We've got a bit of a housing boom going on up here, mainly with renovations, so finding tradesmen is like finding a moonroof for a 1972 Buick Electra Estate Limited 2-door wagon. You sort of have to wait until some generous guy knocks on the door and gives you a quote without any strings. Anyway, Home Electrics is far simpler than automotive electrics, but the trades and authourities have done their very best to build a priesthood of witches around it. Black and Decker have a very nice pictorial manual under their Home Improvement Library, called "Advanced Home Wiring". http://www.blackanddeckerbooks.com/description.asp?isbn=9781589234147&subtopic=4 I've got the 1992 Edition, but I'll pick up the new one today, of that B&D book. I found another one in PDF format for free, that has more detail and shows compliance cross-references with sections of the NEC (National Electrical Code): http://www.make-my-own-house.com/download-page.html Most city building permit issuers allow the homeowner to do his own, except for the main breaker panel. This isn't rocket science, but some new widgets and gadgets add complexity, so these guides are really useful, if only to learn which questions to ask a licensed electrician. Lots of step-by-step pics in both books. This site is a real DIYer's goldmine of information. It's one man's site, not a commercial site. Gut level info that you can use. http://www.make-my-own-house.com/index.html
You're gonna love this one too! http://www.renovation-headquarters.com/ Index starts at Page 7 and goes backward to one (no idea why): http://www.renovation-headquarters.com/index7.htm
UPDATE!!! I got the new 2009 update of the next level B&D book. The Content is updated to include all of the NEC code changes from 2009 to 2011. Worth the money! B&D haven't even updated their own page! http://www.blackanddeckerbooks.com/description.asp?isbn=9781589234130&subtopic=4
Roll Your own grid paper! I was gonna go and buy grid paper to sketch out my wiring diagrams for the renos. Then I thought about MS Excel and writing a quick macro to do it. I don't do much code writing anymore, so I went searching. Found this tip and tried it. I set my default Font to Arial 10 pt, then when the dialog box came up, I set the Range from Cell A1 to AB38 (38 rows, 28 columns of perfect 1/4" cells. The second box asks for the column width, which I set at 3.00. 1st box Answer: A1:AB38 2nd box Answer: 3.00 Read the whole tip to get an idea of the issues and different methods people offered. The one guy used Excel's Ruler in the graphic tools to make a 1" X 1" square, but that would work great if you had to do a metric grid or some non-standard grid paper. The macro, further down, is a Copy/Paste operation. I copied it into Notepad, opened Excel, went to Tools... Macro... and hit Create... Bingo!!! It names the macro itself to MakeSquareCells2, but you can change that. I saved it as a Template (Grids.XLT), so I can use it anytime I want to modify a new worksheet. This is gonna be fun, because I have to do the drawings in 1/4" and 1/8" scales (good luck finding that paper). Here's the link to the tip. This site has some awesome tips that I've used many times. They know their stuff: http://www.mrexcel.com/tip071.shtml If you go way down to the bottom, he shows how he used it to do his car's wiring diagrams too.:2_thumbs_up_-_anima EDIT: In the Print Dialog, you have to enable the Print GridLines checkbox.
Just had another thought with that Macro. You could print your own lined paper too, by just using the same routine, but then select the first column (A1) and making the same width as a full page (1/4" margins for an 7.5" width) 28 columns X 3 = 84 for the A1 width. Then make it the Print Area and preview it. You could print a few blanks at a time, instead of buying a 10 pack that you won't use for years.
And then I found free Templates (ready made) for Excel and Word for Office XP and Up: http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/graph-paper.html And another that makes them in PDF format: http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/
This site has decent non-technical plans for most of the projects. A degree in rocket science is not required. http://www.onthehouse.com/wp/ I tried a few sections like Building, Remodelling & General Repair, Plumbing, etc. Decent info. http://www.onthehouse.com/wp/building
I've got an 11" Craftsman bandsaw, but I just spotted this DIY bandsaw. One of the handiest tools in my shop. This one looks stronger than mine. http://woodgears.ca/bandsaw/build.html http://woodgears.ca/bandsaw/tension.html
My Attic Hatch Invention I've got this grant to insulate and drywall the upstairs. Last fall, we had the roof all redone, and since the upstairs was already stripped bare (no insulation, walls or even a floor (we had the downstairs ceiling vapor barrier up) all the 100 years of dust and muck was always overhead. We had 2 bedrooms up there before, and huge section over the kitchen which must've been an add-on. When we bought the house, that was all closed off, and full of wasp nests. The problem is/was that the tiny U-turn-shaped stairs wouldn't even let me get a sheet of 4X8 up there. So I have to build a new straight stair going up, and another for the basement) also L-shaped. That means prefabbed truss, engineers seal, etc. Well the company doing the insulation wants a hatch for the top peak, so their guys can get in. So I hunted around for a deep enough hatch design. Since they're doing R-52 insulation up there, even the kneewalls have to be made of 2X10 (I'm doing that too), and the venting boards in place and sealed to flow to the roof vents and the ridge vent (its a 10:12 pitch roof). The trouble with R-52 insulation is its really tall once they blow it in. But the hatch has to be removable, so this idea would be OK, say in Boston or Idaho, but not north of South Dakota. http://www.renovation-headquarters.com/attic-access-insulation.htm Nobody makes 15 inch high joists. I thought about plywood sides, and that would be fine to keep the blown-in stuff from falling back into the room, but the hatch has to be big enough for one guy with his 3 inch insulation hose and room to move. So it has to be like a 30" X 30" hatch, with the rigid polystyrene insulation bonded to it (about 5 layers of R13 3-inch insulation, upper clearance being the height limiter. Gonna be tight. Or I'll have to hinge it and suspend the rigid stuff on a fishing net, then pull it down. So... I figured that I'll do it pretty much like that link does. and use automotive foam weatherstrip to seal the edge frame. The common seals that they use for this job are too inflexible to seal properly, and the automotive stuff has a covering that can be silicone sprayed to keep it supple and sealed tight.
A DIY Construction Forum! I'm on this soffit thread via a search that I did via BING.COM. Since my old house didn't have a vented roof before (and the shingles died accordingly), I had to remove the aluminum soffits and the F-mouldings and now, of course in mid-November on a -3C day, I have to reinstall them. The problem on an old 100 year old house is that they made the eaves very shallow from the wall, and I compounded it by adding 3" insulation and vinyl siding. Hard to get screws in there. Well the wasps decided to nest last year, because the soffits didn't lay flat. So I went hunting for a better way and found this outstanding site! http://forums.finehomebuilding.com/breaktime/construction-techniques/replacing-wood-soffit-facia This is just the Construction Techniques section of the Forum. http://forums.finehomebuilding.com/breaktime/construction-techniques-0 If it ain't here, its not invented yet, or it ain't made anymore! http://forums.finehomebuilding.com/forum
Talk about lazy I've got one manual drill sharpener like this: http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=32965&cat=1,43072,43086 which has a really nice list of all the drill bit angles and what materials each angle works best on. And a small Drill Doctor machine, which is ok but only does the common 118* angle (general purpose). I was too lazy to type them from the instruction sheet, so I went looking for a list on the WWW. I found a few, but not what I wanted. So I'll type it here. The angles are expressed per side, so the standard 118* is 59* per side (118 divided by 2 = 59*): 59* General Purpose Drilling 88* To prevent snatching/snagging on thin materials 68* Recommended high production angle for small drills (less than 3/16" diameter) This is the other common 135* angle that most sites also refer too. 49* For soft materials (Copper, Lead, Brass, some Light Alloys - Aluminum and Magnesium) 41* Countersinking angle There! I've broken my lazy spell for the year!
Electrical Code Calculators! For some reason, the Black And Decker WIRING Book doesn't come with Load Calculator links. They give the print version and explain how to fill them out, but no links or cross-references to any decent resources. So I went on a link-fest hunt. There's the pablum variety, and the Contractor grade calculators running into $1,000. Pablum variety: http://www.ehow.com/how_5959134_calculate-electrical-load-excel-spreadsheets.html And then there's some fearless professionals who are confident enough in their business to share their knowledge. Mike Holt is one of those. Here's his site on his Free Downloads page: http://www.mikeholt.com/freestuff.php?id=freegeneral I wanted a couple of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet utilities, because I've used Excel since it came out in Windows 2.0 in 1986. Holt's Residential Electrical Load spreadsheet is updated to the 2011 NEC. It's outstanding and well commented. Easy to use. Since I'm a math fan, I also snagged the formula files, so I could use them in my Room-By-Room calculations, then transpose to produce a more complete Fuse Panel list. Excel is one powerful and flexible piece of software. Also found a good Code Math site for electrical formulae, for the Canadian Electrical Code: http://www.codemath.com/cgi-bin/Run.pl?script=Home And a Forum for Canadian Electrical Code issues that even contractors find they need to discuss. This is the site's Archived threads, but you can access the main site from the top of the page: http://www.selfhelpforums.com/archive/index.php/f-5.html This is a short thread of Load Calculation factors: http://www.selfhelpforums.com/archive/index.php/t-2166.html These are 'Free-To-Download' sites, with some commercial packages offered with a free-to-try time limit: http://www.toodoc.com/load-calculation-electrical-excel.html http://ptf.com/electrical/electrical+load+calculations+for+offices/ And another enlightening thread on Load Balancing in the panel itself. It used to be necessary in the old Fuse type subpanels, but the newer ones are built to manage that. Still, its a good idea to keep in mind. I use radiant electric heat, and I don't need AC, so in the Summer months, if I had the room heaters all one side, the other side of the panel's busbars would get used, while the heater breakers side sits idle. I put an even demand on each side, of both regular load and seasonal load devices (On-Demand water heaters, Oven, Cooktop, heaters.) Lights and plugs have their own breakers. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/wiring/msg0222301931100.html
I don't know about other city building permit departments, but most of them provide NBC (National Building Code) and NEC (Electrical Code) references in their homeowner guides. The problem is, they don't show the tables from the Codes. Well I scored! http://www.powersofteng.com/eps2010/download.html The estimating software is for contractors, but its free. I was looking for a Materials Take-off spreadsheet, but I realized why the professional software packages run up to $2,500. They have the database of all the bits and pieces (electrical boxes, panels, connectors, wire, etc.) for every kind of contractor (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), and all I need is a spreadsheet with the garden variety stuff. BUT! The two charts (Adobe PDF format) are worth downloading, from that page. AND THEN! This was a nice surprise. Its a DIY repair for appliances, tools, stereos, etc., and a forum, with a bunch of pros offering answers. http://www.howtomendit.com/index.php