"E. Julius" (soonerfrommi)
02/12/2015 at 09:47 • Filed to: Lightlopnik
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"E. Julius" (soonerfrommi)
02/12/2015 at 09:47 • Filed to: Lightlopnik | 0
| 26 |
I have an electrician in my apartment right now replacing all of my lights. He took out the old ones and the wires were FRIED. Is this something I should be really angry/litigious about?
I started having intermittent problems with my lights about four months ago. I would turn some on and it would trip my breaker. Nothing I couldn't live with, but I wanted it fixed. The electrician initially thought it was just too much of a draw for the breaker, and recommended we switch all the bulbs from halogen to LED. My landlord did this, which helped some but didn't fix everything.
The electrician came back today and found the wiring in it's current state. The plastic pieces were severely blackened, as was the insulation on many of the wires. The insulation was burned to the point where it crumbled off of the wire quite easily.
Like I said, they're currently redoing the wiring and replacing the lights at no cost to me, so I'm not worried about that. My main concern is whether this was a potentially dangerous situation and I just got lucky.
I'm going to send more and better pictures to my dad tonight and see what he says, but in the meantime what are your thoughts oppo?
Do-Rif-To
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 09:54 |
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How many lights were these running? I'm laughing at any serious electrician saying that too many lights were tripping the breaker and not a more serious problem like a bunch of old, burned, high resistance wire. Sounds like some shady landlord logic to me. You might have a decent case for dangerous neglect that almost caused a fire, maybe one of our resident lawyers can weigh in.
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E. Julius
> Do-Rif-To
02/12/2015 at 09:59 |
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To be fair, he only spoke French and I have pretty much zero electrician vocab so I had a very difficult time understanding him. The first electrician they brought was a complete joke, but when he couldn't fix it they brought in this guy who is very very professional.
Nibbles
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:07 |
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Wires get old; this kind of stuff happens. I wouldn't be worried/litigious about it unless your landlord is refusing to have the damaged components repaired/replaced.
Nobody knows what their wiring looks like until something like this happens.
Meatcoma
> Do-Rif-To
02/12/2015 at 10:07 |
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Old is perfectly describing those wires, looks like cloth insulation around them. How old is this house? And I would say yes, you should have been concerned.
'Wägen, EPA LOL
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:11 |
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Nothing to worry about - your apartment was on the level of most super cars.
Fiery death, is that you?
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E. Julius
> Nibbles
02/12/2015 at 10:15 |
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Yeah that's kind of what I was thinking, I just wasn't sure. On the other hand, I think the wiring was only a couple years old and the electrician said it was really badly done, so it was sort of shoddy to begin with. I'm not really happy about it but it wasn't a huge inconvenience. Just as long as it wasn't something dangerous.
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Nibbles
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:18 |
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Landlords are businesspeople, not contractors. As long as they're working to remedy the situation I'd say they're doing a well enough job :)
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E. Julius
> 'Wägen, EPA LOL
02/12/2015 at 10:18 |
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Haha good one. A frightening prospect here in France though since they lag significantly in fire safety. My building has no smoke detectors or fire escapes, and just a handful of fire extinguishers. I'm on the top (7th) floor, so if there was a fire my only hope would be to use a fire extinguisher and try and make it down the stairs or wait until the fire department arrived to extract me with a ladder.
uofime
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:27 |
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yeah, old wires do fall apart. Thank goodness your breakers were in good shape, wired correctly and did their job.
The you need to switch to LED lighting claim is hilarious though, worked fine for, judging by the canvas wire wrapping, 60+ years with incandecents, but now you need to change... HA!
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E. Julius
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 10:30 |
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Yeah I couldn't understand the guy's french too well, but it sounded like he was mumbling something about there being too much insulation and too much heat from the bulbs so we needed to switch them. Random. I've got nice fancy new lights though. Except they put in exactly one that was different temperature than the rest, which is infuriating me at the moment.
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'Wägen, EPA LOL
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:33 |
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You'd be shocked by how much fire you can actually put out / how much time you can actually buy yourself with a 2.5 gallon water can fire extinguisher. The only problem is that very few people get a chance to practice with them.
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E. Julius
> 'Wägen, EPA LOL
02/12/2015 at 10:44 |
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I think the ones here are dry chemical extinguishers, about 3L in size if I had to guess. Due to some youthful foolishness I have had to use one of those before, but my bigger concern would be some panicked jackoff escaping with the only one on the floor without knocking on the doors first.
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uofime
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:48 |
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equally entertaining excuse, worked fine for how many years and suddenly its a problem, reeks of BS.
how did they manage to rewire the place? I would assume it would involve tearing a low of walls and ceilings apart and generally making a mess
that's a plus, but I really hate the cold temperature LEDs the light is so ugly
Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 10:53 |
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That is actually really bad! I have seen wiring in 110 year old housed in better shape. My guess is not properly grounded and shitty fixtures pulling to much amperage? The wires should be rated to handle the amps of the breaker, probably 10amp for standard 115v service (14 gauge?). If the wires are fried like that they were pulling max amps and the breaker was not tripping when overloaded.
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E. Julius
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 10:54 |
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Yeah it's a pretty big load. At least they fixed it though. They didn't have to do anything serious, I think the main problem was just the last few feet leading up to the bulb. He was able to get it all done just by removing the recessed lighting enclosures, and everything works fine now.
The LEDs are nice, and fortunately all but the one is a nice warm color. I remember maybe 6+ years ago my dad was being an 'early adopter' and converting the house to LEDs before they got really popular. This was also before they were as well developed as they are now so they were all the super creepy ultra pale blue/white. Ended up doing the CFL thing for a few years until warm temp LED bulbs were widely available in all sizes.
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E. Julius
> Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
02/12/2015 at 10:58 |
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I don't know enough French electrician vocab to understand exactly what the problem was, but the electrician said it was very badly done. Also it was 230V since I'm in France, but that wasn't in the post. They were definitely tripping the breakers, but like I said I don't know exactly what the problem was. Oh well, all fixed now.
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uofime
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 11:04 |
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sounds like a Band-Aid, but if it works it works and you're not going to live there for all that much longer, so what do you care.
I still haven't switched, my last experience a couple years ago had the 20$ bulbs blowing out after ~3 months. Might be time to try again since dimmable CFLs are pretty impossible to find in stores anymore
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E. Julius
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 11:06 |
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Yeah I've only got 3 months left here, and it can't be any worse than living the preceding six months with the wiring like that. Sucks you had those shitty bulbs though, I've never heard of them doing that. Good luck with the next batch.
jariten1781
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 11:20 |
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Sounds like everything went as it should...started tripping, attempted easy fixes, didn't work, went all in for the real fix. That would be good land lord behavior so nothing I'd bug them about. It's a peril of renting that these things take time, but as long as it's resolved at no cost I don't think there's anything to even complain about; especially nothing that warrants court involvement.
Plus it's a good learning experience. Now you know when you own a place that when this happens it's time to call an electrician early on rather than attempting work arounds.
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E. Julius
> jariten1781
02/12/2015 at 11:22 |
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you're right, the landlord (or his assistant really) has been nothing but helpful. My only concern was if I was in some sort of danger on account of them not installing the wires correctly, but that doesn't seem to be the case given the majority of the comments.
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'Wägen, EPA LOL
> E. Julius
02/12/2015 at 11:57 |
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You can always buy one for your apartment, dry chem is the most versatile - rated for most fire types (classes A, B, C in the states / A is normal combustibles / B is liquids like grease / C is electrical) but it's a bitch to clean up. CO2 is little to no cleanup, but only rated for B and C fires. A water can is easily refilled if you have a compressor, but only rated for class A fire. If you trying to escape a stairwell, and the stairs are on fire, they are class A.
Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again.
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 11:57 |
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But it's so good for indoor pictures!
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uofime
> Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again.
02/12/2015 at 12:19 |
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you're joking right? makes everything look washed out imo, but I'm no photg
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Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again.
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 12:29 |
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It is easier to brighten colours when there is a good white balance, than it is to colour-correct for yellow lighting.
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uofime
> Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again.
02/12/2015 at 12:39 |
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that makes sense.
but really, post processing, who does that? /s
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Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again.
> uofime
02/12/2015 at 12:40 |
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Haha I know you are kidding, but my wife won't upload any of her pictures until she has at least done a colour correction.