bend over to build themselves a doll house for their pet flower. I only live there when I'm low on photosynthesis and need a greenhouse effect. There isn't any electricity to speak of, yet the 40 sacks of peat moss kept in the kitchen have all been sat on by the Pope. Alexander Pope. They're pretty old. Incidentally, Alexander's pretty young. He put out a rap record this year. All the songs on it were about the best way to get a Jiffy Lube. And I been driving his car crazy. He let me because he just likes to walk anymore. He walks on sunshine and it seems to really enhance my chlorophyll. Jonathan Swift and Anonymous stood on a chair in the livingroom this morning and waved the ghosts aside. I am frenzied by all this phenomena. I try to hide it with my thumb. No touch now except by my touch. The sheer detail was required mood setting. Description of it is a form of anticipation. No, but no, I say to you, I float away on a paper boat. It's afloat in its intimations. Its surgically removed plutonium tatoos and its super-slippery toilet seats. As you can probably tell by now, I am really tired of watching overpaid, renowned, highly gifted, x-ray visionless decorative candle setter-uppers wading out in the water over to where I exist with all my arteries. Such emotion is never absent. I love you even if I don't, I love you even if I do. I disagree with this, but I'm not sure if I do. I'm embarrassed by my own. And my own is owned by the giants. Could you please excuse me (they are giant, hear them roar?). ....puffy brother man..... *squish*.....*squirt*.....[that's it----no more me].....finally....at last....

(*triumphant smile*) It's just as I'd pictured!

Donna just called me 'turtle breath'. she's the middle giant. i think she's really a witch doctor at heart. every time she talks, it doubles the size of the room she's in. i've always noticed when i look up her nose, i hear behind her the walla walla of many people. whenever i try to talk to her, she says this to me, "move closer to the mic." when i do, she gets it wet and up jumps the boogie. a dramatic element alright, it's pretty electric. and that's really how my house got electricity. it works the lights and stuff and even some of the more galvanic pulsing vibrant magnetic pixie dust. but Donna really got all that pixie dust in Zoviet France; brought it back here. i hope none of these words are harming you too much. my bowling balls bounce alot during times like these. ummm, pretty intense.

yes, it were. Our floating ground is more grounded now. I forget if I forgot to mention that the ground in our house was not floating very well or rather maybe too well. Anyway it was looking for a place to neutralize itself and, if'n it couldn't find the right white wire, it'd choose a light bulb *crack* or a stereo *pop* or and amplifier (What's that burning smell?) instead. One smart cookie of an electrician (who also happens to be a not-so-very-close- but-close-enough-not-to-charge-us friend) fixed it 'temporarily' until we can get an eight foot copper wire ground put in. So... Viola! No more blowing up stuff!

Always a good policy around the house...

'cept in the kitchen right??

I do not have any inflatable kitchen help, thank you very much!

A great source: http://doityourself.com/electric/

Yes, this is fantastic. I have a resident self-proclaimed handy man, and my bedroom ceiling fan is making the nasiest grinding sounds. I fear it will grind through whatever is the problem and come down on me in the night. I sleep right under it. This entire website is good. It covers just about everything. Thanks!