At Home In The Woods

[dstig1]

I hadn't seen rare earths that thin myself. That could work well. They are strong enough that you could probably use a larger gap with no trouble. And that is thin enough that it wouldn't be obtrusive, as long as you had enough latch clearance to fit it in there.

I also wonder if you could just magnetize the deadbolt shaft directly. That would solve the problem instantly...

 

[Obed]

Tuesday Digging
I took a vacation day from my job yesterday so I could work on digging the waterline trench. Digging on the very top of this ridgeline is tough because the the rocks embedded in the hard red clay. It took me 10 hours to dig 50 feet of trench that is 2 feet deep.

The day started off badly. Close to the house I accidently dug up our conduit for the phone line. I was majorly bummed. I had thought we had laid the phone conduit deeper than we had laid it. Note: The conduit is empty at this point. After inspecting the damage, it might not be a problem if the conduit is broken where I think it is. But I will probably verify that I can pull a cable through it before assuming that it is ok.

I used a 2" PVC pipe to make sure that my trench didn't have significant humps and dips. I got tire of climbing down into the trench to check for humps and dips and finally got smart by tying a string to the pipe and lowering in into the trench. I made a measuring stick with 1 ft markings on it for checking depth.

Some of the rocks were really difficult to get out of the ground. I was eventually able to get all of them out of the trench with enough time and labor. Sometimes I had to get in the trench with my digging bar and dig around the rocks some to help get them out. The toughest rocks were the ones with just part of the rock in the trench with the rest of the rock buried in the dirt that forms side of the trench.

It drizzled rain for 2 hours but I was able to work through it without too much inconvenience. It was a long day but somewhat satisfying. I still have 45 more feet to dig in order to reach the well.

 

[Obed]

Electrical Panels

Yesterday the electrician dropped off our electrical panels. We will have two 200A panels located in the basement, one for the main floor and unfinished attic, and one for the basement.

Our main floor and attic have already been wired for 40 homerun circuits. The panels the elecrician bought have only 30 spaces in each so he is planning on putting 20 full size breakers and 20 half breakers in the panel. I'm not thrilled about using 20 half breakers up front. That panel will get awfully hard to work in with so many wires crowded in it.

It seems to me that if you know up front that you need 40 circuits, you should buy a panel with 40 spaces. I left him a message last night to call me. I plan to tell him to get panels with 40 spaces each. I'm not looking forward to the conversation.

 

[tommu56]

Electrical Panels

Yesterday the electrician dropped off our electrical panels. We will have two 200A panels located in the basement, one for the main floor and unfinished attic, and one for the basement.

Our main floor and attic have already been wired for 40 homerun circuits. The panels the elecrician bought have only 30 spaces in each so he is planning on putting 20 full size breakers and 20 half breakers in the panel. I'm not thrilled about using 20 half breakers up front. That panel will get awfully hard to work in with so many wires crowded in it.

It seems to me that if you know up front that you need 40 circuits, you should buy a panel with 40 spaces. I left him a message last night to call me. I plan to tell him to get panels with 40 spaces each. I'm not looking forward to the conversation.

40 slot panels aren't the norm and not usually stock around here.

Can I make a suggestion of putting a sub panel with all the stuff you would want on a generator on if you ever decide to add one feed that with 1 2 pole breaker.

On it I would put the well pump, heater, water heater , frig and an other outlet in kitchen
one complete bathroom lights/fan and bed room alarm clock outlet and light
you daughters bedroom light and hall light.

That comes to about 10 circuits and it will have you covered both ways

 

[dcyrilc]

40 slot panels aren't the norm and not usually stock around here.

Can I make a suggestion of putting a sub panel with all the stuff you would want on a generator on if you ever decide to add one feed that with 1 2 pole breaker.

On it I would put the well pump, heater, water heater , frig and an other outlet in kitchen
one complete bathroom lights/fan and bed room alarm clock outlet and light
you daughters bedroom light and hall light.

That comes to about 10 circuits and it will have you covered both ways

I have to agree with the idea of puting in a generator subpanel. At this itme, it's not much money and will be great for the future as well as solving the wiring issue. Deciding to add a panel later can get expensive.

 

[eepete]

30 breaker box that is rated for 40 circuits is the "standard" big panel. That's 20 full sized and 10 tandem breakers. Here's a shot of two of my panels that were full (all 40 circuits). I wired them, it's detailed but not a problem so I wouldn't worry about it. I did put lower draw circuits on the tandem breakers (lights, room outlets on tandems, microwave and kitchen outlets on "normal" breakers). I've used some 30 tandem breakers, only one was bad.

Panels are very cheap at the box stores. A 200 amp 40 circuit/30 space panel with twelve 20 amp breakers is in the $200 range. 100 amp panels similarly cheap- next trip to the box store check this out! Electricians and electrical supply houses seem to price them like they were gold plated or something. So it's pretty easy/cheap to do the sub panel stuff. The expensive part is the 100 amp breaker, which is about $55 or so. You might be able to get by with a 50 to 75 amp breaker on that (do the math). Compare the breaker cost with the cost of a panel! I have a 200 amp 30 slot panel with just 6 breakers in it because it was cheaper than a small panel and the breaker- and it gave me room for more stuff later. The tray below my boxes was more money than the boxes (it was about $400). Agree with the generator ready sub panel in general. The hard part is looking at what you include and what you leave out. It's just like any other design problem, what you leave out is more important than what you bring in. There might be a point where you'd just want a whole house generator by the time you have well pump, heat, water heat, and fridge on there. Contrast that with just some lights, well pump, microwave oven, and fridge driven by a small portable generator. More circuits gets you closer to a whole house generator, they run $8K to $20K.

If you're dead set against the tandem breakers, then a sub panel indeeds solves that problem, and can be wired with an eye towards a generator in the future. You'll have to put 12 circuits in there since you'll loose two for the breaker that feeds the sub panel.

There are threads on TBN that show a breaker with mechanical interlock for attaching a generator to the whole house. You basically run wires for the generator outside. When you have an outage, you select your interior circuits carefully and then the mechanical interlock forces you to turn off your main and then you can engage the breaker where your generator comes in. So a small 5KW portable generator can do a lot, since you can move the loads around. Run the fridge for a bit, turn it off, heat some water, turn it off, you get the idea. Choices and options!

Back to your comments, I would not worry about the 40 circuits in the 30 space box by tandem breakers. I would also avoid putting the GFI and ArcFault breakers next to each other. They run a little hot and so having a normal breaker between them helps out sometimes. Part of why I have extra breaker boxes because I put a blank space under my ArcFault breakers.

Pete

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I would demand the full 40 position panel, they fill quickly. They are on the shelf in my area.

 

[dex3361]

Its a bad idea to fill the panel so full in the beginning. You will add more.

 

[Obed]

I was able to get in touch with the electrician this morning while he was at the store. I now have 40 space electrical panels instead of the 30 space panels. I could have easily gotten by with the 30 space panel for the basement wiring.

However, the main floor panel already has 40 circuits designated for it. The panel is made for 40 circuits max so I can't add more breakers to it. In the future, I plan on adding a 100A sub-panel so I have more breaker space. Also, if we ever finish the attic, I will need to add a sub-panel for the attic. Thus, I have to have room for 2 100A breakers which will take up 4 full breaker spaces. The 30/40 panel would have annoyed me forever.

I'm very glad we caught this before the panels got wired. My wife actually caught it. The electrician had told me we would have 40 circuit panels. I didn't know that that did not mean 40 breaker spaces. These are some of the things you don't know to check for until you run into it. If you already have 40 circuits up front that need to go to the panel, I can't imagine purposely choosing a panel with less than 40 spaces. Personally, I would only use the tandem breakers if I were adding on to an existing electrical panel and all the breaker spaces were full. I wouldn't purposely use a panel that required tandem breakers from the beginning.

 

[Obed]

Today the pedalstal panels got installed on the pedestal posts. They are not yet wired. I had spec'd out an all in one single panel but the electrician or the store didn't order it. The electrician blamed the foul up on the store. He said it would take 8 or 9 weeks to get one in so he accomplished the same thing using 3 panels.

The center panel is the 400A meter base. On each side of the meter base is a 200A panel with a 200A disconnect and 8 empty breaker spaces. Each of the two 200A outdoor panels will feed a 200A panel in the house. There will be one 200A panel for the main floor and attic and one 200A panel for the basement.

The pole shown in the picture with the existing meter on the pole is our temporary electric pole for the house construction. The temp pole will go away when we move into the house.