ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Irresponsible info on the net

here is a link to the "discussion" page.

http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Upgrade-Your-House-with-a-200-Amp-Electrical-Service

thank you for your attention to this matter, and all your responses on there. looks like an outside chance that it could get voted deleted. not to say that another version won't pop up later, or some other site.
oh well..if we can educate/deter even one soul, we've at least help a little.

I added this to the discussion about deleting this "how to":

"I'm not an electrician, but an electrical engineer, and I have an understanding of what would happen if the homeowner accidentially shorts out the power company feed. Called an "Arc Blast" you would briefly have more energy than that used by large radio stations turning itself into heat at levels hotter than the surface of the Sun. This would cause an explosion of vaporized and molten metal from the wires and metal boxes. The homeowner would get burned badly, and this may even set the house on fire. A homeowner really doesn't want to mess with this hazard. And then there's the shock hazard. This is a job to contract out to a licensed electrician, he'll know all the proper procedures for dealing with these hazards. And also know all the revalent codes to do a professional install in a safe method. He will be the one to pull the permits and have the inspections done. You might as well have him clean up any other electrical issues you've been ignoring as well, it won't run up the cost that much more as he's already there. And you won't give your house insurance company an excuse to bail out of covering your house."

Amazing, Save $1200. And put your life at risk. Has anyone ever thought about inhaleing that molten metal.

Doctors (as good as they are) can't fix that, or be as gentile as one would like with the "wire" brush getting it off of your skin.

Not to mention the "grab" factor of the shock and electricity.

I'm very nervouse with every meter,even after 20 years.

I vote to delete!

Some of these sites... If you nicely tell them to stay away.."you don't have a clue"... Banned for life!!
Bad for their web site.
Oh Well.

That site is rather worrying, especially when you see advice like this freely meted out.

This part made me laugh...

That's gotta be a joke!!!!

Err....I actually did that to the city street light in front of our house when I was 14.
We were playing with a 2x4 and whacked the pole.
When the light went out we thought we broke it and bolted inside. When it came back on 15 min. later it became our new game for a while.

This is why I hate kids

IMHO you guys are not approaching this in the right way.

The post being discussed is irresponsible and dangerous, I _totally_ agree. However deleting this post will do very little good.

The problem is that _bad_ information is out there, and deleting a single copy of the bad information won't make it go away. The only way to deal with this is to supply _better_ information.

The site in question is all about 'Do It Yourself'. The article in question describes an extremely large project. The article fails on the following points:

1) It fails to do is to point out the large number of options and alternate situations that might be encountered.

2) It fails to point out the _extensive_ background required to choose the various options.

3) It fails to properly point out the extreme danger of some of the operations.

4) The article oversimplifies in the extreme!

5) Most importantly, it fails to provide guidance for to help the reader reasonably decide what their limits are, what they can _reasonably_ do themselves, and what they should hire a professional for. Simply saying 'hire a professional' will not be listened to; that is not new information. If someone was going to just hire a professional, they wouldn't be looking at the site in question, they would go to the yellow pages.

A qualified non-professional, one who takes the time to study the necessary requirements, is entirely capable of doing a substantial part of a whole house electrical system upgrade. Properly done, this leaves the electrician doing the more high value work (making more $ per hour), the home owner doing the lower value work that they can safely and competently do (reducing over-all price). Improperly done, someone gets dead. Getting this article deleted won't help the situation, so if you don't like this article, then come up with a better one.

I used to haunt www.doityourself.com One of the points that I regularly tried to hammer home was: Electricity is powerful and dangerous. A proper and safe electrical installation requires extensive knowledge. You can pay for that knowledge by taking the time to study, or by paying a professional to simply do the work. There is absolutely _no way_ that an online site can tell you everything that you need to know, because there is no way that we can answer the questions that you don't even know to ask. So study the books, get proper permits and inspections, and be willing to say 'no, too much, time for professional help'.

-Jon

I registered for the site just for this wiki. I have been posting as 130.160.45.52. Anyway just thought yall might like to know.

The article also fails to cover load calcs, and why you may or may not even need a 200A service.