As both you regular readers will know, I installed a massive solar plant to bring abundant electricity to our new 110-year-old home, but haven’t yet re-wired the home. We’ve been making due with the old, very minimal inverter and plugging the new inverter in where the generator would have gone in the old system. It works, but the capacity is really limited and the wiring is… scary.
For all the high-draw kitchen appliances — espresso machine, microwave, induction cooktop, toaster oven — we’ve been using a lithium-battery power station which I can periodically recharge from the new solar.
It’s getting to be a bit tedious, this not having any real outlets in the kitchen. I’ve been waiting for quotes on the re-wiring but decided I had to at least have some real plugs in the kitchen while I’m waiting.
While I was at it, on the other side of the box I put an outdoor outlet on the deck. It will mostly server to power the blower that HA uses to groom Luna the Big Dog™.
I could just re-wire the entire house, but doing this one was a lot harder than I expected. The house is single-wall construction, so all the outlets have to be connected using conduit on the interior or exterior of the house. That involves a number of bits-and-bobs that any self-respecting electrician would have in stock in their truck, but which for me involves either a 40 minute round-trip to the amazing but still small local hardware store, or an 80 minute round-trip to the nearest home improvement store, or very likely the 140-minute round-trip to (what passes for) the big city.
Add to this my lack of experience with home wiring which means that I fail to anticipate pitfalls.
The project stalled because the 12/2 Romex I had was less than 2 centimeters too short. Again because a nipple needed a retaining nut (over an hour of driving for a 15¢ part). A junction box I bought from the home improvement store turned out to have two of the knockouts already knocked out. I had to buy 10’ of 2” conduit because I needed a 5¼” piece. And so on. So it took me three frustrating days to put in the two outlets. There are 32 more to do, plus an underground feeder to the garage. So it’s a bunch, and though I’d expect to get much quicker as my tools and supplies fill in, I think it would be a very big job so I’m very much hoping for a reasonable quote from some pros.
—2p