![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Power Up, The Extended Edition
Jun. 11th, 2016 09:01 pmWe replaced the 100A master circuit breaker on Fernley House yesterday.
( Lisa's Experience With Old Electrical Circuits )
( The Replacement Breaker Arrives )
With the replacement breaker in hand and several hours of daylight available, Lisa decided that we could try to replace the breaker on Friday evening. We shut down the computers, lights, and every other thing in the house except the refrigerator (which could take care of itself), and Lisa went out to the service box to face the challenge of working on a live electrical circuit.
( Breaking the Breaker )
Removing the old breaker should have been as easy as pulling the old circuit breaker off the main service bus. But the old breaker was stuck, and getting a grip on it was very difficult. Remember that the main bus is live. You can't just reach in there and grab the circuit breaker any old way you want, not if you want to avoid accidentally touching that 120A power bus. When the old breaker refused to budge, you couldn't just reach in there with a metal pry-bar, not if you valued your life. And even if you didn't get fried, the box would possibly blow up if you short-circuited it, and that would have still left us in the soup.
I stood well back in case Lisa needed to jump clear, and I was wearing heavy gloves and a long-sleeve shirt in case I needed to try and pull her clear, which fortunately I did not. She used various wooden sticks to try and make the old breaker loosen its grip on the main service bar. Eventually she got it out, but at the expense of the breaker itself.
( Breaker Broke )
You would think that installing the replacement would be relatively easy compared to the hassle of getting the old breaker out of the box, but it was not the case.
( Installing the Replacement Breaker )
After a long struggle with persuading the replacement to fit where it was needed, it was time to button things up and turn the power back on.
( Re-Energizing the House )
So there we are. We now have 125A service (the maximum feed possible on our line from NV Energy), which is 25A more than we did have. We still have more than 125A worth of circuits on the box, and if we were to turn everything on all at once, we'd blow the main breaker; however, we don't expect to do that. Besides the fact that we were running several circuits simultaneously that we rarely run at once when we started popping the 100A breaker, Lisa still thinks that we were experiencing voltage sags from NV Energy, which caused the amperage to spike over 100A, popping the old breaker. Now we have 25% reserve against that happening again. Also, this replacement breaker, while used, appears to be in better condition than the one it replaced, so we have some hope that it will last until such time in the future as we save up sufficient money to undertake the expensive (~$10K) and time-consuming (possibly multiple days) work of replacing the main service box and getting a more modern power drop from our utility.
( Lisa's Experience With Old Electrical Circuits )
( The Replacement Breaker Arrives )
With the replacement breaker in hand and several hours of daylight available, Lisa decided that we could try to replace the breaker on Friday evening. We shut down the computers, lights, and every other thing in the house except the refrigerator (which could take care of itself), and Lisa went out to the service box to face the challenge of working on a live electrical circuit.
( Breaking the Breaker )
Removing the old breaker should have been as easy as pulling the old circuit breaker off the main service bus. But the old breaker was stuck, and getting a grip on it was very difficult. Remember that the main bus is live. You can't just reach in there and grab the circuit breaker any old way you want, not if you want to avoid accidentally touching that 120A power bus. When the old breaker refused to budge, you couldn't just reach in there with a metal pry-bar, not if you valued your life. And even if you didn't get fried, the box would possibly blow up if you short-circuited it, and that would have still left us in the soup.
I stood well back in case Lisa needed to jump clear, and I was wearing heavy gloves and a long-sleeve shirt in case I needed to try and pull her clear, which fortunately I did not. She used various wooden sticks to try and make the old breaker loosen its grip on the main service bar. Eventually she got it out, but at the expense of the breaker itself.
( Breaker Broke )
You would think that installing the replacement would be relatively easy compared to the hassle of getting the old breaker out of the box, but it was not the case.
( Installing the Replacement Breaker )
After a long struggle with persuading the replacement to fit where it was needed, it was time to button things up and turn the power back on.
( Re-Energizing the House )
So there we are. We now have 125A service (the maximum feed possible on our line from NV Energy), which is 25A more than we did have. We still have more than 125A worth of circuits on the box, and if we were to turn everything on all at once, we'd blow the main breaker; however, we don't expect to do that. Besides the fact that we were running several circuits simultaneously that we rarely run at once when we started popping the 100A breaker, Lisa still thinks that we were experiencing voltage sags from NV Energy, which caused the amperage to spike over 100A, popping the old breaker. Now we have 25% reserve against that happening again. Also, this replacement breaker, while used, appears to be in better condition than the one it replaced, so we have some hope that it will last until such time in the future as we save up sufficient money to undertake the expensive (~$10K) and time-consuming (possibly multiple days) work of replacing the main service box and getting a more modern power drop from our utility.
