Does she need a bigger breaker box?

[James Wilkinson Sword]

It's above the ground level of the pool :-)

[Ed Pawlowski]

If not properly wired there is a danger of fire.

If you drop the insurance, the mortgage company will get it and you'll pay for it, one way or another. They can always foreclose on you.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Not to mention decks on ships. And the poop deck.

[micky]

Or the mortgage company pays the fire insurance directly, after you pay the mortgage. That's how it is here. So you can't drop the insurance unless you stop paying the mortgage.

[micky]

This is not true in the USA and it's hard to believe it's true anywhere. The air in the house is warmed, then warmed again and again later. There's a filter on the furnace to removed dust etc.

Air to be mixed with fuel may be pulled into the house from a vent.

If this means what it sounds like, I don't think this is true either, but I haven't had a gas furnace since 1964. Others will know, but I think there is a fire chamber separate from the air to be warmed. ???

The amount of fuel that goes up the chimney unburned decreases efficiency, but once fuel is burned, I don't think it matters if the air is heated directly or not. The heat might take longer to get to the air but the heat doesn't disappear just because it's indirect. The heat is still in the house and it still warms the house.

These would be advantages. Another big advantage is that central air cooling can be added very easily to the same air duct system.

I don't think I've ever heard of anything other than a mainframe computer room being cooled by cool water, and even less common is cooling a home with cold steam.

Here the market is big, a large percentage of houses, more than half I'm sure, have forced air heat. There is not much retrofitting. Places with steam and hot water radiators continue to use them.

So people have water heaters, either gas or electric.

Like I say, very little retrofitting. More likely to see repiping for radiators with the new pipes outsides the walls, but pipes are not as big as ducts.

Not true here.

I myself am not allegic to anything. The furnace has a filter that should be changed what, once a month, and some people get hepa filters or eledtrostatic filters.

Yes, of course

Just rewrite that sentence in the opposite order for new housing in America. My old apartment house built in 1930 had, and my grandmother's house built in 1940?? might have had radiator heat, but I don't think I've ever been in a house built from 1955 on that did.

Yes.

No.

[gfretwell]

If you share a wall, it is one building so you start counting units from the first air gap to the last. If it is 2 units sharing a wall it is a duplex covered by the 1 & 2 family rules. More than 2 "stuck together" is a multifamily dwelling ... at least in the code. If each unit has a meter and a separate drop/service lateral, the code required 100a service since Richie and Fonzy days. If this is a single service with a humongous service disconnect and separate feeders to each unit's meter, they may have hit a loophole but the service still had to be sized to the fixed in place equipment plus the general lighting load (based on square footage). The only way you should need a service upgrade is if you added more fixed in place equipment or increased the square footage.

[gfretwell]

If it is truly a service panel with the service disconnect in it the NEC requires that disconnect be 100a. If this is a sub panel off of a larger service, it can be any size you need.

[gfretwell]

Sub panel is just slang for what the NEC calls a load side panel board. There is a service panel and a feeder serving it. It is not really defining a type of hardware other than not being listed as "service equipment". That has to do with the ability to handle the available fault current. If there is an upstream breaker/fuse, that is a limited current but we usually assume service conductors have no overcurrent protection and available fault current is only limited by the resistance of the conductors. Typically a service disconnect will have a AIC rating of 65,000 a or more where a standard breaker will be 10,000 or less. This will be printed on the breaker or breaker label.

What they can do on load side panels is use a Main Lug Only panel (no main breaker) and then back feed a breaker for a disconnect. That may be what you are seeing. Since it does not need to be listed as a service disconnect, it can save the builder money.

[gfretwell]

I am still not convinced you are looking at a service disconnect. Every breaker I have seen to retrofit into an MLO panel that was service rated spanned both sides of the panel using 4 slots. If she is not adding additional fixed in place equipment, I am also not sure why she would need an upgrade. Simply putting in another general lighting, laundry, kitchen or bathroom circuit does not change the load calc.

[Clare Snyder]

SNIP

In new homes a heat recovery ventilation system does draw in some fresh air and exhaust some "stale" air after recovering heat through a "heat exchanger"

A "heat echanger" is used - the flame heats the heat exchanger which heats the interior air which is circulated through the building.

Virtually NO unburned fuel goes up the flue, and in "high efficiency" furnaces a second heat exchanger is used to cool the exhaust below the condensing point so all water vapour is removed from the exhaust, recovering the "latent heat of vapourization".. This allows the flue gasses to be directly vented using a plastic pipe through the wall, with no chimney or flue required. The burner is "fan forced" so no thermal draft is required.

It has not been replaced by hydronic heating to any great extent in North America, except for radiant heating.

In houses where hydronic radiant heating is used a coil in an air handler is very often used for hoit air heating, rather than using radiators in the rooms because central air conditioning already requires the ductwork.

But MANY homes that were originally built with electric baseboard and electric radiant heat are being retrofitted with forced air gas heat because electricity is so terribly expensive (here in Ontario, for sure)

And they are a lot more efficient than running a heating boiler to heat domestic hot water. Tankless heaters are becoming more common for their percieved better efficiency (which has proven to be debatable)

I know of many houses retrofitted with forced air. In a bungalow it is a total non-issue - particularly with a basement - and in 2 stories it just requires the addition of a few "chases" - sometimes being hidden in a closet - and sometimes opening a wall and patching the drywall when finished. Sometimes you need to pull up some flooring - but the payback for switching fromelectric to gas pays for the trouble pretty quickly.

When using hydronic radiant heat, it is quite common to simply run a hot water loop to a coil in a heat exchanger on the top floor, running ducts in the attic. (not as efficient in cold climates as the ducts need to be very well insulated to keep the heat in the ducts and out of the attic)

Actually the exact reverse, as VERY effective air filters can be built into the air handlers. Even HEPA filters can be integrated into the system - electrostatics (both active and passive) are VERY common.

There are some. Some people think forced air is a "dry" heat - and there are many europeans who come with their biases. Veissman sells a lot of boilers in Canada - but compared to the forced air furnaces sold by Lennox, Bryant, ICG, and about 20 other brands, the boilers are barely a blip.

We call then "blast furnaces" or Smelters.

get thr ft >>> We have those too. We also have smelt that you eat.

Even the Chrysler PT Cruiser was technically a truck

We don't get the Nissan Navara, but it would be considered a truck . ecently we are getting more and more 4 door "crew cabs" and "super crews" that have more passenger room than a fullsized sedan, and sometimes ridiculously short boxes - and HUGE towing capacities - often used for towing large "caravans" - known as RVs or "travel trailers" here - 35 footers are not uncommon.

[Clare Snyder]

Not very common for the mortgage co to pay homeowners insurance in Canada - don't know about the USA - and insurance is REQUIRED by the mortgage lender. If YOU can't get insurance because of a bad roof, poor wiring, bad plumbing,etc, the mortgage company definitely won't get insurance for it either.

The mortgage co will not take the risk of loosing the value of the house due to a failure any more than the insurance co will take the risk of paying out for damage due to these known risks.

Neither one is in the "risk business"

[Clare Snyder]

They have a removeable bonding screw, so they can be used both as a main distribution pannel and a sub panel. They are likely supplied for non-residential use (powering a small storage building, garage, etc) but are still used in residences where no inspections are required - and off-grid installations - and I'm sure by DITers to replace a 60 amp fuse panel with a breaker panel without inspection. They are carried by Home Depot in the USA

I con't see people putting 100 amp services into those "redneck bungalows" scattered across the south, and through the Appalachians.

[Clare Snyder]

The one I gave the part number for is listed as a"service entry panel"

[Clare Snyder]

Micky should give us the model number on the label of the panel and eliminate all the guess-work - but then again, if he did he wouldn't be "Micky" - or is that "Mickey" - as in the mouse.

[gfretwell]

If it is not listed as service equipment, you can't use it for a service disconnect enclosure. OTOH up until 96 it was perfectly legal to reground the neutral in a sub panel in a separate building and it still is for replacements of existing equipment.

The panel you link does seem to be Canada only tho.

There is no exception and that is what the POCO is going drop anyway. I see 100a services feeding a single cable repeater all the time.

[gfretwell]

Yeah in Canada.

[gfretwell]

It sounds like this is an MLO panel and most will be rated at 100a minimum. You can still put a 60a breaker in it but there is no breaker installed in a base MLO, hence Main Lug Only. The rating is just for the bus bars.

[Clare Snyder]

It was a Home Depot US listing - not sure it is available in Canada.

[Clare Snyder]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:57:00 -0500, [e-mail] wrote: Sorry, it was Home Depot.ca - BUT:

It's available at Gordon Electric in Cook County (Chicago), Most Electric in Jackson Ms, cRESCENT eLECTRIC IN East Dubuque, IL , Valley Electric in Indiana, MDW Industrial throughout the US, just for starters.

It is identical to a 100 amp entrance panel but is supplied with a 60 amp main breaker installed.

[sms]

In areas without piped-in natural gas, electric furnaces, or reverse cycle A/C is common, but of course you wouldn't have the A/C and furnace on at the same time.

The other big items are pool pumps and electric car chargers.

While 200 amp service may be overkill, 100 amp might not be enough. I put in an 150 amp panel because the wiring from the pole was limited to

150 amps. It's actually a 200 amp panel but with the main breaker changed to 150 amps.