How NOT to wire a house.

[mandolin]

Dear Cusick Electric:

If you are indeed responsible for the wiring of my current house (since your business card is stuck on the circuit breaker), after finally attempting to make a circuit map of my house last night, I have to ask...

What were you idiots THINKING? Did you have someone lazy/on drugs/incredibly cheap wiring everything??

I mean, it's one thing to have an old house. But if you have 150 amp service to a house and then have about 75% of it connected to only FOUR 15-amp circuits - that is the most idiotic thing ever!

Let me put it this way: the original owner rented out the upstairs. She had window units in the front dining room and the upstairs master bedroom before I moved in.

Want to know what's on ONE 15-amp circuit?

All the receptacles in the entry room (except one)
All the receptacles in the dining room (including the one the A/C is plugged into)
All the receptacles in the sunroom out back (which was in the newer part of the house, so these were ADDED)
All the receptacles in the upstairs master bedroom (including the one the A/C is plugged into)
All the receptacles in the upstairs middle room

Oh, and that one receptacle in the entry room? It's apparently got its own 15-amp circuit all to itself! Two other random receptacles appear to be the same way! They had all this space and all this amperage to work with, and most of my house runs on these four 15-amp circuits! The one I mentioned above services a third of the house!

Well, this makes it clear: the house MUST be rewired before I take on a tenant. Period.

So if Cusick Electric is responsible for this idiocy - I'm NOT going with them. I'd be angrier, but I feel a bit validated now that I know it hasn't been just my inability to deal with an older house. The wiring makes no sense, period.

(I am tempted to call them just to ask what kind of drugs they were on, but I'll be good.)

Comments

[bktheirregular]

(I am tempted to call them just to ask what kind of drugs they were on, but I'll be good.)

You're better than me; one time when I asked whether someone proposing an insane project was smoking moldy oregano, that someone turned out to be a fairly substantial political bigwig from Washington, D.C., and there's better than a one-in-three chance that comment got back to him.

[marielogan.livejournal.com]

But.... what if the owner wired it himself (which seems likely given that it is definitely breaking all electrical codes), and Cusick came by begging to do the job right and left their card?

Anyhow, I feel for you. My house was wired by a drunkard, I swear it... and I had to have it rewired after I moved in. Very frustrating.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

Doubtful. The original owner's husband passed on before she had the service upgraded, and I doubt that Mrs. Horst (who was 84 when she sold the house to me) would have even touched the wires.

But just in case Cusick Electric isn't at fault, I have refrained from calling and asking about what substances their people were using at the time.

At least the office (where the computer is) has its own grounded circuit, and MOST of the kitchen receptacles have their own circuit. (Except for two. It's weird.)

But because of the placement of the window units and the sheer amount of crap they put on circuits 6, 8, and 10 (12, too, but that one makes some semblance of sense and I have yet to blow that circuit), I need the place re-wired ASAP. I'm just worried that my cousin Mike won't do it as quickly or as cheaply if I'm not going to rent to his brother-in-law.

(Then again, Brian needs a place FAST, and the rewiring issue will probably make that a moot point.)

[marielogan.livejournal.com]

Well, GOOD luck! I know first hand how angering bad wiring can be. Everything I used to plug in would often blow on me. *shakes head*

[beachmom.livejournal.com]

I think Mike's brother-in-law name is Kevin!
Glad you could get help mapping your house!