Seeker of Rock said:
arjoll, I don't disagree running new wire throughout is by far the IDEAL situation. But at the moment I have to go with an electrician-friend-of-mine's advice to let a "sleeping dog lie". He agrees with what you suggest too, but again it is ideal and right now and am not pulling that kind of coin to do that.
Fair enough. I was in a similar situation in the old house - bought it just after getting married and it was a mixture of TPS, rubber and cotton in condit. House was built around 1950 with a mixture of whatever post-war leftovers were around! The rubber stuff is the worst, the insulation just perishes and can be a major fire risk. Cotton isn't as bad (and in our case it was in earthed steel so any faults would just blow the fuse).
I'm not sure what TPS would be worth over there or what the standards are - here you can pick up a 100m (333ft) roll of 2.5mm2 twin plus earth for not too much (from memory about NZ$70 or so, about US$50). 2.5mm is the standard for our 20A/230V circuits (usually feeding 4+ dual outlets) but the US may use larger cross section cable because you're having to drag more current at 120V for the same power.
Check what the cost is for a reel, and look at running it yourself. Get your electrician friend to supervise and use the old wiring as draw wires. Do what you use often or anything that could be starting to get dubious first. If you just wire into the old panels etc then you're still making a huge difference to safety and I'm guessing you can do most of it for less than $200 plus whatever tyour electrician friend wants (a couple of six packs?
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Seeker of Rock said:
In my attic where the wire is run, no corrosion or peeling, just an old style of wire insulation, circa 1952. PVC-insulated is my choice, all new, new breaker panel, just re-hung and re-mounted my main service from the pole to my house so that is nice and secure now, GFI on all outlets, etc. is what I would do if I could. Got $5K I can borrow, man
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When we built this house all the electrical work - wiring, all outlets, switches, dimmers, light fittings, 20mm2 neutral screen from the street, RCDs, MCBs, panel, meter box etc - would have been the equvalent of US$5k, so if you take it one step at a time it might ease the pain.
Also remember that I've only ever dealt with roughly twice the voltage you are. Its going to stress insulation more, requires thicker PVC etc etc, so what is a major risk but relatively inexpensive to fix here might be less of a hassle but be more expensive (more copper and less PVC for the same power) there...
Seeker of Rock said:
Tell you what though, right now I'm just happy to have power after 4 days and nights without in 94 degree days and not much cooler at night!!
Yes, power is good. I'm back to 10-15C temparatures in NZ's late winter, from 20-25C in Rarotonga. It was nice to have to snuggle up last night instead of sweltering with AC and a ceiling fan running all night!
Did you escape the worst of the storm? Looked bad.
Seeker of Rock said:
Thanks for the heads up though. I agree with you but it's not something I can prioritize at the moment. It is something I need to do a tax return or so from now.
No worries. Just look into the pricing of the cable. You might find its more like one gig that you need to spend to make a difference!
Seeker of Rock said:
BTW, still haven't had a chance to get a conditioner. They have all different price ranges and this one does this, that one does that, etc. I don't need pull-out lights, just to protect and/or condition the current going into my gear. I would obviously like to buy the low model unless there is a valid reason to jump up $$. Any advice before I make the sale?
Looking through the rest of the thread (after a good night's sleep, instead of after a day full of a 767, a 737 and an ATR72), and putting the hurricane and power disruption to the side (you did unplug it during the outage?), I wonder how dirty your power really is? Do you experience frequent over or under voltage conditions? (surges and brownouts)? How is your PC running? Sweet or always doing weird things?
If your mains really does have phase and neutral reversed then you should get it fixed as soon as practical. A simple tester will show this - or you could wire a lamp between the neutral and earth (just wiring a 120v neon between the pins on a plug). If it lights you have a problem.
In a similar way if your building cabling is contributing to the problem - i.e. if your neighbous have good power from the same transformer - then you have a problem and using any kind of conditioning is like taking panadol when you have menangitis!
If you get frequent surges then a basic surge protected powerboard will help - any number of cheap brands are better than nothing, but throw it out when it gets hit. If you have frequent undervoltage as well then an APC UPS is the way to go. You should also talk to your power utility - in most countries there are certain minimum standards for mains power and they may be exeeding them - often they will put monitoring equipment in to see how bad things really are. Just make sure its not your wiring first!
Hope this helps in some way. As always its written by someone who has only had experience with NZ mains and YMMV
Weird, but after all it is microchip-controlled and computers do the same thing. Sometimes a simple reboot works the bugs out on my PC. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but a power conditioner has to be a must today. Looking at the bottom end Furman, no pull out lights, just conditioning. Any thoughts?
