Electrical Update

Electricity is crucial.  Of all the conveniences available in 2013, this is one of the foundational ones upon which we rely.  That also means that we use a LOT more of it than we used in 1968 when this house was built.

During a period when Building Codes were, going through a bit of a change, and some innovative products were approved for use.

One was “orangeburg pipe” which is essentially the cardboard center out of a role of carpet dipped in wax and installed as a sewer pipe.  Think about that one, how long it’s likely to last, and the consequences of failure.

Now you know why it wasn’t used for that purpose very long, and why it’s mostly been – or surely will be – replaced.

http://www.sewerhistory.org/articles/compon/orangeburg/orangeburg.htm

We didn’t have that – good ol’ cast iron, which also has a useful life and was replaced since we hope to never see the inside of these walls again during our lifetime.

How does this relate to electricity, you ask?

There was a time when aluminum wiring was all the rage in homebuilding.  Unfortunately, it only carries about 60% of the actual electricity that the same amount of copper wiring carries, and it’s kind of brittle after a time and it reacts with copper and corrodes out where the two touch.

Like where you install electric outlets or switches.

So take that outlet that’s only working at 60% capacity and plug in a breaker bar or extension cord with 5 or 6 MORE plugs on it and fill them up to power our Televisions and cable boxes and DVD players and X-Boxes and all that other stuff that didn’t exist in 1968 and you can imagine that a thermal image of the house on a typical day when everyone is home and all doing their different activities would look like a NYC subway map.

Of course, you can’t disburse more electricity through the house than you can bring in, and building inspectors just kind of laugh at the old box in the basement with all the breakers.

The one that shoots sparks out occasionally because it is so full of wires that they start vibrating and jostling each other, and which, by the way, lacks an emergency “MAIN” cutoff to shut down power to the house in the event of an emergency.

So we expanded.  Our 150 Amp Service (which, apparently, only carries 90 Amps on a good day), is simply inadequate.  So now we get a new 200 Amp service and a shiny new box with lots of COPPER wires that actually have LABELS so that trying to turn something on or off isn’t just a random act of flipping switches and listening to the assorted screams of anguish throughout the house until someone finally yells “that’s it”.