Recent content by Dusty Floor

It's looking great! Your layout is serving as inspiration for my new basement workshop that I'm just starting to plan. I'll be building a room inside the basement about the same size.

I've also been very happy; installed my floor in 2011 in the 2-bay attached garage. Cars are in and out daily, toolbox on casters, lots of winter grit, melting snow, etc. I put some dimples in it with a floor jack with small casters, but they disappeared after a while. Got another small...

While they were waiting for the marking crew to come out, and then daylight to do the repair (it ended up being a day and a half), they fed the transformer with the biggest jumper cable I've seen - about 250' pulled off a trailer sized spool. They had a guy in a truck parked in the street the...

It was very impressive when the primary failed -- blew a fuse up the street with a big boom. Once they isolated the issue to our primary (after a couple more fuses...), the put a tdr on it and dug about a 4x6' hole; the failed spot was right in the middle of the hole.

It's on my land; I don't believe there's a deeded right of way to the power company. I hadn't thought about it before, but it's a weird setup. We share the first part of our driveway with a neighbor -- the property line runs down the middle of it. On that section, the line runs on their...

I'd like to run a UF circuit to a gate controller and light partway down our driveway. The best route for it crosses the primary that more or less follows our driveway to the transformer that serves our house and a neighbor's. Depending on exactly how the primary is run, it may be possible to...

For a minute, I was thinking I might be able to use tandem breakers to buy a little time on this project, but there's only one spot open on the neutral bus, so I could put at most one tandem in.

To be clear, the existing setup is a single 120/240 3-wire feed from the main building. It has a single 120V circuit on each leg. The breakers are actually 20A; the etching on the handle isn't visible under the normal light in that area but can be seen with a flashlight. I got the 10 from a...

I have a detached garage used mostly for storage that is fed via an overhead cable from the service panel in the house. It's currently set up with a two breaker box, where one breaker controls the overhead door outlet, and the other controls 3 outlets and lights. The disconnect in the house...

Thanks, I think I'll give the anti-slip tape a try.

I have a pair of 2x10s (with ramp brackets on one end) that I use a couple times a year for jobs like loading my snowblower or chipper shredder into my pickup. They work well for the job, but can be slippery underfoot (esp. since the snowblower tends to be moved when there's snow on the...

After 15 days total in two separate outages last year, the two circuits we were really glad we had were the stairway lights, which provide enough light to move around most of the house, and a bunch of convenience outlets in the kitchen, which were always stuffed with chargers, small tv, and...

The transformer shared by our house and one neighbor is about 400' of direct buried cable away from the street. One evening a couple summers ago we heard a loud BANG followed by the silence of the refrigerator, etc., stopping. Long story short, the bang was the fuse about a quarter mile away...

I have three reasons to have a transfer panel with my portable (pull or electric start) 6kW generator - furnace, well, and built-in refrigerator. All three could be rigged to an extension cord with some hassle (the fridge has a regular plug, but requires removal of part of the cabinet to...

I also switched from X10 to Insteon, with the ISY99; it's been very reliable for me (about 15 devices, most 2+ years old), the only failures I've had are controlled outlets that I've installed outdoors (which they are not rated for); each one that I've taken apart has had critters (ants, etc.)...