Beads of sweat popped out on Tim Ashley’s forehead as he wrestled a heavy light fixture into place over a pool table. Being a residential electrician doesn’t require as much heavy lifting as some home-improvement jobs, but it has its share. Mostly, though, being an electrician is about knowing which wire goes where.
Ashley of Larkin Electric Co. in Dayton, Ohio, has been able to put most of his know-how into the remodeling job he’s working on in Oakwood, Ohio. The job entailed doubling the power supply to the house and setting up a new service panel, the electrical nerve center of a house, and wiring a new garage and recreation room.
But you can call an electrical contractor for a job that takes less than an hour as well as for jobs that take days or even weeks.
“We can come out and put in a single ground fault interrupter outlet, if that’s what you want,” said Joe Ryan, owner of Reliable Electric in Centerville, Ohio. “But it’s a good idea to save up all the electrical jobs in the `honey-do jar’ until you have several. That way you only pay for one service call.”
Let’s face it; even if a person does all his own lawn work, minor plumbing, carpentry, landscaping and other jobs around the house, he may fear electrical work.
In most people’s minds, making an electrical repair has three possible outcomes: You could be successful, you could be electrocuted or you could think you were successful until your house burns down the next day.
Even if you don’t expect to fool with anything electrical yourself, it pays to have a general understanding about how your home’s electrical system works. And it also helps to know how professional electrical contractors go about the jobs they commonly do in people’s houses.
Electricity is such a complicated subject that most people assume they’ll never understand it and don’t try. But the basic principles aren’t that hard to grasp.
It helps to think of the electricity we use at home as being like water held in pipes under pressure. Volts measure the pressure of electricity in the line and amps and watts measure the rate of power flow. Each electrical cord is like a pipe and each lamp, air conditioner or other appliance draws a given amount of energy through that pipe.
The other thing you need to remember is that alternating current, the type of electricity we use at home, travels in loops. One wire, called the hot wire, carries electricity to our outlets and switches, and another wire, called the neutral wire, carries electricity back to the service panel.
In most homes, electricity flows through a meter that measures the amount of electricity being used and then into a service panel, that metal box filled with wires and fuses or circuit breakers.
An electrician sets up the service panel to divide the electricity circulating around the house into circuits, which are basically just power loops made up of wall receptacles and switches. Electricity flows out through the loop on hot wires and flows back to the service panel on neutral wires.
Each circuit is designed to carry electricity only at a certain rate of flow. A 15-amp circuit, for example, could handle five appliances that pull in power at 3 amps each. If you turn on too many appliances at once, the appliances draw power through the circuit at a rate it can’t handle, and a fuse will burn out or a circuit breaker will trip to keep the wires in the circuit from overheating and burning.
Electricity, like water, would flow into the ground if it weren’t held in check. But like water, electricity flows in the direction of least resistance, and metal wires within the circuits in our homes provide a continuous low-resistance path that keeps electricity safely within its loops.
But if a wire breaks or becomes detached the electricity looks for the best alternative path to reach the ground. The casing of an electrical device can become charged with electricity with no place to go, and if a person touches that device the human body can provide a path for the electricity to get to the ground.
And that would be bad.
Ground wires provide extra protection. Grounded circuits have a wire that is attached to cold-water pipes and to a rod buried in the ground. The ground wire gives electricity a safe path into the ground if the loop formed by the hot wire and neutral wire is interrupted.
Both Ryan and Jeff Gutridge, residential manager for Larkin Electric, said most shocks received in homes aren’t life threatening because normal household electrical circuits don’t carry enough power. Heavy-duty circuits, such as those for electric ranges or clothes dryers, carry more power and pose a bigger threat.
“When you get shocked doing electrical work, it’s usually because you’re doing something wrong,” Gutridge said. “We usually don’t get hurt from the shock itself, it’s the reaction to the shock. You can fall or jerk your hand back and slam it into something.”
Ryan said a competent do-it-yourselfer can read a manual and follow instructions to do many minor electric tasks without professional help.
“The main thing I stress is that you have to cut the power to the circuit you’re working on and use a detector to confirm the power is cut,” he said.
“Plus I would never recommend that any non-professional try to wire a hot tub or a pool or a spa or anything else that involves water,” Ryan said. “The potential danger is just too high.”
If you have work around the house that requires the expertise of a professional electrical contractor, you find one the way you find any home-improvement contractor. Start by polling friends and associates to see if they know a reliable company.
The Better Business Bureau, professional building-trade organizations, remodelers and builders may also be a source for suggestions. If the job is substantial, meet with and get estimates from at least two contractors before choosing one.
– New service panel. Circuit-breaker panels have become standard, but many older houses still have fuse boxes. Fuse boxes often have a lower total capacity than circuit breaker panels–60-amp fuse boxes are common compared with 100-amp minimum circuit-breaker panels–so one reason for changing to circuit breakers is to boost a house’s available power.
Also, in some cases, the plastics used in fuse boxes can become brittle from years of heat, or homeowners just aren’t comfortable with the idea of changing fuses instead of flipping a circuit-breaker switch. Ryan said circuit breakers are a better technology than fuses, but that doesn’t mean fuses are unsafe or that all fuse boxes should be replaced.
The replacement of a service panel takes about five to seven hours in most cases, and usually costs $750 to $1,000. Moving a panel to a different location adds costs, as do other factors.
Increasing the electrical capacity to 200 amps instead of the basic 100 may cost about $200 more.
Ryan said some people ask if they should have their entire house rewired when they replace their service panels. He generally recommends against it.
Copper wiring behind the walls doesn’t break down significantly over time from carrying voltage, and it generally lasts as long as the house. Aluminum wiring, however, which was popular in the 1960s, can be a problem. If your house was built during that period, it might be wise to have an electrician inspect your wiring.
– New switches and receptacles. It doesn’t make much sense to call in an electrician to install one or two new switches or electrical outlets–most of the cost for the job will go toward the service call.
But if you’re having something else done–such as installing a new service panel–you might want to replace some switches and receptacles at the same time. Each switch will take only a few minutes to replace, and the cost of materials isn’t high unless you want custom fixtures.
If you look at most outlets you’ll see one slot is longer than the other. This feature makes sure that when you plug in a device it is properly polarized, meaning the current comes in on the hot wire and out on the neutral wire in a way consistent with the device’s design.
Some older homes have outlets with two identical slots, and replacing those old outlets with polarized outlets will help protect devices designed for a polarized power flow.
Replacing old switches and receptacles is something most homeowners can do themselves. The trick is connecting the right wire in the right place.
An inexpensive device called a voltage detector will help you identify which wires are hot wires and which are neutral, and switches and receptacles are color coded so you know where the attachments should be made.
The hot wire goes to the copper-colored connector, and the neutral wire goes to the silver connector. When a ground wire is involved, the ground connector is green.
Another old electrical component you might want to consider replacing after a few decades is the flush-mounted ceiling light of the type found in closets, hallways and kitchens, Ryan said. The heat from the light bulbs can cause the insulation on the fixture to deteriorate and fall off.
– Ground fault interrupter outlets. In any area where electrical outlets are close to water, ground fault interrupter outlets should be used. That includes kitchens, bathrooms, garages, outdoor outlets and basements.
A ground fault interrupter has a built-in device that monitors the current in the hot wire coming in and in the neutral wire going out. An imbalance between the currents on the two sides of the circuit indicates electricity is leaking somewhere and trying to get to the ground.
That loose electricity presents a shock hazard, so the ground-fault interrupter cuts power to the outlet. Once you remove whatever was creating the imbalance–unplugging a faulty toaster, for example–the outlet can be reset.
One of the best things about ground fault interrupter outlets is that you can use them on a circuit that is not grounded. Instead of using a ground wire to carry away loose electricity, a ground fault interrupter shuts down the power flow completely.
Again, installing a ground fault interrupter is something many do-it-yourselfers can do on their own, or it can be added to the list of jobs for the electrician’s next visit.
– Adding a ceiling fan or heavy chandelier. Replacing a ceiling light with a ceiling fan is fairly simple, but adding a ceiling fan to a ceiling that hasn’t been previously wired can be tricky.
The electrician must open a hole in the ceiling and then somehow stretch an electric cable to a convenient nearby power source.
If the room is under an attic, the power line usually can be run between or through the floor joists, then lowered through the space between wall studs and tied into an existing power line.
Ashley connected the light fixture in the Oakwood remodeling job by using a spring metal “fishing” device to pull wires through an opening between floor joists in an adjacent unfinished area of the basement.
Once the wires are in place, the electrician installs a special bracket to hold the weight of the fan or chandelier and makes the electrical connections.
Barring complications, the job costs about $100 to $200. Expect to pay a little more if you want things such as separate wall switches to control the fan and its lights.
– New circuit. It seems houses never have quite enough outlets, and circuits often become overloaded as new appliances with heavy power demands are added.
A way to get extra power where it’s needed is to add a circuit at the service panel and run wires for the new circuit to the spot where power is needed. It’s commonly done for microwave ovens and computers particularly.
Ryan said putting a computer on a separate, grounded circuit is an excellent idea. He said computers use the ground wire as a reference point and to protect delicate components.
“Anybody who has a computer or any hotsy-totsy electronic home-entertainment equipment really needs to get it on a grounded circuit,” he said. “I know people who use their computers on a two-prong outlet for years without problems, and then one day they find they’ve fried their mother board.”
Ryan said adding a ground fault interrupter on an outlet for the computer isn’t enough. Adding a ground fault interrupter doesn’t add grounding to a circuit that isn’t grounded. Adding a circuit costs about $125 if the circumstances are simple.
