Electrical Reflections: What he learned will SHOCK you!!!

Currently reflecting on how thankful I am for all the opportunities I've been blessed with. Specifically, the ability to recognize subpar electrical work and the capability to fix it for the safety of my family.

I was reading up on electrical subpanels on my lunch break since our home has one in the basement.

WHAT I LEARNED WILL SHOCK YOU!!!

With what I learned, well just call me shocked (pun intended ⚡️) that we haven't had an unfortunate incident ☠️. Such an incident where, as someone online so eloquently put:

"All it takes is a preexisting fault, one rainstorm, or wet feet, whatever... and you touching something energized - and you're doing the 60 cycle shuffle."

Arcing. Electrocution. Bad shocky things.

What is an electrician's favorite flavor of ice cream? Shock-a-lot.

⚡️️️️️️️️️⚡️⚡️

I've been shocked (embarrassingly, multiple times) from being careless around my main panel. It's not fun.

Our home's basement, an ill-planned afterthought-addition, prefers to remain wet. This is primarily because of two things.

First, the basement was added after the home was built. So, they dug out from beneath it and used regular old concrete cinder blocks for the foundation walls.

Second, surprisingly, concrete is a rather porous material and water loves to penetrate it. And when this happens, it can build up a lot of pressure which forces the water into places that it doesn't belong, like a basement.

Hence, our wet basement.

Our basement's electrical subpanel is definitely not wired correctly. Oh and there definitely exists a potential parallel path for ground currents. Don't even get me started on how a 30 amp breaker is supplying 3 15s and a single 20.

First off, I have about 5 or 6 open slots on my main panel, so this subpanel is completely unnecessary. Second, that 30A breaker is connected to 4 or 5 outlets, a separate half bath attached to the living room (lol, right?), and the air conditioning. 😒 This breaker solely exists to bring power to the AC, yet it has all these extra, unsafe connections/additions.

What's the definition of a shock absorber? A careless electrician.

The state of all this makes me angry and scared. I'm scared for those who've inherited such an unsafe mess as we have. How many other homes exist with similar, or worse, electrical work?

This fault exists because of multiple people along the chain-of-command, so to speak, who were either unqualified, negligent, or more likely both who wired up the home. And unfortunately, it can be really expensive to fix faults as time goes on. Most likely, it involves running new line, disposing of and installing new drywall, and maybe even framing work. So, even if you can recognize such failures, you may not have the resources available to fix them.

Let's be clear: I'm not a licensed electrician. I'm just an engineer with a thirst for knowledge and doing what's right. However, thankfully I took enough electrical engineering courses to be dangerous (and earn a degree). I have also had the opportunity to shadow those more qualified than me as a contractor during the summers between semesters. Lives are at stake here. Electricity is dangerous.

We have to do better.