Spaghetti bowl electrics

Monday - 6/20/11

I was taking another look at the spaghetti bowl electrical panel today.

It drives me nutz to see something unnecessarily messy as this (not to mention dangerous) and likely because someone didn't want to (or couldn't) spend the money to have it done right in the first place so I’m getting closer to taking the plunge and redoing it myself the way it should have been done.  

Electrical work is actually rather easy.....if (and not necessarily in this order) you posses a good sense of logic, have done your homework on the do's and don'ts, have a healthy respect for the fact that it can kill you if you're not careful, investigated everything that needs to be done, have full and open access to all the walls to simplify the tracing back of wires if there was ever the need, and most importantly, knowing where to turn the power OFF before beginning work.

Wiring breakers is easy as well….black to the breaker switch, white to the neutral bar in the box.  Unless you’re working with 240v lines in which case….well, never mind.  Anyway, overall it’s a piece of cake…..unless someone’s done some jury rigging in which case you need to be triple careful in deciphering what was done. 

I’ve heard stories from the guys at work about people doing things on the cheap and risking major calamity to save a few bucks.  Well, I’m all for saving a few bucks….. but not at the risk of life, limb, or the roof over my head.

WOW...See what I mean?!

So I'm browsing the electrical box to see how difficult it would be to start working on it (as said, not very).  I was finger tracing recognized cables to the logical spot in the box when I noticed this one 60amp breaker switch with heavy wire that seem to go OUT of the house through the same conduit that the power lines come in through.  

I scratched my head for a minute or two wondering why that was and then got to thinking about a stretch of conduit that comes out of the outside meter box, drops down and over to the opening in the concrete for the water tap and disappears down into the ground going…somewhere.  

Going....somewhere.....

As I was standing there contemplating where that wire might be going, I got to thinking of the capped off water line that comes up out of the ground where the old shed used to be.  Next to it, I spied the same a piece of PVC pipe sticking up out of the ground that I had been kicking at and pulling on the other day...

Wholly crap!!   I didn't look closely the other day but It's the other end of the heavy wire that comes out of the power panel!!   That could have been nasty had it been live when I was playing with it!  


Just goes to show you gotta be extremely careful when dealing with things other people have messed with!   I shall endeavor to do so with greater care moving forward!