Live Charge In Water Stream?

I am new to the forum so kindly bear with me.  I live in Mesa, AZ and have just had a PEX repipe done to bypass my copper hot water lines.  (God don't ask!  A real problem here with slab foundations.  I already had my kitchen jack hammered once.  It is NOT pretty!).

It seems really odd to me that just because it is a dedicated circuit  that code would not require that circuit to be GFCI protected.

I have a dedicated 20 amp duplex 12 AWG wire outlet under the sink and it is within a few inches of the water lines.  The outlet serves a switch for the garbage disposal and serves my dishwasher which is always hot. 

  Now that I have all my maple cabinets pulled out I thought I might change the outlet to a GFCI just to be safe.  I have a ground wire, a red wire, a black wire and a white wire.  As it is dedicated I think I should use the LINE sided instead of the LOAD side but I am not sure where the wires should go.

Could someone give me info on this?  It would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.
      

if a 110v receptacle is located near a water faucet on the inside of a building, does it need to be GFCI protected? no sink involved.
      

My wife and I are doing some minor kitchen remodeling in a few months (new sink, countertops, backsplash, adding disposal).  I was looking at the electric to see what I was in for.  There is currently a switch located where you would locate the switch for a disposal... but it shuts off the dishwasher.  WHAT?  WHY?



So I look into the dishwasher circuit.  20a at the panel, wires run in conduit to the switch location.  Out of the switch box comes 14/2 NM-B (WHAT, undersized!) comes out under the drywall and over to the junction box on the dishwasher.



So, what do you guys see as the solution here?  I was thinking to run a new 20a circuit, with 12 gauge THHN from the panel to the switch box, then splice that to a new piece of 12/2 NM-B to the dishwasher.  Question: can the NM-B just lay behind the dishwasher like that?  Should it be BX? 



The 14/2 NM-B would be removed and 12/2 run from the switch to a new outlet under the sink for the disposal.  So, I would end up with 2x 20a circuits: one for disposal, one for dishwasher.



Does this sound like a solid plan?
      

Hi all,



I have read a few posts here about others having problems with receiving a shock while touching the faucet or water from the faucet in certain rooms. Today I experienced this problem in my kitchen. I was able to narrow the problem down to one breaker on my box, specifically one set of outlets. My question is can a faulty outlet cause this to happen?



I currently have the breaker in question flipped off until I can replace the outlet and see if that fixes the problem. There haven't been any changes to the electrical or plumbing in quite a while. This happened completely out of the blue.



Any advise that you might have would be greatly appreciated.



Jess
      

I was going to put this in this thread  Junction box in stud wall behind drywall?  but, decided to start a new one.



Two nights ago while sitting in my kitchen the can lights in my soffits above my cabinets suddenly went out. At first I thought my daughter or her boyfriend was messing with me and reached around the corner and flipped the switch. Nope. Tried the other switch near me and nothing. Everything else in the kitchen worked.



Thinking tripped breaker for a moment...nope other lights work on the circuit. Can't be 6 CFL's burnd out at the same time. Hmmmmm?



Background:

Kitchen was remodeled 12 years ago. Drywall was in good shape so not removed. Added circuits for Fridge, Microwave, Garbage disposal, Stove (gas),Dishwasher, range hood, and countertop recepts. None of these are tied to lights. Original task lighting was 4' tubes over countertops above cabinets. Remodel added sofits and can lights from these two feeds



Started tracing circuit path to look for loose/broken wire. Found no power at lights. Checked power at breaker...Good. Follow wire to kitchen, no junctions. Wire disapears up into wall below the switch area. Check for power at switch box. Yep, power there. Power off and pigtail Neutral/hot  wires at a can light together. No continuity on the load side of the switch circuit. Broken wire somewhere between the switch and the lights. Fortunaly there is an attic space above the kitchen. Unfortunatly, it is a short headroom ~3' or less and full of blown ihn insulation. In I go to trace the wire.  after about 10 min up there I found the burried junction box. At some time in the past there used to be a single light in the center of the "U" shaped kitchen cabinets. This was abandoned and the box was drywalled over...still in the location for the light hookup so the cover was not readily accessable. found a tightly twisted Ground, Neutral and Hot with nuts. All looked good untill I Started messing with them. found that one of the hot leads had broken right at the insulation on the wire. Looking at it closer I could see some arc burn at the break. I am thinking that when the handy hack that did the job nicked the wire he did not know or care and tristed it together anyway. It took over, to my best guess, 20 years for it to fail.



Moral... It can happen
      

We need to have a new water line put in from the meter in the parking strip to the house. We've recently had a new electrical panel put in and the electricians pounded two grounding rods into the ground outside our house. Because of this, will the house be just as well grounded if we get plastic pipe as if we get metal?
      

I'm new to this site.  But would appreciate some troubleshooting.  I just renovated my kitchen, gutted and all, finished in the Fall.  I did not replace wiring to the dryer, nor tamper with it, to my knowledge.  We did have an electrician add a small fuse panel.  We did not add more appliances then before, added some lights, but mostly used the room to separate things out.  Had a mentor do the wiring, many years of experience, very tidy and careful work, though not electrician by trade.  We have a standard 200 amp box as far as i know.  The house is 100 years old, but the wiring isn't.



In October my mother in law heard a very loud bang.  The electric dryer had been running.  She smelled smoke.  At the dryer receptacle was molten plastic sprayed onto the wall, caused by overheating at that point, due to I don't know what.  I thought maybe I had knocked something loose in the receptacle when i was drywalling around it.  I can't remember now if the breaker had tripped.  The receptacle and plug were toast. 



I replaced the receptacle, I replaced the dryer cord, not the breaker.   The dryer worked fine until february, when it stopped heating.  I found a bad thermal fuse and replaced it, the very common two pronged white one. 



The dryer worked fine until early April when it stopped heating again.  I checked all the fuses/thermostats on the back and the heating element, as I had done the first time.  Nothing was bad.  I checked the voltage coming out of the wall, as I had done the first time, only this time I did it correctly and got a reading that told me to check the breaker in the panel, which had not thrown.  When I checked the voltage between the Nuetral Bus and the two terminals on the Dryer's 30 amp breaker I only got a good reading on one of them, telling me that the breaker was bad.  While at the box, i noticed that to the main breaker, from where the conduit comes into the box from outside, the nuetral wires are bare all the way up, no insulation, and at the terminal of the main breaker they appear to have all melted together, even a couple small pieces have melted off of the "bundle." 



Switched the range 50 amp breaker with the dryer, dryer worked fine, nothing was back fed either.  Bought a new 30 amp breaker for the dryer and installed it on Saturday.  Also on Saturday we were given a dryer, about 4 years old, same as ours, so i hooked it up and saved ours for a spare, which I deemed still good since it seemed the breaker was the issue.  New Dryer worked fine from saturday until today.  Now it won't turn on, though it didn't cut out mid load yesterday either.  The breaker did not trip.  I repeat, no tripped breaker.  I just checked the voltage at the wall and it seems to have that same problem where one side of the receptacle gets a reading of 120, and the other a reading of about 5.  The problem must be bigger than the breaker.  I am not an electrician, I am a welder.  I have gone as far as I could on my own.  Thank you.
      

Appreciate any help with this.



Background:



- new to us old house, got three quotes for an upgrade to 200A service plus addition of three new circuits in conduit with receptacles (Chicago area, conduit is code in just about every town around, I have no issue with that);



- existing service to house was overhead, opted to keep it overhead and not bury it;



- the quote says, exactly: "Installation of a 200 amp 240 volt overhead electric service complete with riser, outdoor meter socket with a 200 amp disconnect, 40 position circuit breaker type distribution panel..." etc.;



I understood from discussing the work with the contractor we chose that install overhead service meant to include the work and materials needed to upgrade the line coming from the pole at the alley to the house to handle 200A capacity; paid 50% down on quote;



- the morning the boss and tech show up for the work, boss says we already have a 200A overhead, which I seem to recall the home inspector mentioning months ago before the closing (makes sense because the overhead runs to a single room addition put on several years ago), but boss was the guy who came to the house to quote the job in the first place, didn't mention anything about the existing overhead capacity at the time;



- the work gets done, seems fine; tech left without going over anything with us but whatever.



Final bill matches the quote to the dollar. There is no indication that there were any surprises during the work.



Since the quote says installation of overhead service and they didn't need to replace the overhead lines from the pole I think the final bill should be lower than the quote. The distance from the pole to the riser is about 40 feet.



Should I expect from the wording in the quote that the final bill should be lower than the quote because they didn't have to touch the existing overhead?



About how much lower?



We didn't go with the lowest quote, didn't beat him up on price and the total bill is quite a pretty penny, so I think he would be making good money either way.



I know there is no way for someone to tell me an exact dollar figure here based on a blog post, but I'd like to get some kind of idea so I can start my conversation about the final bill.



Thanks for any help out there.
      

In a large bunkhouse we need to add a second range, water heater, and kitchen outlets.  The existing panel is 125 AMP (with breaker), and don't want to redo entire panel.  A consultant said to install a 200 AMP drop, with a panel to handle the additional load.  Would you then feed each of the panels from that drop as main panels, or use a new 200 AMP panel as the main, and the 125 as a sub-panel from that?  I assume in either instance, the grounding would be done as a 200 AMP service.  Just realized if each was a main panel, the new one couldn't exceed 75 Amps, or total would be over 200.  Any other ideas appreciated.
      

In a 1950s home the electrical is being redone. Wallboard was removed in the kitchen and there is a kitchen sink drain/vent line (seems to be 1" to 1-1/2" pipe) in the wall which is made of steel. It runs down into the concrete slab and up through the roof. There is an old electrical outlet (which will be removed and replaced) next to it which has a 14/2 cable and a separate small ground conductor running to it. With a meter I measure 50V between the steel pipe and the steel housing of the receptacle. Once the old receptacle is removed and a new one is installed, where and how will the drain pipe be grounded? I am sure there are more steel drain pipes used in this house but not all of them are open and exposed. Will it be sufficient to ground this one steel drain/vent line? If yes how and with what conductor size?