r/electrical • • 14h ago

When my fingernail touches the metal part of my shower handle, it shocks me, what’s that about?

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149 Upvotes

it’s a tiny little shock, feels even less than those like fake gum pranks, curious what could be causing it? turned off the vent switch and it still shocks.


r/electrical • • 9h ago

Electrician came up 5 ft short on 4 AWG hot tub cable—wants to put a junction box in the attic. Safe/Allowed?

35 Upvotes

My electrician pulled a 4 AWG cable run for my new hot tub, but he miscalculated and came up about 5 feet short.

​His solution is to install a junction box in the attic to splice the last 5 feet.

​Is this safe for a continuous 50/60A load, or should I hold out and insist he pull a brand new, continuous wire? If a junction box is allowed, what specific connectors/box should he be using so it's done right?


r/electrical • • 11h ago

Any adapters like this for outlets installed ground prong up?

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8 Upvotes

Looking for a 90 degree adapter like this for outlets installed with ground prong up. Need a cord to drop down the wall. I know I could just turn the outlet around but if there's a way to keep the ground up, I'd like to.


r/electrical • • 4h ago

Plugged in heater and felt like a vibrating feeling in fingers?

2 Upvotes

Went to plug in heater and when I put the outlet in like the final few inches to push inside the wall I feel like a vibration in the wire to plug into the wall then it went away. I only felt it in my fingers really. Am I okay and what is this?


r/electrical • • 2h ago

Where can I find these connectors or what are they called?

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1 Upvotes

These are male and female waterproof connectors for the ignition coil on a string trimmer. For the life of me I can not find them anywhere. Does anyone know what these specific connectors are called?


r/electrical • • 2h ago

[ Removed by Reddit ]

1 Upvotes

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]


r/electrical • • 6h ago

Lutron caseta - lights work until a schedule turns them on

2 Upvotes

I have 2 wall sconces that are connected to a lutron Caseta switch (not a dimmer switch, 2 bulbs each rated for 100w). We just moved into this place and 1 bulbs was out in each fixture so I replaced the burnt bulbs with led bulbs with the same wattage as the working bulbs. All 4 lights worked fine - they turned on/off with the wall switch, lutron app, and Google home. The work fine until the schedule turns them off.

Next day I noticed they didn't come on with the schedule I set in Google home and wouldn't turn on/off with the switch or apps. If I unscrew one bulb per fixture, the lights come on. I screw the lights back in and everything works fine...until the next day when the same thing happens.

Any thoughts on what's going on? I know I'm not overheating the fixtures or pulling too much load. These are 4 bulbs that are only 8.8W each.


r/electrical • • 6h ago

Garbage disposal on same circuit as dishwasher

2 Upvotes

When we moved into our unit, the dishwasher and garbage disposal were on the same outlet(both plug-in). When the dishwasher broke we upgraded to a nicer one, but weren’t really using the garbage disposal. When we started using the garbage disposal earlier this year the outlet blew out, so we replaced it with a GFCI outlet, but it still trips the circuit when both are plugged in.

I’d like to be able to have both plugged in but not running at the same time. My current idea is to have remote-controlled toggle outlets to allow one or the other to be turned on. Is there another way to artificially limit one? Could I potentially have a power bank plugged in to run the garbage disposal since it will be running so infrequently?


r/electrical • • 7h ago

Crazy electrical at my daughters apartment. Central [FL]

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2 Upvotes

Crazy electrical at my daughters apartment. Central [FL]

(audio on, no jump scares)

This is an apartment in a converted hotel. One side is kitchen/living room, second side is bedroom bathroom.

When she took this video, all power had flipped itself off to the kitchen side, including the PTAC unit. The second side was full power with the exception of PTAC & bathroom GFCI. Apparently this has happened a few times now.

Maintenance arrived a few hours after she reported it, told her 3 other units in that building (property has 12 buildings, \~350 units) have the same issue & it's due to 'old outdated breaker panels'. This was apparently beyond their work scope, so they called in the electric company serving the property. Provider flipped power to the entire building for an hour or so, then back on. Unsure what they actually did while power was off.

My knowledge on electrical is very very little, but I do know a 220 line shouldn't affect anything on separate 110 & 220 switches.

Is this a low worry situation where she should just wait out the permanent solution, or is this a potential fire hazard that she should request to be transferred to another unit? Has an 8 y/o and 5 mo old kiddo.


r/electrical • • 14h ago

Non Insulated neutral on aluminum wire?

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4 Upvotes

I went to replace my dryer cord and box today because of burn marks on L1 at the plug and I find 3 aluminum twisted wires, but the "neutral" doesn't have its own insulation layer. This can't be proper right? Wouldn't this electrify the metal on the outlet box? Does this wire need to be rerun or am I overthinking this? The bundle is sheathed but the neutral is definitely in contact with the box. Home was built in 1970.


r/electrical • • 1d ago

Flickering lights in new construction

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122 Upvotes

I have a new construction home and most of the lights flicker whenever my hvac is on. Not just when it kicks in but the whole time it is on the lights flicker. It’s basically all the fixtures that have regular screw in LED bulbs. My Halo puck lights don’t flicker but my Hinkley fan light does. I just bought some high quality “flicker free” dimmable LED bulbs to test if that was the problem but they still flicker. Some are on dimmers and some aren’t. It doesn’t matter if dimmer is up or down. One fixture I put an incandescent in and that’s fine. I had service upgraded to 200 amp before construction. The house is all electric and has three, 2 ton heat pumps so it is probably drawing a lot but it still happens even if only one air handler is going. My electrician has looked into it a few times but I don’t know that he has gone beyond changing bulbs and saying that LED lights are weird.

I’ve read some suggestions here about having electrical company check connections at the meter so I’m going to call them but I’m really at my wits end with trying to figure this out. It’s making half the lights in my house unusable.

Edit: I have grid-tied solar, just to add this to the mix if that could be part of the issue. No batteries, just net metering.


r/electrical • • 17h ago

Buying an ungrounded house

10 Upvotes

Hi! My husband and I are in the process of buying a house and just found out from the inspection report and from having an electrician out there that the house is not grounded. It was built in 1919. Just wondering if we are able to live in it? Is it safe to raise our family here? The electrician made it seem like it was completely impractical to rewire the house? Not sure if it helps but the house is a two story home that’s 1980 sqft. Unsure about the number of outlets present

EDIT: Thank you everyone for the responses!! The house has been updated thoroughly so we have no other issues except for it not being ground. It’s not knob and tube either. We’re asking for more money off, thank you so much for the responses!! I had no idea about GFCI outlets so that’s a huge fix! Really appreciate the help :)


r/electrical • • 5h ago

30 amp vs 50 amp transfer switch

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1 Upvotes

r/electrical • • 5h ago

LED light briefly gets brighter when switching on a laptop charger, with a faint crackling sound from the switch

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1 Upvotes

r/electrical • • 17h ago

Akash, Brother, are you okay?

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8 Upvotes

r/electrical • • 7h ago

Connecting a 9v battery to 12v led lights

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0 Upvotes

I’m trying to connect these together and they started to smoke and got really hot, what did I do wrong?


r/electrical • • 7h ago

Generator outlet

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0 Upvotes

Can someone tell me what plug to use for this locking outlet on a generator? I need a plug with the tab on the right side of the prong instead of the left.


r/electrical • • 11h ago

Concrete Walls

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2 Upvotes

Looking for advice:

Have the chance to work on a 60’s concrete and steel high-rise. This perimeter wall where customer wants to add a plug and some sconces is straight sheetrock glued to concrete. The existing boxes seem to have been placed when the concrete was originally cast. The 3 different locations I’ve stabbed with my saw are all solid concrete. I’m thinking wire mold is the only option, any one had to deal with a situation like this?


r/electrical • • 8h ago

Breaker randomly tripped

1 Upvotes

We’ve only lived in this house for 4 months so we are finding out all the quirks that come with it. We have one breaker that was extremely overloaded, idk how the previous owners managed with this. Two sump pumps, a backup battery charger, dehumidifier, microwave, refrigerator, and coffee maker. It was fine when the sump pumps weren’t running but during rain it would trip. This happened twice and then I put one sump pump and associated backup battery charger on another breaker and it hasn’t tripped again until this evening. The dehumidifier and coffee maker were off, sump pump wasn’t running (and no backup battery charger on that pump). I noticed that the microwave clock was off, went down and saw the breaker had tripped. Fridge was still very cold so it couldn’t have been off for long. It did not trip again since (it’s been an hour since I flipped it back on) but should I get it looked at?


r/electrical • • 9h ago

Heater time!

0 Upvotes

Hello good people. I live in a basement and got a heater from my landlord. This is a convection panel heater and 1500W. I've attached the link in the comment. Any idea how long I can turn a panel heater on continuously? I try searching online but couldn’t get a reliable information.


r/electrical • • 9h ago

sub-panel questions

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0 Upvotes

Hi. So this subpanel has one bus bar with neutrals and grounds on it (I know that’s a taboo). I also see aluminum from the main incoming service to this subpanel immediately come back out and it’s bonded to a copper to another piece of wire (I think it goes up attic, across and down and grounded at main panel). All associated outlets are grounded per polarity plugin tester.

Three questions.

1) if my presumption about the path is correct, is it fine in terms of the aluminum ground wire not being attached to a designated busbar in this panel meant for grounds?
2) as long as I know how to safely do it, can I attach a busbar and isolate the grounds (with letting that thick aluminum wire remain on its preexisting path)?
3) why didn’t they just attach this ground wire in this panel like they did for the neutral?

Thanks in advance.


r/electrical • • 9h ago

Safe to side wire + back wire on GFCI receptacle?

1 Upvotes

First time homeowner here trying to install some GFCI receptacles. I have a Leviton GFCI outlet that supports side wiring and back wiring (with a pressure plate). One of the hot wires needed to get spliced because its insulation had been damaged and exposed the copper underneath.

I'm having a hard time getting the J-hook right on the new wire and I'm thinking of just taking the easy way out and back wiring this specific wire while using the pre-existing J-hooks on the other ones. Is there anything inherently wrong other than being sloppy/lazy?


r/electrical • • 7h ago

is this outlet okay to plug a washer into?

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0 Upvotes

i was only concerned due to the partial gap, and i wasn’t sure if that mattered


r/electrical • • 11h ago

Dead switch outlet

1 Upvotes

I shorted the source wires to a household light switch, it did not trip the breaker but now the feed is dead. Any ideas for a fix?


r/electrical • • 11h ago

What can I do to this ground?

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1 Upvotes

I have just built a shed. I want to level out the area behind it and put gravel down to make it usable and not muddy. Problem is that there is a copper ground wire coming out of the meter, to a rod into the ground, then another copper wire coming off that rod behind the shed to another rod. Can I bury all this, and pound the rods further into the ground? If I leave it at the height that it is, I will trip on it every F’ing day!!!!