A friend called me recently with some intriguing questions about some electrical work that he was having done at his newly purchased home. The home was built in the mid-to-late 1950s with some electrical work done in various...
Two recent press releases from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), one from August 17 and the other from August 18, see positive trends for homebuilding strength. “In a sign that housing continues to lead the...
My single-speed swimming pool pump motor, installed in 2004, finally quit working. I nursed it along for many years and probably should have replaced it a long time ago. However, I kept finding other ways to spend the money...
An electrical contractor emailed me a photo of a feed-through all-in-one 200A 120/240V, single-phase, eight-circuit panelboard with 200A main circuit breaker. It had an auxiliary 2-pole circuit breaker position where up to a...
The growth of renewable energy has enabled private homeowners to act as their own power providers independent of the grid. Virtual power plants are completing the role reversal by turning homeowners into a source of power for...
When I was an electrician, I tried to ensure the location and sequence of switches made sense, especially when there were several installed in one location. My goal was that homeowners could understand the installations and...
When I was doing fire and electrocution investigations, I received a phone call from an insurance company about a fire in a home the company insured. Upon arrival at the home, I discovered that the fire department had...
A few years ago, I received two phone calls regarding voltage gradients in swimming pools at existing homes in North Carolina. The pools had supposedly been installed using 680.26(A) and (B). This section of the Code was...
Despite predictions by industry experts for weakening construction starts in late 2019 and into 2020, construction starts are actually continuing to increase. According to the latest report from Dodge Data & Analytics...
Recently, my refrigerator stopped making ice. The manufacturer told me to get close to the fridge with my cellphone so he could connect electronically to troubleshoot. If you had told me 10 years ago, or even two, that I...
The growing interest in combining residential rooftop solar panels with battery-based storage often overlooks a critical piece of equipment: the inverters that are key to making such combinations work. Inverters today are the...
As an electrical contractor in the 1970s and 1980s, I received intriguing phone calls from homeowners and commercial customers with strange electrical problems. I could troubleshoot some of these issues over the phone. Others...
A two-story home can be a dream come true when a family is young but could become a nightmare as family members age and the owners reach their 70s and 80s. Two-story homes are usually built with the bedrooms on the second...
Utilities have taken on climate change in a number of different ways. In Sacramento, Calif., the local utility has gone all electric. Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s (SMUD) All-Electric Smart Home project is part of...
In the past few weeks, I have been involved with two separate installations where aluminum branch circuits were used in dwelling units. One was a single-family dwelling, and the other was individual apartments in a multi-unit...
Wireless connectivity may be a trend with staying power, but its successful installation in existing multitenant buildings can prove challenging. A lack of planning or training or a standing building’s infrastructure can...
In the 1967 film “The Graduate,” Mr. McGuire gives young Benjamin Braddock the famous one-word piece of advice, “plastics.” Today he might well say “batteries.” The overall market for battery-based energy storage doubled in...
According to the just-released ninth annual "Deloitte Resources 2019 Study,” the knowledge gap between business customers and residential customers related to the benefits of clean energy is continuing to widen. While...
A friend who had just purchased a 10-year-old house asked me whether he and his wife should spend money to have his electrical contractor install all the newest safety devices. We reviewed the existing equipment so I could...
In Madison, Wis., wealth is no longer a prerequisite for adding solar panels on your roof. The city’s new Backyard Solar grant program helps low-income residents and neighborhood organizations participate in the solar energy...
