The crazy things you see a Home Depot

I was in the electrical dept the other day having some wire cut. A lady pushing a cart comes along to ask the guy, who from all indications didn't know much, which wire is the right one to use to hook up her new stove. In the cart are Romex and armored cable, both

14 gauge. She was most concerned about getting the right kind to use in crawl space. She asked him if the armored was intended for use outdoors, which he avoided. It was also clear that she had spoken to him earlier before picking out her wire. After watching this for a couple mins, I did my best to get the lady pointed in the right direction, which was to tell her she most likely needs a 40 or 50 amp circuit, heavier wire capable of that kind of load and to go back to the appliance dept to find out what the stove installation manual called for and to seek an electrician.

I find it curious how someone with no technical knowledge can go from buying a stove to picking out 50ft of wire to hook it up.

Reply to
trader4
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Hooking up a stove with 14 gage wire? Hope she connects it to a 15 amp breaker.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Somebody's got to keep the fire department busy or they'll get bored.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

What is even scarier is that she probably had more electrical knowledge than the store clerk in the electrical department.

Reply to
AZ Nomad

Be just fine if it is a GAS stove.

Nobody specified what kind of stove.

Reply to
clare

Not hard. I went to buy some single pair 22 ga cable to hook up a phone extension on the old Nortel digital PBX at the office - 27 phones already connected and working using that wire, just needed to add #28 and the "expert" who had apparently worked for the phone company as well as holding an electrician's licence, told me I needed cat5, or at minimum cat3 cable - 4 twisted pair. I told him he was wrong - all of the exixting phones were connected with single pair and had been working for years. He argued with me so I went elsewhere to buy my wire.

Reply to
clare

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote the following:

Trader4 told her she would need the heavier circuit and cord, so he must have known it was an electric stove.

Reply to
willshak

Insane. We're dealing with 19th century technology. used to be 4 wires, now only two are needed. Anything from 0000 to 30 guage wire will work; pick wire that can survive the environment and you're done.

I wouldn't trust such a monkey to sell flashlight batteries at radio shack.

Reply to
AZ Nomad

PBX technology was 19th century?

Reply to
Jeff The Drunk

The guy was offering you a vastly superior product for something like $0.15/FT extra and you felt so angry you had to leave the store and go some place else? This must have been one of those Mondays...

Anyways, if you were adding an extension for a new employee, you could have used that one CAT5 to provide the person with 100Base-T Ethernet in addition to the phone, just split the pairs yet only pull one cable. Also, not knowing your environment it's hard to tell but the fact that the conductors are twisted (tightly, as opposed to loose twist in the cable you bought) could save you some EMI-noise aggravation.

But it all pales in comparison to a feeling you'll have one day when the boss wants to install a new IP PBX instead of the old one now that Nortel is out of business and he wants new bells and whistles. Had you spent $0.15/FT more that day, you'd have one less location to worry about ...

In any case, this may not be a good example of a Home Depot horror story anyways because there actually are digital PBXes out there that do use two pairs for extension cables (and some that use four) so the guy was just not familiar with the particular one you had - happens all the time even if he was still active in the field.

I think we ought to give HD employees some credit for trying to help.

Cheers!

------------------------------------- /\_/\ ((@v@)) NIGHT ():::() OWL VV-VV

Reply to
DA

Phones have never needed more than a single pair unless you had selective ringing on a party line. Then it was 3 wire. Four wire cable came with the Princess phone to serve the light.

Reply to
gfretwell

re: "I find it curious how someone with no technical knowledge can go from buying a stove to picking out 50ft of wire to hook it up."

Don't blame her.

There are basically three levels of knowledge:

1 - We know what we know. 2 - We know what we don't know. 3 - We don't know what we don't know.

She was at level 3: She didn't know what she didn't know.

In many instances I'm at Level 2. For example, I know that there are a multitude of wire sizes and I know that there are different specifications for different applications, but I also know that I don't always know which spec fits which application. Level 2 is an OK place to be, because as long you know that you don't know, you know that you have some homework to do.

Level 3, however, is a dangerous place. When you don't know what you don't know, you can easily assume that you *do* know.

In her case, she probably didn't even know that there was so many things that she didn't know, so buying some wire probably seemed like a simple task. Hopefully your advice moved her up to Level 2, making her realize that she was in over her head.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Level 3, however, is a dangerous place. When you don't know what you don't know, you can easily assume that you *do* know. ===========

Rumsfeld syndrome!

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

What sort of fittings to you use on 14AWG to connect it to a gas line? ;-)

Reply to
keith

Sharkbites

Reply to
DerbyDad03

it's very similar to the connector you use to hook twisted pair to fiber.

Reply to
Steve Barker

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Sometime you are better off not giving advice if you don't know the details of the situation.

My favorite HD story happened when I had retired from my real job and was filling my time as a peddler at the local RadioSchlock. A women came in and wanted to get a line cord with a plug at each end. I tried to explain that it was dangerous and most likely illegal. And yes, we did not have such a thing. She said the guy at HD had assured her that we had those items in stock.

He didn't try to dissuade her. At least he didn't sell her the parts and explained how easy it was to make your own assembly.

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

You could use CAT3 2 pair. Even though the Nortel will work with a single pair. It's advisable to use twisted pair because the Nortel phone will get noisy if you don't use twisted pair. I've never seen any single twisted pair phone wire except for the very old cloth insulated stuff. I know this because I've installed and programed a lot of Nortel systems. Nortel has merged with Avaya and a lot of Nortel stuff will no longer be manufactured. What kind of wire did you wind up using?

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

I used to install a lot of 25 and 50 pair telephones. 1A2 systems are tough and you could hit someone over the head with one of those monster phones and knock em out.

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

Doorbell wire is usually twisted? And you use twisted pair to keep the proper impedance along the cable which prevents crosstalk. The same reason Cat5e is able to do gigabit though you'd really want cat6.

Reply to
Meat Plow

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