Basic Electricity For Homeowners - Page 7

clkeiper · January 28, 2017

Worth, I was at a trade show this week and I asked and AEP rep which LED lights were better than others as I just put a brand new one in the bathroom only to have it blink on and off all. the. time. drives me crazy. the LEDs do not last, but the comment was made maybe the ballasts aren't compatible. So, just what does that mean? I need to switch out all the old light fixtures in our house or just go back to finding all incandescent and forget about the "savings" on out electric? we built the house in 1992... it is 25 years old... all of our fixtures are out of date? man. if mine are who's aren't? does the same explanation go with the poor life span of CFL's, too? they don't last for any length of time either.

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by clkeiper

Worth, I was at a trade show this week and I asked and AEP rep which LED lights were better than others as I just put a brand new one in the bathroom only to have it blink on and off all. the. time. drives me crazy. the LEDs do not last, but the comment was made maybe the ballasts aren't compatible. So, just what does that mean? I need to switch out all the old light fixtures in our house or just go back to finding all incandescent and forget about the "savings" on out electric? we built the house in 1992... it is 25 years old... all of our fixtures are out of date? man. if mine are who's aren't? does the same explanation go with the poor life span of CFL's, too? they don't last for any length of time either.

Carolyn something is rotten in Denmark with your house and electrical.
I remember you talking about this some time ago with lights not lasting long.
LED lights and CFL lights have electronics way beyond the common incandescent light.
An incandescent is just a glowing resistor more or less.

Is your house the only one running off the transformer on the pole.
If not do other people have the same problem off of it.
If so I would start looking at the voltage coming from it.
Is the voltage fluctuating low or high?
My guess it may be too high.
This may also be the reason for the fire from your charger in the work shop.
I have had the LED lights and CFL Lights in my house for years with no problems.
You can also check both sides of the phase coming in to see if they are the same.

The ballast?
If you have an incandescent running there should be no ballast.
If you are running dimmers that is your problem right there.
These CFL and LED lights dont take kindly to dimmers from what I have read.
I'm telling you now something is wrong somewhere and it isn't the lights.

Worth

Rajun Gardener · January 28, 2017

That diagram is misleading but I get it. I won't give the answers since I know electricity.

Good on you for this thread, I think everyone should know basic wiring.

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

To go farther we had a truck that kept burning up coffee pots.
These pots ran off an inverter.
The pots had circuit boards on them.
It took forever due to red tape to get these idiots to stop buying fancy coffee pots with computerized BS timers and so on.
When they or someone got a simple coffee pot with no fancy stuff the problem stopped.
It was me the "ignorant southern redneck" ((((someones not so nice description of me that was from California))) to solve it.

Worth

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rajun Gardener

That diagram is misleading but I get it. I won't give the answers since I know electricity.

Good on you for this thread, I think everyone should know basic wiring.

It is very misleading.

I will say that the wiring is for one light and one light only.
You would not wire up a bunch of lights like this in any manner.

Well maybe but it is the next diagram.
It involves parallel and series circuits.

Worth

dustdevil · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Worth1

I will start this weekend right now I have seen enough wire to drive anyone insane.

I sent my boss a pictuer of the place I was working and he was flabbergasted I could do anything at all.
The place looked like a bomb went off in it.
You could call it a hostile work environment.

This is the place I saved all of the glass from.
Worth
Here it is.

Attachment 68942

Now you know why they call it a "drop" ceiling

Rajun Gardener · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Worth1

It is very misleading.

I will say that the wiring is for one light and one light only.
You would not wire up a bunch of lights like this in any manner.

Well maybe but it is the next diagram.
It involves parallel and series circuits.

Worth

It's a good teaching tool for beginners. After you explain everything, the light bulbs will come on. Pun intended!!

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Next is an example of two types of circuits.
Parallel and series.
It is a wee bit complicated if you start to figure out the math involved as to why you would do one and not the other.
But those formulas were given in the ohms laws section.
The top A is parallel the bottom B is series.
Remember those old Christmas lights if one burns out they all stop working.
That was because they were in series.
The power had to go through each light to complete the circuit for all of the lights.
With a parallel circuit all of the lights share the same power.
If one light goes out the rest work.
This is why with the above drawing I said it was for only one light.
To go even farther you can have a series parallel circuit.
This would be where you would drop a light on the circuit in parallel or series anywhere in the given circuit.
Wiring 2.jpg

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by dustdevil

Now you know why they call it a "drop" ceiling

I was back there yesterday and figured out all of the wiring.
The boss was in the control room with another guy and the fire alarm panel went to hell.
What the!!!!!!.
Was that Lee cutting into the circuit?
No he wouldn't do anything like that.
He came down and I said yes I did.
What?

The guy is a fraidy cat.
I told him so I also told him I was tired of fooling around the wire had to go and the only way to find were it came into the room was to cut wire and check voltage.
This to see where it came from.
We did and we fed it back into itself in J boxes to isolate the room.
After I did that the wire started coming down.
This IS NOT 120 VAC it is supervised data and speaker wire for fire alarm.

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Next a more complicated circuit that I ran across at the house I am working at on Sundays.

My friend was flabbergasted as to how it was working.
This is how it is working.
Just add more switches and lights.
And oh yes make the white wire the hot wire coming from the red warning light to the switch.

Found it out the hard way.

Worth

Wiring 3.jpg

clkeiper · January 28, 2017

Quote:

Originally Posted by Worth1

Carolyn something is rotten in Denmark with your house and electrical.
I remember you talking about this some time ago with lights not lasting long.
LED lights and CFL lights have electronics way beyond the common incandescent light.
An incandescent is just a glowing resistor more or less.

Is your house the only one running off the transformer on the pole.
If not do other people have the same problem off of it.
If so I would start looking at the voltage coming from it.
Is the voltage fluctuating low or high?
My guess it may be too high.
This may also be the reason for the fire from your charger in the work shop.
I have had the LED lights and CFL Lights in my house for years with no problems.
You can also check both sides of the phase coming in to see if they are the same.

The ballast?
If you have an incandescent running there should be no ballast.
If you are running dimmers that is your problem right there.
These CFL and LED lights dont take kindly to dimmers from what I have read.
I'm telling you now something is wrong somewhere and it isn't the lights.

Worth

I think we are the only ones on this side of the transformer. There is one on a pole in the middle of our property. It is for the shop and the house.
The flashlight was one of a series from a company which recalled the black housed lights but not the camouflaged lights... which had already caused several other fires. no intelligence on that if you ask me. they took responsibility for the loss.

When she said ballasts I was wondering if she meant the sockets and interchanged the terms? Shouldn't a cfl or an led just screw into the fixture with no issues? no updating the fixture? nor are there dimmers on the switches. Electricity and me... ain't. I leave that up to the electrition, my son or my husband. I get shocked just looking at the outlets. My Grandpa/ma had a freezer on a porch when I was a child. It was filled with Schwans icecream. there was no way in hades you were ever going to get me to touch that freezer. I got shocked everytime I reached for it. one day my aunt was opening it and touched my forehead with her elbow. Man! no one believed me that I got shocked until that happened. every watch I wore died the next day. I went through a few. everytime I get out of my van I get shocked closing the door.

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Well She could have, I have no idea and I am not going to say it is because she was a she.
One of the best electricians I have ever met was a woman.
One of the best electrical supply counter people I have ever met was a woman.
The first her name is Heather and the last her name is Liz.
I didn't have a clue as to what anything was called and Liz schooled me on everything.

Now for ballast and what it is.

It can be a noun or a verb.
Noun.
It is what is in a fluorescent light fixture to make it work.
It is the gravel in a railroad bed.
It is on a ship to make it stable.
Verb.
You ballast a ship or railroad track.
What is it in electrical.
It is basically a currant limiter and or controller in the VERY simplest of terms.
There are many kinds.
Ballast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr..._lamp_ballasts

As for you getting shocked it is static electricity.
How much a person builds up has a lot to do with the person.
What their individual chemistry is.
What clothes they wear and how they walk and how they move their body as they walk.
What you do is become a capacitor in a way.
When you touch a ground or get close enough you discharged may thousands of volts in DC current like lightning.
Do you have a cat?
Take a comb and comb it fast in the dark the sparks will fly off its fur.

This static electricity can kill micro circuits like chips big time.
I know a guy that ripped the protective plastic covering off a new fire alarm panel real fast.
It wiped out the boards in the panel.

Now if you hold something metal and let the sparks fly of it when you touch something you wont feel it.

I would be very curious to know what the voltage is coming into your house.
And if it fluctuates.

Worth

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

Next that pesky Hertz thing on stuff and what it is.
No it isn't a rental car.

It is a frequency.
What is a frequency in AC applications.
It is the amount of times the positive and negative swap direction in a second.
Frequency can be related to frequent.
As in how many times you frequent the store back and forth.
If you go to the store 7 times a week you have a frequency of 7 hertz.
Heinrich Hertz is who the term is named after.
Its symbol is Hz.
So if you see a symbol of 60 Hz this means it runs on a frequency of AC voltage that swaps polarity 60 times a second.
This is in the US.
Most other countries have one of 50Hz.
This is why we call it alternating current.
It alternates positive to negative on the same wire.
This alternation is what really messes up our bodies nervous system big time when we get shocked.
We run on electricity in one really wild way from our brain to all of our muscles.
And from nerve endings to our brain.
These are called receptors.
Opiates shut down these receptors.
Basic grade school stuff but I thought I would toss it out there anyway.
Here is why I am telling you this.
Sometimes on very rare occasions when people get shocked they don't have any effect till hours later.
Sometimes their heart muscles will start to not function properly and they die hours later from that shock.
Sometimes it cant be fixed no mater what.
In effect their circuits are fried and there isn't any fixing it.
Worth

clkeiper · January 28, 2017

ya, I know it is static electricity, but I seem to draw/generate great quantities to me. I mostly wear denim and tennis shoes. STILL get shocked every time.
and yes it was a she at the AEP booth... not really very friendly or terribly helpful. I felt like I was asking her to take a pay cut for answering the question. nice and friendly... not.

Worth1 · January 28, 2017

I hat to use plumbing and water pipe for examples of electricity but here is one example I will use it for.

That pesky AC current.
Almost nothing with fancy electronics runs off of it.
It cant.
So what happens when it get into our fancy contraption.'
First it goes through yet another transformer and the voltage drops.
Did I mention that DC current doesn't work well in a transformer.
Well it doesn't it has to be AC from what I have been told.
So we have dropped the voltage down to what we want lets say 12 volts.
BUT it is still ac current, now what to do.
That is called a diode and we need 4 of them to change to basic DC or direct current.
What is Direct current.
It is a current the doesn't swap polarity like AC but DC like what comes out of a battery.
Positive one wire negative the other.

A diode is a check valve in a way but I think it is still stupid to call it that.
What it does is allow either positive or negative to flow through it depending on which way the thing is connected to the wire and what wire it is.

It takes 4 of them to make what is called a bridge rectifier.
What this does is convert AC to DC current.
Here is a basic one with a filter in it.
That filter is to filter out what is called AC ripple.

January 28, 2017	#91
clkeiper Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: ohio Posts: 4,350	Worth, I was at a trade show this week and I asked and AEP rep which LED lights were better than others as I just put a brand new one in the bathroom only to have it blink on and off all. the. time. drives me crazy. the LEDs do not last, but the comment was made maybe the ballasts aren't compatible. So, just what does that mean? I need to switch out all the old light fixtures in our house or just go back to finding all incandescent and forget about the "savings" on out electric? we built the house in 1992... it is 25 years old... all of our fixtures are out of date? man. if mine are who's aren't? does the same explanation go with the poor life span of CFL's, too? they don't last for any length of time either. __________________ carolyn k

January 28, 2017	#98
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Next is an example of two types of circuits. Parallel and series. It is a wee bit complicated if you start to figure out the math involved as to why you would do one and not the other. But those formulas were given in the ohms laws section. The top A is parallel the bottom B is series. Remember those old Christmas lights if one burns out they all stop working. That was because they were in series. The power had to go through each light to complete the circuit for all of the lights. With a parallel circuit all of the lights share the same power. If one light goes out the rest work. This is why with the above drawing I said it was for only one light. To go even farther you can have a series parallel circuit. This would be where you would drop a light on the circuit in parallel or series anywhere in the given circuit. Wiring 2.jpg Last edited by Worth1; January 28, 2017 at 08:58 AM.

January 28, 2017	#100
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Next a more complicated circuit that I ran across at the house I am working at on Sundays. My friend was flabbergasted as to how it was working. This is how it is working. Just add more switches and lights. And oh yes make the white wire the hot wire coming from the red warning light to the switch. Found it out the hard way. Worth Wiring 3.jpg Last edited by Worth1; January 28, 2017 at 10:05 AM.

January 28, 2017	#104
clkeiper Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: ohio Posts: 4,350	ya, I know it is static electricity, but I seem to draw/generate great quantities to me. I mostly wear denim and tennis shoes. STILL get shocked every time. and yes it was a she at the AEP booth... not really very friendly or terribly helpful. I felt like I was asking her to take a pay cut for answering the question. nice and friendly... not. __________________ carolyn k

January 28, 2017	#93
Rajun Gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Tomato Cornhole Posts: 2,550	That diagram is misleading but I get it. I won't give the answers since I know electricity. Good on you for this thread, I think everyone should know basic wiring.

January 28, 2017	#102
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Well She could have, I have no idea and I am not going to say it is because she was a she. One of the best electricians I have ever met was a woman. One of the best electrical supply counter people I have ever met was a woman. The first her name is Heather and the last her name is Liz. I didn't have a clue as to what anything was called and Liz schooled me on everything. Now for ballast and what it is. It can be a noun or a verb. Noun. It is what is in a fluorescent light fixture to make it work. It is the gravel in a railroad bed. It is on a ship to make it stable. Verb. You ballast a ship or railroad track. What is it in electrical. It is basically a currant limiter and or controller in the VERY simplest of terms. There are many kinds. Ballast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr..._lamp_ballasts As for you getting shocked it is static electricity. How much a person builds up has a lot to do with the person. What their individual chemistry is. What clothes they wear and how they walk and how they move their body as they walk. What you do is become a capacitor in a way. When you touch a ground or get close enough you discharged may thousands of volts in DC current like lightning. Do you have a cat? Take a comb and comb it fast in the dark the sparks will fly off its fur. This static electricity can kill micro circuits like chips big time. I know a guy that ripped the protective plastic covering off a new fire alarm panel real fast. It wiped out the boards in the panel. Now if you hold something metal and let the sparks fly of it when you touch something you wont feel it. I would be very curious to know what the voltage is coming into your house. And if it fluctuates. Worth

January 28, 2017	#103
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Next that pesky Hertz thing on stuff and what it is. No it isn't a rental car. It is a frequency. What is a frequency in AC applications. It is the amount of times the positive and negative swap direction in a second. Frequency can be related to frequent. As in how many times you frequent the store back and forth. If you go to the store 7 times a week you have a frequency of 7 hertz. Heinrich Hertz is who the term is named after. Its symbol is Hz. So if you see a symbol of 60 Hz this means it runs on a frequency of AC voltage that swaps polarity 60 times a second. This is in the US. Most other countries have one of 50Hz. This is why we call it alternating current. It alternates positive to negative on the same wire. This alternation is what really messes up our bodies nervous system big time when we get shocked. We run on electricity in one really wild way from our brain to all of our muscles. And from nerve endings to our brain. These are called receptors. Opiates shut down these receptors. Basic grade school stuff but I thought I would toss it out there anyway. Here is why I am telling you this. Sometimes on very rare occasions when people get shocked they don't have any effect till hours later. Sometimes their heart muscles will start to not function properly and they die hours later from that shock. Sometimes it cant be fixed no mater what. In effect their circuits are fried and there isn't any fixing it. Worth

January 28, 2017	#105
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I hat to use plumbing and water pipe for examples of electricity but here is one example I will use it for. That pesky AC current. Almost nothing with fancy electronics runs off of it. It cant. So what happens when it get into our fancy contraption.' First it goes through yet another transformer and the voltage drops. Did I mention that DC current doesn't work well in a transformer. Well it doesn't it has to be AC from what I have been told. So we have dropped the voltage down to what we want lets say 12 volts. BUT it is still ac current, now what to do. That is called a diode and we need 4 of them to change to basic DC or direct current. What is Direct current. It is a current the doesn't swap polarity like AC but DC like what comes out of a battery. Positive one wire negative the other. A diode is a check valve in a way but I think it is still stupid to call it that. What it does is allow either positive or negative to flow through it depending on which way the thing is connected to the wire and what wire it is. It takes 4 of them to make what is called a bridge rectifier. What this does is convert AC to DC current. Here is a basic one with a filter in it. That filter is to filter out what is called AC ripple.