Electric Mayhem!

Wouldn't demolition be more fun if the contractors looked like this?

I was thinking about Animal's band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, when I was over at TOH today sniffing around the electrician. I don't know how the order of operations is decided, but Boudreaux's got his electric guy moving the circuit box to a new *legal!* location and upgrading the service to the house.

When we had the house inspected prior to purchase, our electrician Sam discovered a whole new level of electric mayhem. Sam is older than dirt and slow as molasses, but he's cheap and he knows his stuff. I knew bad news was coming when he came out of the basement shaking his head. It turns out that somehow, the house had a NEW 200 amp circuit breaker, which was being fed by a 100 amp main breaker outside, which in turn was being fed by a 60 amp meter box . I don't know much about electricity, but I take it this is the equivalent to plugging a 220 volt dryer into a 110 volt outlet, but the dryer is actually the entire house. Hmmm. Also of interest is that the 100 amp breaker could only be opened by taking a saw to the railing for the porch stairs.

Sam laughed and said there was no way this set up ever passed inspection. He also found a bunch of outlets that had three-pronged receptacles but were not actually grounded. I suspect that some former owner got rooked by a shady contractor when this set up was put in. Since Mr. Nola and I each run multiple computers, televisions, air conditioning and eventually an assortment of kick-ass cooking appliances, decent electrical service is mandatory. Once the guys over there today are done, we should be ready to go. Of course, there's still the matter of old knob-and-tube wiring, but we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it.