Potpourri starting Jan 10, 2010

wlhayesmfs · Post by **wlhayesmfs** » Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:16 pm

Farmer, if that thing blew a fuse could we even find them now. I remember my first house in 67 and it had TWO of them to run the whole house and found out one of them had been wired around. Lucky it did not burn down before I rewired it. Knob and pole wiring in attic and saw dust insulation.
Those were the days.

cocacola1012 · Post by **cocacola1012** » Sat Jan 16, 2010 11:06 pm

A funny thing happened today. I plugged my drill in to drive a couple screws for a shelf project. I squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. So I told the LOML that the drill wasn't working. I went and bought another one, plugged it in (to the same outlet) and it didn't work.. Then I thought to check the breaker. It was tripped.. I kept the drill and put the old one away for now....

kameljoe21 · Post by **kameljoe21** » Sat Jan 16, 2010 11:24 pm

@ mickyd

Yes it will be the whole house and the basement as well
and the dog name is Sydney and shes an australian shepherd red merle

robinson46176 · Post by **robinson46176** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:12 am

wlhayesmfs wrote:Farmer, if that thing blew a fuse could we even find them now. I remember my first house in 67 and it had TWO of them to run the whole house and found out one of them had been wired around. Lucky it did not burn down before I rewired it. Knob and pole wiring in attic and saw dust insulation.
Those were the days.

Actually fuses are pretty easy to find. Lots of drug stores carry them yet and so does Wally World. Mennards has a wide selection. There are also screw-in breakers that you can buy that screw right in the fuse socket to convert to push button breaker. I use one in one shop for an air compressor that sometimes blows a fuse if it has a hard time starting in cold weather.
In spite of what some folks think there is really nothing wrong with fuses other than the inconvenience and if your wiring is proper you rarely blow a fuse. I did actually have an insurance company turn me down because this house has fuses instead of breakers. I assume that their logic is that someone can easily put in a fuse that is way to high of an amperage for a given circuit or stick a penny in under it. I am pretty conservative about fusing. I try to use just as light of a fuse as possible, they are cheap.
This house is still fuses because when the service was heavily upgraded last my father did it (former electrician) and he was old school enough that he just preferred fuses over breakers. BTW, my old house (I had it built new) is all breakers and in the first couple of years I had three breakers fail and one did a scary amount of arcing when it went.
I have breakers in one barn but the other 4 are all fuses. Two are on another meter down the road about 600 feet. Here I have a pole about 30 feet from the house with a huge breaker box on it. The house has two underground feeds, each on their own breaker. The barns and a few sheds are on an overhead tri-plex feed on another big breaker. Each barn and shed then has its own fuse box or breaker box. There is also a separate feed in that big box to the well pit so that in case of fire we can kill power to the house and still have water to fight a fire with. I don't recall the breaker sizes in that big pole box. I have never had to reset one.

It all had to be set up pretty heavy because of crop fans, grain equipment and welding etc. plus this is a very large house. I do have light weight feeds to two barns (big barn and a small barn) and a shed since I rarely use anything but a couple of light bulbs in them. It is heavy enough that I can run most power tools for building repairs etc. Just not heavy enough for something like a shop. Right now I have a heated water tub running for the horses in one barn but it is only a 150 watt heater.
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The fuse holders on the kiln are unique. They are a heavy socket held in place with EMT compression fittings.