100+yo house, breaker boxes and more - 12/29/02 12:18 AM
Good evening, all. First, please know that I'm just a home owner who knows very little about electrical. My husband has good basics in electrical, but doesn't pretend to be anywhere near an electrician.
OK, next said, I don't have a ton more to spend on the house right now. so while i know the right answer is pay a large amount of money and have half hte house rewired, that option is fiscally impossible at this time.
OK, now....
The house used to be on a fuse box. In fact, half hte kitchen and the basement remain on the fusebox. However, the fuse box is "backed" by a breaker in my breaker box.
The breaker box was installed, we're guessing, in the 1970s. Just a guess. Most of the house equipment seems just fine on it.
A little more background and i'll be quiet i promise...
the wiring in the basement is bizarre. There is more than one hot line at a time, found when we were attempting to repair a burnt light socket downstairs. A friend who IS an electrician (and EE) helped us get it so it was functioning safely, and the light is very seldom used, and seemed to be fine the last six months. To be honest, i'd basically forgotten about it.
Or so we thought...
when we bought hte house the owners were required to GFI the kitchen socket. That socket has never been right. It ws crammed into a normal size box, doesnt fit, sticks out. I use it only for the toaster and have been saying from day one it needs to be replaced. Well, from day one it has periodically popped the GFI. Knowing that segment of the kitchen is often damp from the sink we've carelessly ignored it.
Then one day last week, half the kitchen was dead. We checked the screw in fuse, it was fine. did a little more research, then checked the breaker. The breaker was "not right" so Mike pulled it.
It was "NOT RIGHT" alright! It is burned through the case on one side!!!
...
OK...
so...
now, I go to buy a new breaker for it. But I can't get one, at least not easily. It is a GTE sylvania something or other, sorry no i don't know what, but it has 2 cut outs where it drops into the box to mount it, it is not a bolt in. It can be ordered, or i can likely find one on line.
some people are telling me the whole fuse box is outdated and dangerous and I shoudl consider this a warning and replace the whole box (OUCH! that's a lot of breakers!)
Others are saying that's ridiculous but that those people just oculdnt get the breaker i need and, of course, this person CAN, but its going to be expensive....
So I'm looking for a straight answer. Is my GTE/Sylvania style breaker box dangerous??? do i need to replace the whole box? (besides rewiring half the kitchen and the basement, sigh...)
If my box is dangerous, why didnt the guy who installed my AC unit onto my heatin system, who had us purchase a big, special breaker just for the AC system separate, tell us it was a problem? And could the AC being onboard on this same box actually have anything to do with the mysterious sudden problem with this breaker??? (it, too, is in the basement, but supposedly wired totally separately).
I'm worried about my house....my family...and more. but just not sure how to get an HONEST, SAFE, ACCURATE answer.
OK, next said, I don't have a ton more to spend on the house right now. so while i know the right answer is pay a large amount of money and have half hte house rewired, that option is fiscally impossible at this time.
OK, now....
The house used to be on a fuse box. In fact, half hte kitchen and the basement remain on the fusebox. However, the fuse box is "backed" by a breaker in my breaker box.
The breaker box was installed, we're guessing, in the 1970s. Just a guess. Most of the house equipment seems just fine on it.
A little more background and i'll be quiet i promise...
the wiring in the basement is bizarre. There is more than one hot line at a time, found when we were attempting to repair a burnt light socket downstairs. A friend who IS an electrician (and EE) helped us get it so it was functioning safely, and the light is very seldom used, and seemed to be fine the last six months. To be honest, i'd basically forgotten about it.
Or so we thought...
when we bought hte house the owners were required to GFI the kitchen socket. That socket has never been right. It ws crammed into a normal size box, doesnt fit, sticks out. I use it only for the toaster and have been saying from day one it needs to be replaced. Well, from day one it has periodically popped the GFI. Knowing that segment of the kitchen is often damp from the sink we've carelessly ignored it.
Then one day last week, half the kitchen was dead. We checked the screw in fuse, it was fine. did a little more research, then checked the breaker. The breaker was "not right" so Mike pulled it.
It was "NOT RIGHT" alright! It is burned through the case on one side!!!
...
OK...
so...
now, I go to buy a new breaker for it. But I can't get one, at least not easily. It is a GTE sylvania something or other, sorry no i don't know what, but it has 2 cut outs where it drops into the box to mount it, it is not a bolt in. It can be ordered, or i can likely find one on line.
some people are telling me the whole fuse box is outdated and dangerous and I shoudl consider this a warning and replace the whole box (OUCH! that's a lot of breakers!)
Others are saying that's ridiculous but that those people just oculdnt get the breaker i need and, of course, this person CAN, but its going to be expensive....
So I'm looking for a straight answer. Is my GTE/Sylvania style breaker box dangerous??? do i need to replace the whole box? (besides rewiring half the kitchen and the basement, sigh...)
If my box is dangerous, why didnt the guy who installed my AC unit onto my heatin system, who had us purchase a big, special breaker just for the AC system separate, tell us it was a problem? And could the AC being onboard on this same box actually have anything to do with the mysterious sudden problem with this breaker??? (it, too, is in the basement, but supposedly wired totally separately).
I'm worried about my house....my family...and more. but just not sure how to get an HONEST, SAFE, ACCURATE answer.