Does she need a bigger breaker box?

[gfretwell]

Just go over the back rail. Then it is only tough on the water skier. That is why they call the rear of that deck the "fan tail". It was the first bathroom fan.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

See sig:

[Clare Snyder]

Particularly whenthe transformer is in a vault 200 feet away, across an intersection., on the far side of the house from the service entrance. I was told the upgrade would cost me over $4000 if everything went well - up to $8000 if the "expected problems" cropped up - - -

[Clare Snyder]

"gold medallion" all electric homes were the "cat's meow" back in the early seventies in Ontario.

Then Natural Gas became available and Ontario Hydro priced itself out of the market.

Privatization, as Hydro One made it incrementally worse - - -

[gfretwell]

Yup that is the part of underground utilities people forget. Certainly they are immune from ice storms and falling trees but when you do need to work on them things get expensive and hard to do pretty quickly. I believe I would have been thinking about a vault somewhere inside my property line and cut the pull in half.

[gfretwell]

There are plenty of "all electric" houses here in Florida. I have a well so I don't even get a water bill.

[micky]

There are the skinny, tiny incandescent ones but there are, or were, others whose glass part is almost an inch long and over a half-inch wide. I presume those are the one Mark means.

[micky]

Yes. I said I wouldn't know until I saw her again Thursday night.

But my guess is that someone told her she'd need one, having selling the house in mind, and she's thinking she might as well not wait until then, since prices go up and she can get the "benefit" of the upgrade while she lives there. I think I said I'd be surprised if she's tripping breakers.

[micky]

My mother lived in a small 2-bedroom house in Allentown, Pa. that had been built with radiant heat in the cement slab it was on. Before or soon after she moved in, they had trouble with the tubes and replaced it with electric baseboard heat. Yes, it was expensive to run, and with the baseboard heat, the floor was cold. I don't know if any neighbors also had electric or not.

They pushed them on TV a lot in the US, in the 60's iirc. They showed one that actually had a gold-colored disk embedded in the front stoop.

But we already had a gas water heater, furnace, and garbage incinerator in the suburban house in Indianapolis, built some time before 1954. By this time my mother was a widow, and to save money she wouldn't use the gas in the incinerator. She just mixed newspaper with the banana peels, let it all dry, and burned it that way. (No AC, at all, but the next owners added AC to the heating.) The few cans we had, she cut the bottom and top off of, crushed the can, and accepted the invitation of the man** next door to add a small package to his garbage, which he paid to have collected. **Married, innocent invitation. A single man of the right age on the other side of the house, but I don't think she ever even talked to him. I don't know why.

In our older small-town city detached home before that, we had coal, and my father bought an electric-stoker, so he could fill it before he went to work each day, and my mother wouldn't have to shovel coal. But that still meant my 53+ year old father, born in 1892, had to shovel a lot of coal so around 1947 or 49, he changed to gas. No shoveling at all. We had forced air heat then, and I thought we had it even when the furnace used coal. That's possible, right?

I was newborn and the room wasn't warm enough, so he had a separate fan put in the duct to my room.

While we're at it, the house didn't have enough receptacles, and I'm just about sure he hired an electrician, not a handy-man, and the guy drilled a hole just above the baseboard from the closet in the other room, ran lamp cord through the hole, plugged one end into the outlet in the closet and ran the other end along the baseboard in my room to a surface-mount outlet.

It's been 60 years since I left there, but if I ever go by again, I'm going to stop and check if they still use that outlet.

I think they added central AC too, so it will be even more interesting if the outlet is still in use.

Every place I've ever lived is in nicer condition now than it was when I lived there. (They were always in the same condition when I moved out as when I moved in.) Except where I live now. I'm counting on the next owners to fix it up again.

[micky]

You don't get it. With the lights on, it's not dark.

I don't know about Mark's house but we have some houses whose Xmas decorations you can see from space.

[gfretwell]

If her current panel is getting the job done and she is not planning on buying a spa or something what added "benefit" does he expect for her $2000-$3000?

[rbowman]

Figures the French would have something to do with it...

[Clare Snyder]

Still over 100 feet from my property line to the vault

[Clare Snyder]

Possible, but most likely a "gravity"furnace - worked on convection. Looked like an octapus.

[Clare Snyder]

The first house I lived in was a little stone house that had been neglected for over 50 years. Lived there about a year - it has now got several additions around it and is about a 1 million dollar country home. The next big concrete farmhouse is still standing, surrounded by a gravel pit. The third farmhouse is still standing (last I saw it about

3 years ago) but looking a bit forlorn. The apartment over the store in St Jacobs is still there - don't know if it is still an apartment or not - downtown of a tourist town.

Next home, the first my parents owned, was purchased at 88 years of age with no central heat, no indoor plumbing, and only a dropcord in each room for lights and one receptacle in the kitchen.

25 years later when Dad sold it was one of the nicer homes on the street,,and 40 years later it was bulldozed for the lot and a pair of semis built.

The first house I bought I fixed up some in the years I owned it - likely about the same shape now 37 years later.

My wife's house, where I moved when I got married, now has a big addition and is likely a 650,000 house.

I am still living in the house we bought 37 years ago, which is in about the same shape as when I bought it - with windows, entry door, roof, electrical panel, furnace, etc replaced as required.

[micky]

The reason I think it had been forced air is that their was afaicr no evidence of the ducts being added later.

There certainly were afaicr no boxed in spaces in corners of the room or ceiling. It was two stories, plus attic and basement, I guess I'll have to check more closely if I ever see the house again.

I'm trying to remember where the ducts were, and so far I only remember the one in the hall, because on v. cold days, my mother would warm my coat over it before I left for school. That was on the first floor of course. It's the 2nd floor that would be hard to install ducts.

My father was a bachelor until he was 53, lived with his mother, sister, and nephew in a house that was probably long paid for, and had a good career, and there was no way to live high on the hog in this small city, so he had lots of money by the time he got married.

[micky]

What do you mean, semis built?

[micky]

That's why I put it in quotes. She said "eventually", so maybe that's just before she goes to sell it. Or maybe someone who thinks everything always needs upgrading told her hers does. Or maybe an electrician or handyman was trying to sell an unneeded product.

Maybe someone was just going to replace the 60 amp breaker with a 100 amp breaker, repaint the door panel, and charge her $900?

Or maybe that was someone's plan but before she did it, she would check with electricians and not get hoodwinked.

[Clare Snyder]

A gravity" furnace uses ducts too - generally pretty big - and duct booster fans were invented for gravity furnaces.

[Clare Snyder]

Semi detached houses built in place of the single detatched

A semi-detatched is two houses sharing one wall.