ISO electrical expertise

May 18, 2012 12:53 PM

I just bought a house (yay!) and I need some schoolin' by educated mefites about the relative importance of various electrical upgrades my inspector recommended. If you're an electrician, a handyman with electrical expertise, or just a homeowner that's been through this, I'd love some thoughts on what is worth spending $$$ to upgrade now, versus not that important.

To head it off at the pass: there wasn't anything life- or house-threatening that the inspector found in the electrical system. It's just an older house (1950s-vintage) with 60-amp service and un-upgraded electrical stuff that the inspector said "you might want to upgrade at some point." We're not planning on doing it ourselves, and what I'm really looking for is some educated opinions about how to prioritize or think about the necessity of some of these upgrades BEFORE I have an electrician come out and give me quotes.

The things that the inspector recommended we consider are:

1. Replacing the panel and/or upgrading the 60 amp panel to 200 amp service (I'm not sure if this is the same thing). It's a small house (brick, one-story, less than 1500 sq ft) without AC and I'm hoping to avoid installing it. The panel has some double-tapped wiring and no room for more breakers, so this was pretty high on the inspector's list of things to take care of. He also recommended moving the panel from the main floor, where it is behind the refrigerator (which slides in and out pretty easily) to the basement, in order to make it easier to access. I'm much less sure if the cost of moving the panel is really worth it, especially away from the main floor where we will do most of our living and to the downstairs basement.

2. Lots of 2-prong and ungrounded outlets throughout the house. I'm not sure how big of a deal this is or what the potential fixes are. I know that it's safer to have grounded outlets but I am having a hard time evaluating HOW much safer, or if it's a big deal in my home office (with router/computer/printer) than in my bedroom (where the only thing plugged in is my alarm clock).

3. The inspector recommended maybe adding GFCI outlets "where needed." Talk to me like I'm stupid: what's the difference between adding GFCI outlets and upgrading old 2-prong and ungrounded outlets? Is this the same thing? Kitchen outlets aren't GFCI, but I think the bathroom outlets are. Is it important to upgrade the kitchen outlets to GFCI? What about office/bedroom/living room?

4. One of the outlets in the living room has reversed polarity. I know this indicates shoddy work, but is it really dangerous? The first electrician who gave us a quote for everything on the list wanted to charge $150 to fix this, which seems.... high.


Generally, we're doing a bunch of repairs over the next 2-3 weeks before we move in, and my thinking is that if I don't get this taken care of now then it's not going to get easier to find the money and deal with getting quotes. (So I want to upgrade in a smart way that doesn't assume I'll be doing a lot of upgrades later.) On the other hand, we're having to re-roof and re-gutter the place, plus put in a radon remediation system, so I don't particularly want to throw thousands of dollars at electrical upgrades that aren't needed given that it's a tiny house without AC.

Google is useful for looking up specific terms, but metafilter really shines at helping put this stuff in context and provide a framework for how I should be thinking of things. Help me make good decisions that I won't regret later!

posted by iminurmefi to home & garden (26 answers total)

1. I would definitely upgrade the service to 200 AMP--you'd be surprised how much energy computers &c. can pull. Also, having the panel behind the fridge will be annoying in times of actual power outages.

2. You absolutely want to ground the outlets, where possible. (Plus there's an awful lot of stuff requiring three prongs, nowadays...) Depending on your insurance company, there may be code issues involved here as well.

3. You should definitively have GFCI outlets wherever there's water. If you have outdoor outlets, those should be GFCI as well.

4. Yeah, I'd fix your wonky outlet. As always, you can get a second (third) opinion.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:00 PM on May 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

We upgraded our 60's era 100amp service to a 200 becuase we were adding a spa. Already had a/c (which we installed in the first year). I also wanted to move the meter, which was inside the house (!) to an outside wall and move the drop to the side of the yard instead of right down the middle of our backyard. To do this they added a new main box on the corner of the house, converted the old main box to a subpanel, and then added a new subpanel where the spa was going. Very glad we did all this, the added capacity is nice, and they fixed a bunch of double (and one triple!) tapped circuits.

The 2-prong to 3-prong is a fairly easy do it yourself as time allows project. I did it over the course of a few years as outlets where accessible/used. As long as there is a ground wire (and it's grounded obvs) its easy. Get one of those little plug in circuit testers with the three lights. Make sure the circuit is off (duh).

To the reversed polarity issue - I'm pretty handy, and have handled a lot of electrical upgrades to our place (minus the box above) and for the life of me could not fix this same issue on a circuit in our house. Finally had the electrician look at it and he found that they way two other sockets where hooked up was causing the one (hooked up correctly) to show up as reveresed. I'd let him handle that. $150 to come out and do it seems reasonable. It's tough to get a service call for anything for less than $75.

GFCI is just replacing sockets with GFCI units. Read up on it though because there are some nuances that I'm not familiar with.
posted by Big_B at 1:05 PM on May 18, 2012

Definitely upgrade the panel/service (and yes, in order to upgrade the service to 200 amps you will also need to upgrade the panel). We have so many things that take a lot of amperage these days, and you will probably at some point want to run the dryer and cook dinner at the same time. In my particular case, when we upgrade the panel/service, they also had to relocate the panel because of some electric company thing I no longer remember, so where the panel is located may not be much in your control.

Not sure about 2 and 3, but I'm pretty sure "just replacing sockets with GCFI units" is not true -- my understanding is that there should be only one per circuit, so if all of the bedroom outlets are on one circuit, you'd only need one GCFI in that circuit, and I'm pretty sure it either needs to be at the beginning or the end, so I think this is something you might want to pay an electrician to do.

My advice: get at least two electricians with good references out to your house and ask for a bid, and you can ask for more than one scenario if you want, just to see what costs what.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 1:13 PM on May 18, 2012

We made pretty much all the changes as outlined. A breaker panel replaced a fuse box. With all of our computers, TVs, game consols, DVD players, etc, this was a no-brainer. Based upon your current load, go ahead and change out the panel. If they don't move it to the basement, perhaps a wall on the kitchen you can cover with a cute poster?

As for grounding, we didn't do it. I'm thinking of having the whole mess grounded at the panel, and getting Arc Fault Grounding as well.

Ground Fault Circuit Interruptors (GFCI) will protect you from being electrocuted through water. They're the plugs with the little thing that goes, SNAP. There's one on your blow-dryer. Put these in your kitchen and bathrooms, and anywhere else electricity is close to water.

You'll want to rewire your own outlets. As Big_B said, it's pretty easy. It's also a great way to fancify your house with, nice, new, clean outlets. Get yourself a Polartiy Tester, to make sure you did it right.

What I recommend is get a couple of electrical contractors in to quote the whole job, along with any other electrical work you want done: Ceiling fixtures/fans, attic fan, door bell, adding outlets, moving outlets, etc. Our contractor gave us a 20% discount, and it was well worth doing the whole thing all at once.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:16 PM on May 18, 2012

GFCI stands for ground fault circuit interruptor. It's a safety feature, rather than a better-power better-operations feature.
They are always 3-prong outlets. They are required in the bathroom, and recommended anywhere else that you've got electricity near water (kitchen, laundry). Normally the current makes a loop, anything going into the device comes back out. But if you've got a problem (you're getting an electrical shock and leaking current to ground out hte bottom of your shoes) the outlet senses there's a problem and shuts off.

You can take out any 3-prong and replace it with a GFCI outlet (cost ~$20), but it does require the neutral connection to be there, so you can't do that with 2-prong.
You only need one outlet per circuit to be GFCI, that protects any attached after it.
posted by aimedwander at 1:18 PM on May 18, 2012

I'm just a homeowner, not handy, but I have been though a major remodel, including electrical.

1. 60amp is REALLY low. I will definitely recommend upgrading, and if you're upgrading from 60, you might as well go to 200, so you have a more future-proof installation. Possibly related to this, see if you can find out how many circuits your house has, and what areas they cover. My house was originally wired with the whole kitchen, plus dining area, PLUS the side of the living room where the TV/consoles/DVR sit, all on one circuit. This was terrible, and we would have to try to remember never to switch on two high-draw appliances at the same time (eg microwave and toaster), or the breaker would flip, taking down the kitchen, dining area, TV etc. So if you have any craziness like that, it would be a good thing to fix before you move in.
2. I would want grounded outlets for my home office, but agreed that you can probably live without it in your bedroom.
3. You only need GFCI outlets anywhere there is water, like kitchens and bathrooms. They are typically 3 prong outlets, with an extra level of protection. You can tell them because they have a Test and Reset button on them. It is basically a super-protective outlet, which will detect much smaller faults than a circuit breaker takes care of, and it also just switches itself off, rather than the whole circuit. Good to have where electricity and water are near to each other.
4. No idea, sorry!
posted by Joh at 1:20 PM on May 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

For comparison, mine is a very similar house (50's brick colonial just under 1500 square feet), but we do have central air, and 100A service is sufficient for us. 200A is overkill for most households, but the difference in cost is small enough that it's not worth skimping over.
posted by jon1270 at 1:20 PM on May 18, 2012

You really need to do the panel. Overloaded electrical circuits are dangerous. I just got this done on a much bigger house with a detached garage. I went from a 100 amp to a 200 amp panel. Not only was it really overloaded(every breaker was double loaded)it was a poor quality panel(zensco keeps the fire department busy-its like orangeberg sewer pipe for plumbers). I also had a few new circuits installed and some wall heaters put in, ran me about 5300 for a new meter/main panel, new house panel and a whole lot of rewiring/ and 5 new circuits, included dryer and range circuits to modern 4 wire. Yours will likely be much cheaper. My mom got pretty much the same in a 900 sf home for 2400 and that included taking out 3 different fuse panels (that house was a mess).

the last thing is to get a whole house surge protector, about 100 extra and really protects every thing downstream.

Arc fault circuits are now required in all bedrooms.
posted by bartonlong at 1:23 PM on May 18, 2012

These older houses were built before the 3 wire system was put into place. A lot of these houses are not grounded at all.

The GFI (ground fault interrupt) outlet is meant to be installed into a 2 wire system in order to act somewhat like a 3 wire grounded system. It constantly monitors the current running through it. If it senses a drastic change in current either way, as in you being electrocuted when touching your bathroom sink and radio at the same time, it shuts off the power. If you don't have a 3 wire system in your house, or if your house isn't grounded at all, it is imperative to install GFI outlets at least wherever there is water and plumbing...kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room.

Two prong outlets are OK for simple lamps. However, your computer and other delicate electronics are in danger if they are not properly grounded. Any outlets feeding sophisticated electronics should be grounded 3 wire outlets. It only takes one power surge or lightning strike to fry a few thousand dollars of equipment.

A two prong outlet can be replaced with a 3 prong outlet only if the metal box in the wall in which the outlet is mounted is grounded. You need to kind of know what you are doing in order to check this....big potential for a nasty-to-lethal shock or blown fuses. If the metal mounting box is grounded, you can replace a two prong with a 3 prong as the ground wire of the 3 prong will screw to the metal mounting box and a proper ground will be established.

Sometimes, there is no metal mounting box behind the outlet at all. In this case it must be ascertained if the metal BX cable sheath that the wires come out of is grounded, in order to have a 3 prong outlet installed.

If there is no ground available at the outlet site at all, unfortunately an electrician must be called in to replace the wiring feeding the outlets with a grounded system.
posted by Nicholas West at 1:26 PM on May 18, 2012

A lot depends on whether the wiring between the panel and the outlets includes ground wires. If each outlet box has a ground wire that comes into the box and is clipped to the side or wrapped around a screw head, then switching to 3-prong outlets is trivial. If those ground wires aren't already there, then you're stuck with rewiring any section of the house where you need grounded outlets.

Fixing the switched polarity on one outlet is a piece of cake; you just switch the wires so that the black-insulated wire goes to the side of the outlet with brass screws, and the white-insulated wire goes to the side with silver screws. But, if the wires are already attached that way then the problem is somewhere else, and there will be some diagnostic work to find it. That's why it's $150.
posted by jon1270 at 1:28 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm definitely planning on upgrading the panel to 200 amps--seems worth doing now, even if we don't want to get AC. (I've lived in places where the fuse blew every time you used a blowdryer and have no desire for that in my new house.)

Now that I'm reading all of your (very helpful!) responses, I guess I could narrow my question to: given that I'm going to pay $2k to upgrade the panel, are there other upgrades that I should definitely do at the same time in order to minimize cost? Conversely, is there stuff that isn't worth paying an electrician for, or could easily be dealt with later once I know something is actually causing problems? I know all of the things I listed in my question wouldn't be a *bad* idea to do, but for instance it's hard for me to want to spend $150 to get correct polarity on an outlet in the living room if it's not likely to start a fire or blow up my television. The house is old, and the list of possible upgrades is long!

Also, I'm definitely interested in understanding more about upgrading outlets in the bedroom and office. Since none of the outlets are currently grounded, I was thinking it would be prohibitively expensive and involve ripping out walls in order to upgrade these 2-prongs to 3-pronged outlets--but maybe that's not the case? What does it take to make an ungrounded house into a grounded house?
posted by iminurmefi at 1:33 PM on May 18, 2012

I just described that above.
posted by Nicholas West at 1:37 PM on May 18, 2012

I would want to upgrade the service, but I don't think it is at all pressing. Put the new panel in the basement. If you are going to replace home runs from individual circuits, now is the time. But if you want to reduce cost I would feed the existing panel from the new one to maintain any existing circuits, only upgrading where you needed more power or grounded circuits. I would also swing over any large loads to reduce the loading in the 60 amp panel.
posted by ihadapony at 1:41 PM on May 18, 2012

You say you have a basement, so running new wires to the outlets might be pretty easy and is highly recommended. That is what made redoing my house possible. Having that work space available makes a huge difference in doing these kind of things. I would get it fully upgraded to current code if you can afford it. I would put a priorty on putting large loads, like the range, the microwave, any heaters, wall air conditioners, etc on their own dedicated circuits. I would definitely fix the polarity issue as that is trivial, and put in gfci on any outlets next to water. With the new panel you are going to get good new grounding rods and new guts/breakers which all by themselves give a lot of peace of mind.

Good, modern electrical service may not add a lot of value(like a kitchen/bathroom can) to the house but it is expected by most people when buying a home and can really help the place sell for a good price.
posted by bartonlong at 1:44 PM on May 18, 2012

Since none of the outlets are currently grounded, I was thinking it would be prohibitively expensive and involve ripping out walls in order to upgrade these 2-prongs to 3-pronged outlets--but maybe that's not the case?

Not the case.

First, the mere fact that the outlets themselves aren't grounded doesn't tell you whether the wiring going to the outlet includes ground wires. In my similar-vintage house, there are ground wires in all the outlet boxes even though none of the original outlets are grounded. Swapping in modern outlets and connecting them to the existing ground wires is easy and cheap.

If there are no ground wires then you're looking at running new wires, which is considerably more expensive but does not require ripping out walls. New romex can be fished into place with minimal destruction.
posted by jon1270 at 1:45 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Reversed polarity is easy to fix; I've done it for a few outlets. Hie thee to the hardware store and get a book on home electrical work (the Stanley one is pretty good), needle-nose pliers, and a non-contact voltage detector. The book will give you detailed instructions about how to do the work safely.

Basically all you're doing is taking off the wires, switching them around, and putting them back on. Book & tools will set you back less than $50, and you get to keep them for next time.
posted by echo target at 1:59 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I moved into a 1950 cottage with un-upgraded electrical (except for GCFI in the kitchen and bathrooms). Having been here several years now, here's what I have to say:

1. Yes, upgrade the service. We HAD to do this to get our house insured. Also running the microwave and dishwasher at once used to trip the circuit, annoying.

3. GCFI wherever there's water.

Going back to #2:
We spent around $3000 on electrical right when we moved in, which included upgrading the service/box and making a few outlets 3-pronged, which is mostly not difficult or expensive. (And some other things.) Since then every time we've had the electrician out, we've had him do a few more outlets. Had I known at the time (and had we had the money to put towards it; like you, we had a lot of things to do in the house and had to prioritize), I would have had more of the outlets done at once. It's annoying to want to plug in a laptop in the bedroom and realize, oh, this is only two-pronged.

Other things we discovered:
The upstairs bedrooms had only one (two-prong!) outlet each, 50s style. We had extra outlets put in the bedrooms after we'd been in the house a couple of years; we don't plug that much stuff in in the bedroom, but having JUST ONE OUTLET is annoying as shit, since you at least want bedside lamps and an alarm clock ... and now cell chargers and all that stuff ... and the single outlet was behind the bed, which was even more annoying. This cost a bit with drilling and whatnot.

We had two outlets put in outdoors, one in front and one in back, for Christmas lights and power tools and that sort of thing. This was not terribly expensive but is a nice improvement in our lives.

After 60 years, not a lot of the circuits make sense. If the electrician will label your box, have him do it; we've labeled about half of ours through trial-and-error and random blown circuits over the years but sometimes it turns out the dining room overhead fan is on the same circuit as a single outlet in a bedroom on the second floor on the other side of the house. Seriously, circuits?

50s electrical code also called for far fewer light switches, in less-convenient places, than modern electrical code does. I have occasionally thought about investing in a clapper so I could turn on SOME light when I come in the room. I have to cross my whole living room in the dark to get to the switch if someone forgets to turn a lamp on.

Older-style canister light fixtures may not fit modern low-energy bulbs. I have to make a special trip to a far-away-ish store to get bulbs for my overhead kitchen lights, and they burn out super-fast compared to everything else. Also they're incandescent and the heat annoys me now that I'm used to CFLs (and my kitchen is hot anyway). I buy them at least six at a time (for three fixtures) because it's an annoying trip.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:04 PM on May 18, 2012

Also, I'm definitely interested in understanding more about upgrading outlets in the bedroom and office. Since none of the outlets are currently grounded, I was thinking it would be prohibitively expensive and involve ripping out walls in order to upgrade these 2-prongs to 3-pronged outlets--but maybe that's not the case? What does it take to make an ungrounded house into a grounded house?

Find a two prong outlet in a main part of the house that is probably original. Make sure power is off to the circuit and pull the outlet out of the wall. How many wires are there? Will be a at least one white and one black, and *fingers crossed* a bare copper wire. If there is a bare copper wire you will be able to ground it. But remember that copper wire has to be grounded correctly at the box also, but the wiring is in the walls.
posted by Big_B at 2:33 PM on May 18, 2012

I've never regretted a penny I've spent in electrical work. An anecdote:

The guy who owned our house before us used to wire movie theatres for sound. So he was all up on wiring. To wit: there was a elementary school loud speaker in every room of the house, and it was hooked up to a Marantz receiver in the basement.

I don't know about you, but those things are fugly. You know what's more useful than loud speakers? Lights. So as part of our two-week long electrical odyssey we had our electrician replace each loudspeaker with a light fixture. Nothing fancy, simple, contractor grade, ceiling fixtures. Did I mention that the previous owner didn't bother with centering the speakers? He didn't.

Another anecdote. In my condo in Florida, the outlets looked gross. They were beige but covered in age and dust and yuck. So I went to the Big Box store and bought shit-loads of modern, Decora outlets and rocker switches. I got my pliers, my wire cutter/strippers, polarity tester and got to work changing these bad boys out. You know how White is ground, red is hot and black is neutral? What's orange? Baby blue? There were colors in my outlets I've only seen in fashion magazines. Also, instead of being soft and pliable, the wires were very fat and stiff, hello copper.

I was determined and I spent hours and hours squatting down, rewiring these things.

In the house we're living in now, I asked the electrician if he could rewire the outlets. He couldn't because he would have to bring them up to code at considerable expense. He did recommend some very nice, white plastic cover plates at about $5 a pop. I can live with that.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:35 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

1. Replacing the panel and/or upgrading the 60 amp panel to 200 amp service
You will eventually want the increased service. You'll want a window A/C or a better microwave, or something. Someday, you'll sell the house, and buyers will expect it.

2. Lots of 2-prong and ungrounded outlets throughout the house.
You will eventually want the 3 prong plug. Someday, you'll sell the house, and buyers will expect it.

3. adding GFCI outlets "where needed." No question, fix this.
This is really important. GFCI = Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor, and it is a serious safety issue in any location near water; kitchen & bathrooms, mostly. Also, pretty cheap to upgrade.

4. One of the outlets in the living room has reversed polarity.
Get it fixed. Shouldn't be expensive.

I sold my house 4 years ago after living there 20 years. I wish I'd done the repairs that I did to sell it many years earlier. I could have been enjoying the new kitchen flooring, the paint jobs, the list of small repairs.
posted by theora55 at 2:47 PM on May 18, 2012

On the upgrade to the 200A panel: That, and some additional garage circuits, were the first thing we did when we moved into our 1947 cottage. Here's what I wish we'd done smarter: Our electrician moved the drop and put the new panel on the wall outside the garage, and then ran conduit up over the top of the garage and down the wall to the old panel, which he used as a junction box.

But: The way he ran the conduit and where he cut the hole in the 200A panel, if I want to run more wires to the house/old panel, I'm either going to need to overstuff that conduit, or untie everything through the conduit to the new panel, cut another hole and some bit off the conduit, and reroute things.

I'm not explaining this well, but: Make sure that your electrician routes the wires out the back of the panel in such a way that adding circuits is easy. Mine didn't.
posted by straw at 3:35 PM on May 18, 2012

As long as you're thinking about new switches, we've found these useful:

-- light switches with dimmers where you would like mood lighting
-- switches that have timers on them (like bathroom fans. Ours run 5,10,15, or 30 minutes then shut off.)
-- switches that have clocks (for outside lights. Turn on and off whether we remember or are at home or not. Ours turn on at sunset and and off at 11:00p every day and 'know' about day-light savings time.)
-- Switches that have lighting behind the switch to make it easier to find in the dark.

Also:

-- outlets that are connected to a light switch so you can plug in a bedside lamp from the doorway.
-- outlets that have built-in 'child-proof' barriers.
-- undercabinet lighting
-- ceiling fans
-- closet lights that turn on when you open the door
posted by birdwatcher at 8:32 AM on May 19, 2012

In my 1935 house, there were only one or two outlets per room. I had the electrician add several more to each room, especially in the room where the computer and all its peripherals live. Upgrading to 3 prong is essential or you will have to use wonky 2 to 3 prong adapters on nearly every plug. These adapters make every plug stick out about an extra 2 inches from the wall and make it very easy for the whole thing to fall out of the socket by its own weight.

If you can, go ahead and have it done before you move in. Once all your furnishings are in, it's a much bigger ordeal.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:36 AM on May 19, 2012

When we moved into our 1968 house, we upgraded the panel to 200 amps. We're cheap, so were trying to avoid the work, but one of the reasons we did so is that our panel was an old Federal model, and both the inspector and the electrician told us that old Federal breakers were notorious for not tripping (also, I googled the model of our Federal panel, and the first page I came to had some horrendous photos of fires caused by those boxes and some rather strongly negative words about their safety).

Last week, I drilled into a "stud" in the drywall inside my garage. As I am not an electrician, or a crazy 1968 home builder, I didn't realize that the big main lines between the main panel and the hallway panel ran in that space. My "stud," detected by my "stud" finder, was a pair of thick wires, an inch wide black, 1/2 an inch wide white. The drill bit stripped the insulation and crossed the lines. Bang/flash/pop, smoke, and a seared away drill bit followed, but the new box's breakers immediately cut off, and all was OK.

The electrician we called said that if we hadn't replaced the old box, there's a good chance it wouldn't have tripped, and we would have had really bad mess of fire and electricity.

And at that moment, I was very very glad that we had replaced the old panel.
posted by seventyfour at 1:05 PM on May 19, 2012

Some spending on home repairs feels like a cheat, but I am always pleased with my spending on electrical work: you get to enjoy the benefits immediately and very tangibly.

Make sure to get outdoor outlets (as noted above). They are awesome.

And while you can do a lot of electrical stuff yourself, know that replacing the panel & upgrading the service is Serious Business and Not At All For Amateurs.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:05 PM on May 22, 2012

Ruthless Bunny writes "You know how White is ground, red is hot and black is neutral? What's orange? Baby blue? There were colors in my outlets I've only seen in fashion magazines."

White is neutral. Black is hot (as is red, orange and blue). Ground is green or bare copper.
posted by Mitheral at 7:31 PM on May 26, 2012