Blaine sent me this photo one day and said, “guess what this is?!”
Hmm… some sort of weird hybrid turnip-carrot came to mind…
It’s actually a brick core…
To allow for all of our modern appliances and central air to be enjoyed simultaneously, we upgraded the electrical service to the house from the existing 100 to 200 amps.
First, the utility company came in and disconnected service to the house temporarily. Then, Blaine got to work.
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| My husband electrician 🙂 |
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| Old 100 amp box |
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| Old wires & meter socket / disconnect removed |
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| New box & wires being installed |
Eventually, we’ll upgrade the shop’s sub-panel off the house to 100 amps too. (The existing shop service is only 60 amps on fuse panel and it badly needs to be upgraded.)
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| Three amigos |
Doing this upgrade involved installing thicker wires from the weather head where the power lines connect down to the meter socket / disconnect. Also, a new meter socket / disconnect box was installed along with the line from this new box to a new panel inside the basement. Everything is now rated to 200 amps and the new wiring inside the house will feed to this new panel.
In order to get the new thicker cable from the box outside to the new panel in the basement, a large hole was drilled through the brick foundation. Hence, the hybrid-looking-turnip-carrot-thing was actually a brick core! Boy, I was way off on my guess!
This service upgrade took just a few hours worth of work and I am again reminded how thankful I am to have married an engineer. 🙂
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| All done! |
The real time-consuming part of the electrical project is running wires and installing outlets inside. For this, Blaine’s folks from North Dakota came down to help.
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| My MIL, came prepared with bug spray 🙂 |
Note, we still don’t have the air conditioning on in the house. Coming from the Dakotas, I’m sure the SoIL heat & humidity was something awful!
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| My FIL, Jerald, running wire in the north bedroom |
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| Dad working in north bedroom |
We put new outlets at least every 6ft of wall space throughout the house. (Previously, there was only one or two outlets per room.) Also, the new outlets themselves are not GFCI, but rather the breakers are either arc fault or combo ground fault / arc fault circuit interrupters, where necessary.
After much debate, we chose to install simple white switches and outlets. I was originally wanting to install these push button ones, but couldn’t justify the added cost.
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| Our final simple choice for switches |
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| Jerald runs wires on the main floor |
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| Thank you for helping, Brenda & Jerald!! |