OK, I’m a patzer in the area of electrical work (OK, perhaps just lacking the practice necessary to own a high level of skill, ‘K? :-)). I know that. It means, for one thing, that I work very, very slowly when working with electrical wiring, etc. BTDT as a young kid with the live socket thingy. *heh* It also means… tools. As in, my better tools are designed for car mechanicking, plumbing and wood working.
The “proper” tools for doing electrical work are fairly expensive. I’m talking about the screwdrivers and pliers, etc. (I have circuit testers that work for the simple electrical circuits I work on around the house. Yeh, they’re overkill, but I’ve also found them useful for electronics stuff.) Since the electrical work I have planned will end when everything at twc central’s finished, I didn’t want to spend $20 for a pair of pliers, etc., but just have some tools that’d do the job–safely. Of course, almost all of it could be done with uninsulated tools as long as I were pretty darned careful (shut down circuits, etc.), but rewiring electrical panels w/o detaching the meter (detach meter=get the electrical company pi$$ed off at me) does require working around some hot lines, so…
Bought some new, cheap-a$$ed tools and wrapped the handles with some self-fusing silicone/live rubber tape rated for high-voltage electrical wire wrapping that I always have laying around.
Works. Cost me about $2/tool. Added to the $1/”cheap-a$$ed” tool price, I came out of the operation with tools as safe (electrically) as $10-$20 tools (screwdrivers in the “pro electrical” range are still expensive) for about $3 apiece. Yeh, yeh, the tools backups. I already have one designed for wiring work (has the nifty lil wire bender for socket/junction box, etc., installations built in–and it’s had its insulated handle beefed up by rubber tape wrap, just ‘cos) and a couple of better wiring pliers, but @$3 apiece, making sure I have one to leave behind at one end of a run can be really handy for my work style.
Besides, if I “lose” one of these, I’ll not weep and moan and gnash my teeth as badly as if I lost one of my better (still not “pro” grade) tools.
Oh, first up? Running a new circuit off an outside circuit that’s been unused for ten years or so. Still not planning to use it for the purpose it was once used for (above ground pool, now gone), so re-routing it inside as a new, dedicated, circuit for the overloaded kitchen. There’s another unused circuit available on that panel (it’s a simple two-circuit sub-panel) that I think I may dedicate to the freezer or the dishwasher, just for the heck of it. Three more unused circuits on another outside panel that may get used outside in the near future, but they’ll just have to wait.
Some strange stuff in this house’s wiring already, so I don’t feel too weird about these lil projects, even though I know it’d be best to just rewire the whole house “correctly”. I’ll settle for safe, for now. Heck, four years ago, I started tracking down a “mystery circuit” that was wired in the main breaker panel but didn’t feed to anything in the house I could find. It was in a terminated box, unused, coming out of the basement ceiling. It’s now serving ONE room downstairs… Son&Heir’s electronics only. Gotta love 12-gauge Romex. (Strangely, that circuit was wired with 12-gauge from the box, whereas the rest of the house 110 has 14 gauge wiring… weird. I kept that circuit at 12-gauge throughout.)
I’d like to pull new wiring, circuit by circuit, throughout the house and rationalize some of the weird layout, but that’s something I’ll just have to do a teensy bit at a time, I think. May take me the rest of my lifetime, as I have plenty of other projects to complete around here. *heh*
Anywho, the “proper tools for the job” don’t always have to be expensive, special-purpose tools. As I did with these, they can be common tools adapted and repurposed to very closely approximate the special-purpose, “pro” tools while maintaining both functionality and essential safety features. Less expensively.
After all, I don’t plan on making a living with ’em, nor do I plan on willing ’em to my heirs.
Whatever does the job. Pricey things aren’t always required 🙂
I know our wiring is hodge podge as well. The previous owner thought he was handy. Dangerously handy.
Sadly, I know the guy who built this home–well, he and his dad, now passed–and he built it just the same way he builds everything in America’s Third World County, where “building codes” are either non-existent or “encrypted redneck building practices” *heh*. This home’s electrical consists of a primary 100 amp service panel (the two boxes are separate from the primary service panel–yeh, weird) that is perfectly OK for when this house was built about 35 years ago. Heck, it even allows for something that only that one, weird circuit was wired for: a 3-wire grounded circuit. The rest? All 14-gauge 2-wire, ungrounded, laid out in a completely irrational manner. All grounded circuits (or even just outlets in a couple of cases) have been made so by me.
We’re the third owners of this home, and until fairly recently, I really didn’t have time to spend on this (and I’m too much of a tightwad to hire the one competent electrician in the county who’d not adamantly retired *heh*), but now… I just have to get some things done.
The last time I started in on something like this, it was 32 years ago in a KCMO bungalow that had been built in 1901 and electrified later… and had hodgepodge electrical “upgrades” done by the owner just previous to us.