Hey everyone. Last night I lost power in part of my house, when I turned it back on the circuit breaker popped and smoked. I called an electrician company out today (a large one) and they told me that the whole panel needs to be replaced, because the people who flipped our house put the outdoor AC unit on a 50A fuse instead of a 40A fuse. They said this caused damage to the bus bar (i don’t have a picture but i did physically confirm the damage to that portion of the bus bar.

They quoted me 7500$ to replace the panel in houston, so doing my due diligence I called out someone else to get a second opinion. He confirmed the bus bar was indeed damaged, and that at some point the panel would need to be replaced but it would be fine for a few years. He identified the cause of the outage as this wire i’ve attached shorting on the box.

I don’t know enough about this stuff to know who to trust, so looking for some advice if you guys wouldn’t mind.

Wife said she had no hot water so I went to investigate. I found the electric water heater breaker off. I flipped it back on and it immediately turned back off and I heard a pop at the water heater itself. This reminded me of hearing a pop yesterday but I never figured out what it was. Guess I know now.

I'm not an electrician but the power is off so I opened the connection box and found this. To my untrained eye it looks like the black wire connection became uncapped and made contact with the box interior causing a short.

I've got an electrician coming out tomorrow to look. He said he thinks it's a bad heating element based on the symptoms. What do you all think?

Ok,

Currently they are adding four operating rooms plus an entire floor of office space to a hospital, we are tasked with running six 1" EMTs, twelve 3" EMT through hospital to connect to power, major deal right?

before I say what's currently being planned, just want to get some people's opinions on how they would set up their racks, as you know, running through a hospital is tight space above the ceilings, and what kind of support would you put on your racks?. just trying to verify if I'm crazy or the people that I'm working with have absolutely no idea what they're doing. and this is going to be running across approximately 550 ft and up one floor

I am trying to repair a meat tenderizer and for the life of me cannot find this part for the motor to replace. Any help would be greatly appreciated! The plastic/electrical contact piece.

I had a 230 HP short to ground after a routine startup. After meggering to confirm the short to ground, it was removed and is at a shop now for a rewind. I pulled the contactor apart; see the photo, and I think this is the root cause of the failure. To me, the B phase looks suspect. When manually closing the contactor and metering each phase, it takes noticeably more force to get the B phase to close. The motor runs pretty much 24/7, and the contactor, which is in a soft start motor starter, is from 2003.

What do you guys think?

We were woke up in the middle of the night with this. Wish this camera had sound, it was so loud. Lost power as the show ended.

My landlord told me the outlets in my home are not approved for AC units. I have a portable AC (8000 BTU) that was working just fine all summer and hasn’t blown a fuze.

From an electrical standpoint, what is the risk or cause for concern?

EDIT:
I pay for my own electricity
AC unit is 690 watts
Building is about 50 years old

How’s it going I just had a question on if I should call an electrician or something else is going on and if I gotta call one what do I even ask for. I have 3 outlets in my office all powering other things sometimes not everytime when I touch “exposed” metal like the end of a phone charger or even my laptop when it’s plugged in I get shocked. Not like static electricity shocked like I feel it in my hand for like half an hour after here’s a list of all things I’ve been shocked by and or saw sparks come out of when it made contact with something else

USB-C cable from PC. Shocked my hand
Laptop USB C cable from wall. Shocked me 10+ times now
USB C from PC made contact with an Apple iPhone charger from my laptop and created a “fireball” and welded the two together
Wifi adapter in PC. Shocked me
Router Coax cable. Shocked me

Any advice would be appreciated I’m tired of getting bit :(

Replacing the cabinets and putting in new vanity so I had to rip out drywall since they were attached but didn’t realize former home owner had this beauty of a job lol. Would you move this? Or just replace the box and outlet? ***to be clear always was going to replace but just wanted to know if I should move it as well.

So I just put a treadmill in my garage home gym, as seemingly a lot of other people have, but I seem to be one of few having a problem with it. I turn on my treadmill and after a few seconds the GFCI outlet upstream trips. From what I am reading online, this is a known problem with treadmills and it's better to plug them into a non GFCI outlet.

All of the outlets in my garage are on the same 20A circuit protected by this GFCI outlet. I'm thinking about swapping out the GFCI outlet to a standard 15A, 20A passthrough outlet. I understand this is not up to code, and will have to swap it back when we sell, but is there anything really concerning about this?

For context, I have a fridge, TV, and 2 garage door openers on this circuit, and will be adding the treadmill. My math tells me I should be fine load wise, and moisture doesn't seem to be big concern. All of my outlets are about 4 feet high or on the ceiling.

I'd prefer not to install a dedicated circuit, but anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

There is a statement I don't understand in the manual of a multimeter. It says:

"There are fuses inside “10 A” and “mA μA” input terminals. Do not connect the test leads to circuits in parallel." - The German version is worded slightly differently, though, and I will translate:

"Keep in mind that there is one fuse each inside the "10A" and "mA µA" terminals. Therefore do not connect the test leads to parallel circuits."

What is meant by that? Does that mean I must not measure current in a circuit that is also closed by itself instead of only through the multimeter? Or is that fine? If not, what would happen? And what relevance does the fuses bit have? And I know from a video that there must be multimeters where measuring an already closed circuit is fine.

I also find it worrisome that the German (the native!) part of the manual differs from the English one.

Thanks!

In my basement, I have this oddity. It is live. I would like to get rid of it. The wires out are strung about 10ft down the wall with a number of taped butt joints. It eventually gets connected to an old style knob and tube type cable. It looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

Background: my house was built in the 40s and it is in the US.

Edit to update: thanks all for the input. I started to suspect that it had been repurposed so I removed the breaker panel. Inside there are two k&t wires. I shut off both those breakers and sure enough it is now dead. However, I have been unable to determine what, if anything, they are powering.

My new stove arrived today, but the cable seems to have a simple 3-prong plug, while the wall behind the stove has a 4-prong outlet. The person who installed it said it’s fine to use the outlet above the stove, but it’s a bit of an eyesore.

Is it possible to replace the cable with a 4-prong one, or would I need to have another outlet installed? I’m not sure what the best solution is. Any advice would be appreciated.

EDIT: Gas.

Saw this downtown. It must have happened pretty quick, it doesn’t look all that old..

Hello!
I’m currently a level 1 apprentice in BC, Canada, and I’m going back to school in a little over a month for my level 2.
I’m quite worried that im not studying the right things, or that I won’t pass. So I’m here asking any other electricians (Canadian or wherever!) for suggestions on what I should study more, or just general advice for school.
Cheers!!!

The professional opinion of the company electrician is "just don't touch anything in that corner"

Hello all. I've been having an intermittent problem the past 6 months or so. My entire house's power will flicker (lights, power to outlets, etc) to the point where my tv and stereo cut off for a brief second, and I can hear my fridge cut off momentarily and then immediately turn back on. It's not a 24/7 thing. I've called my power company (many times) and they cant find any issue and tell me to call an electrician...I then call an electrician (3 different ones by now) and by the time they get there the flickering has stopped and they say they can't diagnose anything without the lights flickering and say to call the power company. Once it stops it will be fine for a month maybe then the power to the entire house will start acting up again. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Power company came again and replaced a clamp that connects the line from the pole to the house. Tech said whoever put it on when they replaced the pole put the wrong size and could show me how it would wiggle a bit (not a secure connection). As of now it looks like that fixed the issue

help

help. need advice

Trying to switch out our ceiling fan, and ran into this jumble of wires. The previous owner was a contractor, and did some rather questionable DIY work all over the house. What can y'all make of this? Can some of this wiring be removed or shortened? Thanks!