Originally Posted by
jlhmnj
Interesting question for an electrician though polarity must have something to do with it. I can rewire safely though I must admit my understanding is lacking. There must also be issues with non polarized plugs being somewhat unsafe as to cause their demise or limited use today.
Jon
My cousin is a retired electrician. I call her if I have questions (usually they're "WTH were they thinking? Wait, is that even allowed?!!?" issues with this house!) but she usually just tells me I knew what I needed to do and why was I asking her.
She once told me that if she wasn't retired, she'd have loved to have me as an apprentice.
Polarity does factor in, it's just not in the same way as DC. DC has a positive wire and a negative wire.
AC has positive and negative on the hot wire and neutral or "0" on the other wire.
Non-polarized plugs are still around. My laptop for instance. Or one of them. Others are coming finally with 3 prong plugs. Also, almost any phone or tablet charger I can think of is 2 prong non-polarized.
Originally Posted by
Cogito
tammi,
this is the stuff that I yearn to know more about! Can I come visit you for a couple of weeks?
I find this all so fascinating and want to become proficient at it. But at my age, I kinda need it beat into my brain. Lol!
You can come and stay as long as you want as long as you bring sunshine and warm weather with you!
You can learn a lot about power from.... the
Home Depot Orange 123 book. That will start you out right with some of the common things in your house.I also have a Black and Decker Home Repair book too that's really good. Those books are probably 15 years old. They predate our move to this house and were around at least a few years in the first house. I was actually thinking of apprenticing as an electrician years ago and even have some materials and the code book here but I can't take the cold and a lot of the new construction is in half finished unheated buildings. Not here. Not for me these days.
Rain's tutorial on how to rebuild a 15-91 motor was an excellent tutorial on basic wiring and soldering. The skills also transfer to the non-potted motors.
I learned AC wiring first from my neighbor - a guy in the electronics corp in the army - he would come and show me how to change switches and outlets etc. He taught me the "bad" way though - without turning off the breaker first. I shocked myself pretty badly once when I grounded out the outlet putting it back in and started doing it the right way immediately afterward - even if he teased me for it every time. He's the one who drilled it into my head that Hot != Positive.
I've since wired or rewired a lot of this house including putting in a 2nd stove in the basement, running new circuits and wiring lights in my studio. The freaking doorbell got me though. The transformer it uses stays hot because it's on the incoming side of a switch and I had just turned the switch off to replace a couple of lights (a throwback to those bad habits my neighbor taught me. I hadn't done it in years and was lazy because the fusebox wasn't labeled with the circuits. It's labeled now and I always turn the breakers off AND test), not realizing that the transformer was even there attached to the light box.
I would have done the garage but the inspections and permit stuff was a pain if you wanted to do it yourself. Now I'm going to have to trace a bunch of wires though because the electrician put one whole wall of outlets on the wrong side of a switch and I discovered it after we insulated and put up pegboard/OSB.