Calling all electricians for advice on wiring home

I am getting ready to do my place as well, had an electrician friend over 4 dinner the other night, and he will connect the work in the box for me if I run all the wires, a good deal. Any way, its worth doing from the feed back I got when I posed the question, and I cant wait to hear the difference for myself. Good luck on your project.

I put in three 10 ga Romex dedicated lines myself. It's not difficult, surely not rocket science, but if you are not mechanically inclined, wiser to let an electrician do it (safety). Be sure that the electricity is off.

The hardest part (for this old man), was crawling 40 feet in a very tight crawl space, and digging two trenches in lava rock, for the two 8' dedicated ground rods. The only real pain with using 10 ga wire is when terminating the ends (stiff wire), and getting them to cooperate sharing space in the small electrical baxes - Ha!

I terminated each dedicated line with Porter Ports - very worthwhile.

As for the sub-panel, I used a 12 circuit breaker box, and connected my three lines into breakers 1, 5, and 9 - i.e.:

1 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6
7 - 8
9 - 10
11 - 12

Same side, but every other row, so that they are same phase.

Damn Shventus!

What you went through to install your circuits sounds similar to Navy SEAL training.

To liven things up next time you decide to crawl under your house, make sure to set up some barbed wire barriers and have your wife hide a few claymore mines in random spots.

Better yet, hire Slappy!

Thanks Gunbei,

I sure felt like I was going through some military basic training (Marines, Navy Seals, BUDS, etc.), but I think that it was real enough, I'll pass on the barbed wire, live firing, explosions, and hidden claymores. It was so tight, dark, and humid under my house, here in the tropics, when my knees landed on sharp lava rocks, I thought that I HAD unearthed a claymore. My back didn't forgive me for days - Ha!

Your story reminds me of when I went under my house a few years ago to run the PVC pipe for my long runs of interconnect.

I had been in total darkness for about half an hour, except for the small flashlight that was resting between my face and the earth. I could only see a few feet beyond that small pool of light.

I sensed something moving off to my left and turned my head. In the dark I could see two glowing eyes moving slowly toward me. I banged my head on the 2X4 runners reaching my hand around to grip the flashlight and when I aimed the beam toward the light I saw my tortoise shell colored kitty cat smiling at me.

I still can't believe she jumped into the scuttle hole to find me. I was never so glad to see a cat in my life.