X-mas lights blowing fuses.. adding breakers?

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horn4life

500+ Posts
Well I sort of went half nuts this year on the lights, riggin my own miniture Zilker Christmas tree in the front yard. It's about 22 feet tall, big enough for the kids to spin underneath and get the "Zilker effect"

Anyhow I don't have more than one outside electrical outlet on the front of the house and it runs my pond pump so I can't put too much on that circuit. So I ran a couple an extension cord out of the garage and used one of those new big fat extension cords that has multiple plug in points.

I think I have solved my problem by running a 100 foot extension cord off of a different circuit off the outdoor outlet in the backyard. So hopefully no more flipping of the breaker. I knew I was close on the load anyhow.

So does anyone have any idea how much it will cost me to drop in another breaker or two and some outets on the front of the house? I figure to run the line through the attic myself and just have the electrician make the connections on both ends. The idea of messing around in my breaker box myself is simply something I am not confident in doing at all.

I saw a really slick multiple outlet outdoor electrical box at Home Depot for $40 bucks with a timer and dawn to dusk sensor. But I wonder how much Electicity I can pump into one outlet? Seems like for my washer dryer I have 30 amp breakers with the remainder being 15 and 20 amp swithces.

I have plenty of physical room in the breaker box (thankfully) but my over exhuberance on the "Zilker Tree" has my kids wanting me to go even bigger and badder next year, so looks like a call to the electrician....
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Of course then I can go complete ape **** and send my ebill though the roof!
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Quit being a ***** and do-it-yourself
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If you have room in the box, adding a breaker and outlets couldn't be easier. Go open the panel and look inside. Black wire to breaker. White wire to common bar. Ground wire to ground bar. So simple, even aggy could do it.

Same thing on the other end. Black wire on side of outlet marked "hot". White goes on "common" or "neutral" side. Ground goes on screw on bottom of outlet.

Of course, the first outlet in the chain needs to be a GFCI. The only tricky part is sizing the wire and breaker. The rule of thumb is 14 gauge wire for a 15 amp breaker, 12 gauge for a 20 amp breaker.

Come to think of it, just use a GFCI breaker, then you can use regular cheapy outlets.
 
Hmm... that sounds actually pretty easy...

Maybe I will do it myself since I am doing all the hard stuff of pulling the damn line through the frigging attic and fishing it through the wall...

If after the first of the year I never post again then... it wasn't as easy as I thought....
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It really IS as easy as BW makes it sound. The wiring is done cold and then you sort of snap the breaker in and it's not really any more complicated than plugging in the vacuum cleaner. You just want to be real careful about where your screwdriver/lightning rod is at all times.

You've done far more complicated projects. My experience has been that it's cheaper to use a GFCI outlet than to use a GFCI breaker. GFCI breakers were in the $40 range last time I looked and outlets were under $10. That may not hold true, but give it a look.
 
I changed out all my outlets and put in GFCIs and shocked the everliving **** out of myself about 3 times. My wife just looked at me and said, "why don't you ever turn the power off?" Well duh, because then I won't have the lights on to see what I am doing.

Pain don't hurt.
 
You can do it yourself, but I would recommend buying an inexpensive circuit tester at Home Depot, and turning the power off during the exercise. The tester will light up a small bulb if there is still power in the line or outlet you thought you just turned off. Check it twice, every time you go back to a new location-or you will be installed into the yard display as Rudolph the flashing nosed home electrician.
 
quick question for the electrically literate here.... the house I just bought to remodel has the old 2-prong plugs without a ground... not only do I want to replace these for asthetics, but some of them I need to rewire to make the grounds functional...

1. what does it mean to "loop the neutral" or something when installing the 3-prong grounded plugs but not actually running the ground?? how do you do this?
2. what do I need to do to run actual grounds to the outlets that I want to fully convert?
 
ldogg

To change to 3 wire system you need to replce all your wiring in the house to 12/2 with ground Romex and also install a new breaker panel. This will not be a cheap project.
It will also require a lot of labor. I would recommend hiring a licensed electrician since basically you will rewire the entire house. You can however install grounded outlets in place of the 2 prong outlets just leave the ground screw without a wire under it. Keep in mind the outlet will not be grounded, but you can plug a 3 prong outlet in.
 
Ok, In my humble opinion as a fairly experienced DIY electrician:

1) I agree with BigWill, installing additional breakers is not too difficult, but you need full concentration, and make sure you don't have more wire exposed from stripping the ends than you need. Also be aware of how the wire comes into your box, watch that there isn't tension somewhere that would cause the wire to rub through eventually and short out on the metal box.

2) I also agree with BigWill on the wire sizing issue, with one thing in mind, and that is future changes that might need more service load. A bedroom now would be fine with 15 amp service, and 14 ga wire would be adequate. But if that bedroom were to turn into something else in the future that needed more juice, if the 12 ga were in place, then the breaker could just be upgraded.

3) I prefer to use the screws instead of the snap ins, mainly because of the times I have had one of those connections give while trying to get the receptacle or switch into the box. I don't much trust them.

4) We also are in an older house that has two wire w/o ground, and yes you can jump from your ground to your common, IF you have a breaker box that has a certain grounding bar in it. Don't ask me, I don't really know the diff, but this electrician told me what to get, and I did. Works ok so far, and much cheaper than having a rewire. I did not take a chance with the receptacles that my entertainment equipment or computers run off of, and ran a 8 ga ground from those receptacles through the wall outside to grounding rods. We have a lot of lightning up here and I was going with that ounce of prevention adage. If you go with the jumper technique, be aware that the code in your town might not allow it, and while it will work for you, it might be a problem when you sell.

5) The GFCI outlet first in line is much cheaper than the GFCI breaker.

6) Lastly, like I mentioned with the code situation, I have heard horror stories of insurance companies not paying claims due to fire, based on wiring problems, such as overloaded circuits or mismatched breakers/wire, etc. Something to think about.
 
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