Looks like a nice wood gas truck project, solid looking truck. You might need a wood gas vehicle, right after the election .
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Work tossed out a Backup Power Supply.
Grabbed it, plugged it in, E07 code low battery. Could be from sitting unplugged.
Tried plugging it in at the house, E08 Code. Service Wiring.
Looked it up, you must have modern Code grounded wiring in the building! I have told mom we canāt cheat with this stuff. This thing gives out about 12a so I could power the freezer for a while, at least long enough for most outages we get. With the freezer I could add ice packs to the fridges to keep them cool.
But I guess not!
I know the carpentry shop is grounded, all the Shops are grounded actually. The box leading to the well pump is grounded and thereās two outside sockets from that panel.
Might buy a deep freezer and put it in the wood shop for this BPS.
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The only ground wires i have is the standard , grpund too the braker box, and the bare ground that grounds too about a 3 foot rod that is hammered into the dirt by the outside braker box.
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We donāt have any grounds in the house itself. Save for the 240v for the washer and dryer. Original late 1950s 2 prong outlets.
Only got things grounded outside of the house like the Well and HVAC breaker combined, the Shop and Outbuildings. The circuit where the pool used to be.
I need to replace all our outlets at least with GFCI outlets to be safe.
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You will have to run new wire for modern outlets but it would be a wise idea most insurance companies around here will not insure a house with old wiring like you have i have been involved with replacing it several times.
The freezer should be good for a power outage on their own if you donāt open them they should hold well over 12 hours without any real thawing out. The refrigerator is where you are likely to see things spoil.
Most of those backup power supplies have a lead acid battery IIRC they tend to be gell cells. I have seen people swap out an automotive gell cell into them before.
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I was planning to do that, actually. The connections are outside of the box without the beauty cover so I can just rest a bigger gel battery beside it.
Also according to some quick research itās okay to just replace the outlets with GFCI, not that itās as ideal as a grounded outlet but at least Iāll have some protection.
Iāll probably slowly replace all the outlets with GFCI ones. We really donāt have the money to rewire the house. Already sweating over leaks in the roof.
When my grandmother passed away and mom got a fairly good sized inheritance, she spent it on new windows and the two giant Trane HVAC units.
If I was in her shoes I would have rewired the house to actually be grounded.
We have two fridges, Iām not sure if this unit would be able to support both of them. Itās worth testing I guess.
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Run one half an hour then the other. That would keep things safe.
As to the wiring i am not sure how you would put in those outlets if you have the old 2 wire system. I am pretty sure you will need the 3rd ground wire. If you have 3 wire romex in the walls you can put in normal outlets and connect the ground at the box. If you have the old cloth wrapped wiring i would try really hard to get anything like the refrigerator which draws alot of current off it. Those wires can be a fire hazard. This farm house i am sitting in was wired in the 40s right near the end of WWII. When we rewired it the electrician my mother hired got a bad shock off something in the basement IIRC the water pipes because the old wire to an electric oven was apparently still hot even though the oven was removed a decade earlier by my grandfather. Long story short her electric bill dropped enough to pay for the rewire over about 18 months because of the issues we where lucky not to have burned the house down with.
As to the roof. The quick cheap solution is to get some billboard tarps if you can find some in your area. I worked at a company making the printers for that industry the canvas they use will last a long time like 5 years if you nail it down on a roof so the wind doesnāt get under it. I used it for a temporary fix on many roofs for friends who where not able to afford to do the repair at the moment. My late uncle always said keep a good roof on a structure and the rest will wait.
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House was finished in 1960, I donāt think it has cloth insulated wires. I havenāt seen any yet at least in the kitchen area.
Also while itās best to connect a GFCI to the Ground, theyāll still do their job with just 2 wires. We have GFCI outlets in our bathrooms but theyāre definitely not grounded with a 3rd wire.
They shut off in a Ground Fault but your electronics can still get damaged.
https://www.angi.com/articles/does-replacing-ungrounded-outlets-gfci-outlets-make-them-grounded-and-safe.htm#do-gfci-outlets-need-a-ground-wire
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In the 60s you should have romex. If you look in the basement you can quickly tell
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I live in an old home too Cody.
Could be there is a ground ( bond actually ) wire in the back of the boxes that is just not connected to the old two prong plugs.
if its there just connect it to the ground screw on a new modern u ground receptical and bobās your uncleā¦
If not you would need to run a new wire with bond from the box in your main service.
There are some other hack ways to get a ground in there too but I probably should not talk about it.
Those inverters are pretty slick.
I have one for my sump pump and its showing a polarity fault.
Its running and in reality there is no problem with my wiring, its the old EATON ups has a problem ( but it still works, but that is why it was scrapped it had a problem! )
Before that I had SENDON 400 to run the sump pump.
It was a real heavy old thing also scrapped out because of bad batteries.
It gave me many years of reliable service ( not bad run a 1/4 hp sump pump on a 400 watt inverter )
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We donāt have a basement, but none of the outlets are 3 wire. If it has a 3rd wire they didnāt run it anywhere near the outlets. Weāve only grounded parts outside of the house.
Keep in mind itās Rural North Carolina in 1958-1960.
If it is Romex already, then you might be able to hook new wire up to the old wire and pull it through or hook a fish tape to it. If it is the cloth knob and tube it is a lot more work. At least I think that is the point Dan was hinting at.
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Individual wires, rubber insulated. Just white and black.
Yes, that is a 3 hole socket with no ground. This is what I mean by my mom ācheatingā the wiring.
The GFCI on 2 wires will be leagues safer than this nuthouse kludge my mom did.
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does it look like this in places?
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No clue, I donāt think so though. I havenāt seen that in the few places weāve had the walls open.
I would map the circuit out and see what is on what circuit. Be careful, Sometimes 3-4 way lights use a shared neutral with another circuit so they didnāt have to run another wire and sometimes you end up with two circuits in the same box. But I am guessing it is probably pretty straightforward if you want to do it, or you can hire it out at a later date. IF where you want to put the battery is like the first plug from the breaker box, you could run the wire from the box to the plug and that takes care of the immediate problem. Rewiring really takes 2-3 people to do quickly.
The wire on the left is modern romex the wire on the right is the old cloth wrapped wire. The one on the right will feel rough not at all smooth. That wire is dangerous and should be replaced.
I wouldnāt think the knob and tube wiring (shawn posted) would be in a 60s house but i donāt know when the cloth wrapped wire was used for sure.
Oh i suspect the wiring in a house will be stapled to the studs and wonāt allow you to pull new wires by attaching to the old ones. You normally end up fishing them through the walls as new runs which is definitely not fun but it is one of those things once you do it you learn the tricks. With no basement if you have an attic or crawlspace above that you can access the easy solution is to run down the walls. Well easierā¦
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I heard the term romex and assumed it was the green cloth and paper.
We call the white stuff NMD up here
Non metalic dry wire. ( non metal not armoured of sheathed in lead or copper jacketed like Pyro )
There is also some other stuff called NMWU.
Non metalic wet under ground
If the green cloth stuff is like what we used in Canada ( and it should be very very similar codes and parts ) there should be a small bare copper bond wire ( might be a smaller gauge than modern wire too ).
In the old days they just screwed this little bare wire to the back of a metal box and bonded the non current carrying parts like the frame of a receptacle or switch by the mechanical action of the screws that hold it together.
Today we run the bonds right to switches and receptacles to be sure you always have a solid bond and return to source path if you have a short in the wiring.
The goal is to never energize a metal non current carrying part.
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I think Romex is the major distributor of home wiring cable in the norteast post 70s. I am pretty sure it is just the brand name but everyone refers to the plastic coated wire here as romex.
You are correct that the box in the old house he is talking about should have the 3rd bare ground wire attached to it. It should be connected to neural at the fuse panel or breaker box. So a continuity test between the box and the wiring or a voltage test should show if that is the case. It has been a very long time since i had to deal with the old wiring that included non grounded outlets.
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I wish I had carried a cell phone or Camera over the years.
Some of the things I have found were funny, some were scary and a few were very sneaky.
I stumbled on some industrial knob and tube style wiring in an old mine where I worked.
Only I seemed to be interested in it thought ( it hung from insulators in the drift from steel ground supports, It had taps feeding disconnect switches and lighting, as well as soldered and taped joints ).
Homes were never much interest but the industrial stuff had all kinds of secrets you had to look at and try to understand.
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