Electrician costs..

[nobbie48]

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That's very sad. I have worked with some great electricians and some like you bring up here. It's frightening that they can keep their ticket without understanding basic concepts.

One problem is that prospective electricians too often go into the trade based on how much money they'll make instead of getting into a profession they enjoy and for which have a basic instinct. Add to that the "Quantity before quality" demands of the business and you understand how the above examples arise.

You would be surprised at how many electricians fail to understand ohm's law and how to apply it, if they even try.

I worry about tradespeople that rely too much on their smart phones.

I worry about the housing sell-fest and all of the fix and flip reno's being done.

 

[slowbird]

As someone that works for a Fire Dept I would rather let a licensed technician sort everything for me then make an error and torch the place.

 

[GreyGhost]

Yes I know know. A tandem is different from a true double pole breaker. As seen above. You are only hitting 1 phase with the tandem therefore both 15amp circuits coming off that tandem have the same sine wave voltage function. You're only getting 120v between the 2 not 240v.

Well technically if they really tried to hook up a tandem as 240, most loads would see 0 volts. It is theoretically possible that some load would have neutral at the center and a hot leg to each side so it would work independent of phasing, but I don't know why you'd do this or any application where it actually happens (as essentially it is operating at two parallel 120V circuits). On something like a kitchen split, a tandem would work fine (as you aren't actually asking for 240, just 2x15A 120V), but it's obviously not best practice as you aren't trying to balance across phases and it wastes copper as you would need 2 runs of 14/2 instead of one run of 14/3 (as you would severely overload the neutral on 14/3).

Looking at PrivatePilot's energy plots in the electric car thread, he has every 120V load in his house except his furnace on the same leg, so again obviously some electricians just don't care. It's amazing that they got things that unbalanced, sheer luck would normally result in a reasonably balanced panel.

 

[SunnY S]

. The only concern is some electricians seem to think they can get 240v from a tandem breaker.

Yes, we call them apprentices.....

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