Hello all,
Being on this website for a while now and always enjoy reading AMAs so I thought I'd start one myself. 10 years experience which includes 4 year apprenticeship and 6 years out of my trade.
Employed full-time, I'd class myself as a commercial electrician, mainly doing new installs on shopping centres and high rises throughout my career. I do feel like my knowledge as an electrician in other fields is lacking but I will do my best to answer any queries.
How do I tell my electrician is dodgy? As an ordinary person all I have to go by is whether they're licensed and bonded. Are there any tells that another electrician would spot that I would miss?
Not really, it's hard to judge a book by it's cover
Check with the licensing authority for any complaints/ restrictions/judgements bankruptcies etc against them. In qld it’s the qbcc.
Best thing you've seen inside of a switchboard / electrical apparatus?
Can't really think of much on top of my head, other than maybe a few dead geckos, coat hanger use in place of a fuse. Someone left behind a spanking new pair of pliers inside the switchboard, I inherited it haha
I once saw a 6ft snake laying across the bus bars in a IP66 1000A dist board.
Was nice and crispy, no idea how the hell it got in there.
Is becoming an electrician a physically demanding job ?
Yes and no
Depends on your field of work really, I can only comment for domestic and commercial.
I'd have to give credit to guys that do domestic, I haven't climbed through many roof spaces but man. Some ceiling space is so low you have to army crawl and rat shit everywhere. It's a proper full body workout by the time you get out of there.
Commercial wise, not really. Other than maybe doing conduits on deck, help unloading gear on site such as cable tray/ladder/switchboards. Not really hey… 500m drums of cable can be rolled. Cable pulling can be strenuous but there is a lot of stop start.
do you like 12v?
yes
2 months ago, a company did a quote for Solar Panels + Inverter for our house for $8,000 (out of pocket portion after government rebates). This is the equivalent of 3 years worth of electricity bill. The sales person claims that the system would save us from pay any electricity bill for the next 20 years.
Would you have recommended it? Do you use Solar Panels for your own home?
I'll save the op some time, That's impossible to answer with the details you've given, need specs on size of install and power used (and when it's used).
I agree it is impossible to recommend that system without more details, but unless your house is heavily shaded the price of solar is at the point where it can essentially be recommended for every house (even a house with only south-facing roof available will still be good if it is unshaded - obviously not as good as other directions, but still good enough to provide a saving). A competitively priced 6.6kw system (5kw inverter) is essentially good for any house anywhere in Australia no matter what the power usage is like.
The details will determine what is best and how quickly it will pay for itself, but unless you overpay or get really crappy equipment it is very hard to not save money.
Nobody can guarantee you won't pay an electricity bill for the next 20 years - being able to do that with solar panels is reliant on getting a good return for electricity fed back into the grid and while at the moment it is good, I can't imagine that it will stay that way for the next 20 years, but if the system pays for itself in 3-5 years which is quite common then it hardly matters if it only halves your bill in 20 years rather than making it zero.
How do you deal with ancient brittle single core cable when replacing a GPO, when the previous installer managed to mangle 4 wires in the terminal, so you have to repeat.
And then be happy that it is a good enough termination to run 10 amps.
Yes I agree, I’ve only worked with 1mm2 core cable and it’s horrible. You find it is still very common among new houses on the lighting circuits.
Did you do any digital marketing for your business in recent years? What worked best for you and what didn’t? Do you have any suggestions about where to spend marketing dollars online?
My original post stated that I'm employed full time, so I have no idea. However I have contacted two different trade services through Facebook based on reviews and they were both very good.
How would you explain and compare Voltage, Ohms, Wattage and Amperage in absolute layman's terms.
For eg., Ohms (resistance) can be compared to a hose connected to a pump. The greater the resistance (smaller the size of the hose), the lesser water flows through it. Something like that.
How safe is the electricity going into a house meter - Would like a bit of a technical answer. I have seen how they put the wires back into a meter at house that was having power re-connected (just 2 wires and screwing the screws to hold the wire in) and was surprised at how… basic it was.
What precaution do electricians use when plugging the wires into the meter, it just seems so easy for a tool (screwdriver or pliers) to slip - then they would be dead?
Hope your making the $.
The electricity going into the meter which is 230V is the same electricity that you have you in your house 230V.
What you have observed, is pretty much it but there's a bit more to it. The meter has one set of incoming cable from your energy distributor, and another set of cable outgoing from the meter to your main switch.
The precautions;
Isolating the power; If your house is being fed by overhead power lines then there would be a fuse on top of one of those thick timber poles, a fuse puller is used to isolate power. If your house is fed underground, then you'll have a green box (green boy is the term) between you and one of your side neighbors which will contain a fuse feeding your house.
Testing the polarity which is VERY important, which is performed live with PPE.
What's the negation of electrical energy?
wood
The wood renders an electrical system safe by providing a direct path to the local forest in case of a short somewhere in the circuit?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulator_(electricity)
Running your own ethernet cables in a domestic home Cat5-6 and PoE, what are the rules here?
- I have heard you can't flat out
- I've also heard you can as long as they are not close to any live power cables
- And for the rest they just do it
From my investigations the way to become licensed was to go to do a bunch of courses and then have to be supervised by a licensed installer to get your hours up. This seems overkill to me but I am sure there are many stories around about houses burning down or something to that effect.
https://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Telco/Infrastructure/Cablin…
I was under the impression the regulation and licensing was there to prevent people accidentally killing themselves in cavities while running data cabling. Not so much because there are complex guidelines for install or risk of cabling causing fires
Edit: meant to reply to below message
Well you do need a data license to run data cable, so it's illegal to run data cable without one I guess.
In saying that, I have ran data cable before at work and my in my own home. There is a regulation stating that data cable must have at least 50mm segregation from 230V cable at all times, or some sort of mechanical protection against each other. It actually affects and decrease the performance on your data cable (such as internet speed). So keep that in mind, it may even also distort the 230V cable.
I haven't heard any stories of data cable burning down houses to be honest and I can't see how.
p.s PoE is awesome for home security
If you have three phase power then it can be used to run a 3-phase load (usually large ducted aircon in a residential setting), but it will also be wired up with different circuits connected to different phases to even out the load. The different phases might be labelled in the switch box.
I'm not sure why you want to test - are you wanting to buy a 3-phase ducted aircon and make sure it can be installed before you buy it? Or are you wanting to install 3-phase solar? Those are usually the only things that use 3-phase in a residential house and both would require an inspection of some sort of your house anyway, so if you aren't sure I'd get the installer to check at that point.
If you have wall outlets on all three phases then it might be possible to prove that you have three phases being used by checking the voltage on different switches since the three phases may run at different enough voltages to detect.