Suggestion: Go through your electrical...

[95 TA - The Beast]

Hey guys, just figured I would drop a bit of advice for everyone that has recently purchased a home, and that is to go through your electrical (if you are able to do it yourself).

My house was built in 1989 with the guy that built it/owned was an electrician with his own contracting business. I will say, after 25 years I have found more than enough stuff that needed redoing due to age, or was just flat out done poorly.

I am going through and replacing every outlet and light switch. I have 151 duplex outlets and 79 light switches. Those duplex outlets don't include the 23 GFCI outlets we have. With the switches those include at least 5 4-ways, at least 24 3-ways, 9 regular dimmers, 7 digital dimmers, and the rest are regular 1-way switches.

Now, I am doing this because I have found a bunch of outlets with low-tension when you plug something in, and most don't have proper back support so when you plug something in the outlet flexes inward.

The switches I am doing because I decided to upgrade to decorator paddles from the old-school flip switches. When I did the master suite my wife asked me if I put in new bulbs since the lights were noticeably brighter. So, that just indicated to me that all the switches everywhere needed to be upgraded to decorator paddles as well, along with a bunch of occupancy sensors in strategic locations (like bathrooms, mudroom, etc).

What I have been finding is wire-nuts that are not tight, grounds that are not hooked up properly, missing GFCI outlets where code requires them (like on the outlets on the island in the kitchen), as well as general issues with wall plates lining up, etc, etc...

I have replaced all the wall plates with updated plates and will be going with screwless plates next year. As it is this little set of upgrades has cost a ton that I wasn't planning on doing, so the extra for screwless plates can wait...

While doing all of this I also cleaned and painted some of the intercom stations (Krylon Fusion paint for plastic is AWESOME), as well as replaced a bunch of the older wall thermostats that are in each room (this place has baseboard electric heating everywhere as well as the gas furnace forced-air heating). The thermostats were the biggest shocker as I tore a bunch of them apart and they all had signs of internal arcing/heat/damage. I am talking to the point where they caused the bakelite material to discolor from the heat. I can only imagine how much energy was lost in those faulty connections. I did check with the manufacturer and those units are original from 1998 and they are rated for a 10-12 year lifespan, less with heavy use, so they have been needed to be replaced for quite some time.

Oh, I also replaced all the yellowed old-school central vacuum inlets with new full-cover plate inlets. Things look much cleaner and nicer. I do believe I will be doing some painting over the winter, or in spring at the latest.

In going through the electrical I found out there was a breaker that had a line that went into a junction box on the back of the house with nothing hooked up to it. I found the dishwasher spliced onto another circuit instead of it being on it's own (which is weird since this place is so overbuilt with two 200amp services and two 40-breaker electrical panels, every counter outlet in the kitchen has 12-gauge wire with a 20-amp breaker and an dedicated GFCI outlet for just that one, along with all the major appliances on their own circuits, so there are 12 dedicated breakers for stuff in the kitchen alone, every bathroom has at least two breakers with one for the GFCI outlets and the other for lights/fan/heater, etc, etc), I found extra GFCI outlets off one of the panels wired to other breakers in the panel where the breaker was a 20-amp with only 14awg wire (a big no-no, as 15-amp is the max breaker for 14-awg, unless it is an approved motor connection that has startup surge, in which case a 20-amp is allowed), found the sump-pump originally was supposed to be in the lighting panel and was cross-wired over into the power panel and also found a leak in the wall area where the electrical service conduit comes through.

I ended up redoing everything that was wrong, put the dishwasher on it's own breaker, rewired the sump pump outlets back to where it was supposed to be, sealed up the leak by the conduit with polyurethane concrete & masonry sealant, ordered up 30 new 15-amp breakers and 20 new 20-amp breakers and will be replacing everything as well as tightening down everything and checking the buss bars when I do the breakers. I also took the opportunity to balance the phases on the lighting panel (not needed on the power panel since it is all 240volt stuff), and took readings on everything. I found my whole-house blower fan is pulling just over 10amps continuously, so I am looking into replacing that ASAP (new ones have a 7.9amp startup rating, with less than 4amps continuous run draw), I balanced out what phases a bunch of the rooms were on and in doing so I ended up reducing the amount of interference noise that comes over the intercom.

In regards to the intercom I found that was one of the temper-tantrums done before the previous owner left after it foreclosed, since not only was the main intercom unit mis-wired, it had a fuse half-in. If I would have pushed the fuse in and not checked the wiring it would have fried out the main unit. That was taken care of just after I bought the house. But the other sabotage was that a lot of the intercom stations had their wiring wrong in the wall. When they installed the intercom they put a large nail near each station and wrapped the intercom line around the nail to keep it taught between points as it was run throughout the house. Well, I found a lot of the wiring off the tension posts and actually wrapped around the electrical wiring in the wall. All that did was cause a ton of electrical noise over the intercom when it was in use. I redid all of that and now the entire intercom system is damn near noise-free. I think I have one or two more circuits to balance between phases on the breaker panel which should take care of the rest of the induced noise, but it is near the point when you make one change it unbalances something else, so I have to really work out a power loading chart and a listing of what wires run near what intercoms to determine if I can squash the remaining interference (but, then agian, I may just leave it alone since it is only noticeable when the volume is maxed out, not when at normal talking levels and it really is a majorly overly anal thing vs something that is an issue).

I will say it took me over two days to map out all the circuits everywhere. And the previous owner did do some cool stuff, like putting all the built-in entertainment cabinet outlets in the family room on their own 20-amp circuit and a 20-amp switch so he could switch everything off and not worry about it when he went on vacation. I am thinking that is why he also moved the sump pump to the power panel, as he could then pull the main breaker for the lighting panel and still have sump pump protection??? Then again the security system is on the lighting panel so maybe that wasn't the case... Maybe the bank moved the sump pump over and removed the power to the lighting panel to pay for only one service while it was for sale???

But, yeah, if you have the ability, go through the electrical in your place. You will be amazed at what you would find.

I am just happy to update a bunch of stuff that *should* be done properly, stuff that was just unsafe, and adding some protection that was missing in critical areas, as well as adding some conveniences (the wife LOVES the occupancy sensors).