Telephone 510 393-1446

Considerable craftsmanship goes into wiring a house. Good wiring requires a high level of technical skill and a lot of patience to do the job right.  The materials used are purchased from Laner Electric Company which provide me with high quality electrical components. They are also a good source for lighting designs and lighting fixtures. Click here for laner.com  My background is as ASE master auto technician, automotive machinist, radio, electronics technician.. High quality work is not always the most expensive. The illustration below shows an example of a service installation that normally costs from $2250 to $2700.


contact us please put the word electrician in the header box

 

Finding the right electrician

In California electricians and apprentices must be licensed. There tends to be specialization in the field. Many electricians are residential service electricians. They are skilled in troubleshooting and repair as well as being knowledgeable of wiring a whole house. Commercial and industrial electricians may not have the experience to troubleshoot residential wiring fast and efficiently. Construction electricians also may not have the same skill sets as the residential service electrician. An electrician who works for a home warranty insurance company might have to troubleshoot five houses a day. The problems they are confronted with are many times complex yet they solve many of the problems in an hour. An electrician who is not skilled in troubleshooting might end up taking a half a day or longer to arrive at the same solution on some of these jobs.

Hiring uncertified electricians certainly has its cost benefits, but then you get what you pay for. These electricians tend to believe that bigger sizes of wire are better when in fact it can work to the detriment of the homeowner. You can spot an amateur if you look at their wiring. On large projects all the wires for lights and outlets will be colored yellow. This is twenty-amp wire. But, houses have been wired from as far back as the 1920's with another size of wire, fifteen amp wire that is smaller in size (fifteen amp wire is of a white color). The yellow coated wire takes up too much space in the outlet boxes on which the switches are mounted. This means that when the owner tries to add a dimmer switch there may not be enough room for the dimmer and wires. This forces the electrician to crush the wires tightly just to install the dimmer. This problem mathematically increases as an electrician wires 2, 3, and four gang switch boxes with twenty-amp wire. Add to this multiple three-way switch wires and the electrician has created a mess for the next electrician who has to service the wiring in the switch box. Uncertified electricians do not have an adequate grasp of how to size the outlet boxes properly further execrating the crowding problem. Most problematic is that uncertified electricians do not know how to interface old knob and tube wiring systems to modern romex wiring systems very well. Some bury the interface connections in the wall and plaster over them. They place junction boxes in locations that are time consuming to work on if there is ever a problem.

A 20 amp circuit has enough capacity to light (22) 100 watt bulbs though in practice this is limited to (18) 100 watt bulbs.*

A 15 amp circuit has the capacity to light (17) 100 watt light bulbs but in practice and calculation it is limited to (12) 100 watt bulbs. Since most people use smaller bulbs most of the house could be lit by a single fifteen amp circuit. This is not done because a home needs load diversity and so the lighting wiring in a house is broken up into three, four or more circuits. So, in reality a well designed wiring job has every fifteen amp circuit carrying no more than 7 amps or about 800 watts. There is no need for 20-amp wire in a lighting system.

*Underwriters Laboratories limits the amperage of many circuit breakers to 80% of their rated value.

 

Replacing knob and tube wiring (K&T wiring).

Some insurance companies have been making their policyholders rewire their houses. They are required to strip out all the old K&T wiring and replace it with modern romex wiring. In talking with an agent, he said his company only requires the replacement of Kitchen wiring, bathroom wiring and laundry wiring. His approach to rewiring seems more realistic as rewiring a house that is occupied can run $15,000 or more to rewire. Rewiring a kitchen might be $3500 to $4500, and this does not include plaster work. A bathroom might run $1500 to $2000 and this is well worth the cost because hair dryers tend to overload old wiring circuits.

If there is any evidence in your house that someone has tapped into the K&T wires without using approved junction boxes then it is likely that you will find other taps in the house some of which might be buried in the walls. Houses in which the wires have never been touched are inherently safer. The junctions of K&T wiring are soldered together. These junctions have proved to be reliable. There were, however, batches of K&T wire that are defective. The rubber has prematurely hardened and the insulation tends to crumble. You will find that a significant number of house where the insulation is gone on the wires that power the kitchen light. This is because tenants have used high wattage bulbs that have baked the insulation.

How does an electrician know how much electricity you house needs? Contractors size the amperage of your house meter to your actual and future needs. Common amperages are 100, 125, 150, and 200 amps. Houses that have electric heat automatically must have a minimum of 200 amps available.

The National Electric Code (NEC) sets the minimum power you must set aside for lights and outlets at three watts a square foot. If you have 2000 square foot house, including garage and storage, you need to set aside 2000 X 3 or 6000 watts. But, since not all lights are on at the same time, and not all electrical devices are likewise not on at the same time, the NEC code allows the electrician to derate the 6000 watts to 2100 watts. The code requires that the electrician set aside 3000 watts for the kitchen. Here, electricians are not allowed to derate the 3000 watts. Each appliance is counted as 1500 watts derated 35% or 525 watts. The point to be made is that most houses do not actually draw as much electricity as they seem. A 100 amp service has 24,000 watts of electricity available. Most gas heated house demand less than 12,000 watts. Nevertheless, some homeowners opt for the larger 125 amp service (32,000 watts capacity). The power company might charge for the larger power line however. Your homes power needs are derived from calculation, not from a guess, opinion or whim. Each house is different and the examples above do not include some other electrical devices that need to be considered. So, it is important for the homeowner to hire a professional electrical contractor. There are many, many capable electrical contractors out there to perform your calculations correctly.

Electrical contractors are professionals who have on their trucks the many large and small parts required to do a professional job. General contractors and others who claim they are electricians tend to improvise on the job. Thus, necessary small parts are left out of the wiring of a house because to include them would require repeated trips to the hardware store. Electrical contractors know from long experience that there are "standards of the electrical industry" that define the proper placement of outlets, switches, quality of product and the like. If a contractor is to upgrade your service it should be an electrical contractor.

Replacing Glass Fuses With Circuit Breakers

California insurance companies are increasingly requiring homeowners to replace glass fuses with circuit breakers. The problem with this is that most of the indoor fuse boxes are located in closets. A circuit breaker box cannot be placed in a closet according to the National Electric Code. The cost of moving the breakers to a new location is about $1000 to $1500 plus permits. In addition, you cannot add a new circuit to a box that is in the closet in many inspection jurisdictions.