Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Double Pole, Single Throw, GE Type, 20A GFI breaker

That's what I need. A circuit breaker. A particular circuit breaker, and there are none to be had in Alexandria or Pineville.

Actually, I bought the last one today and I need another one so we can get the pool pumps hooked to electricity. It should be in tomorrow morning.

My back yard is still a disaster area.


A swimming pool surrounded by a sea of mud. The contractor doesn't want to do anything else until the electricity is hooked up, so he told me to holler at him when the electrician was finished and he'd be back to start the pumps, vacuum the pool, clean it all up and pour the deck.

Did I mention that those breakers cost about $100.00 apiece and that copper prices have climbed dramatically over the past year? 10/3 UF Romex is about a dollar a foot. 12/2 UF Romex is about 44 cents a foot. Wiring prices are as high as I've ever seen them. Copper, of course, is a major component of brass. Brass is in high demand worldwide.

You should see the volume of sand that Milady is sweeping out of her kitchen every day. It's impressive.

Matthew and I hooked up the light today. Matt had the good sense to ask Milady where she wanted the switch, for her convenience. I have to admit they placed it most appropriately.

I'll be glad when the deck is poured and the contractors are gone, gone, gone.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, copper prices are down a bit, from the high of a year ago..

Rivrdog said...

Wire? Try buying some marine grade heavy-current cable as I have just priced for the installation of an inverter in my boat.

It's a 1500 watt inverter, and I will be powering it from the same cables that power my anchor winch. Those are 3/0 cables, fortunately, already in the boat. If I had to replace them, they would be $17.29 PER FOOT. I will only have to cut the winch cables and put in bus bars, then do a short 3 foot run of size 1/0 to the inverter. That will be $82.74 for SIX FEET OF CABLE!!!

Add in 6 heavy copper terminals, the bus bars, and a heavy DC circuit breaker, and the material costs for this little project will run me around $250. I already have the 1500-watt Statpower inverter and it's remote control panel, or I would be looking at Another Thousand.

No one is talking much about the tripling or quadrupling of copper prices. Could this be a case where an unfriendly foreign government is hijacking the USA? I know we mine copper here in the USA, but do we mine enough for our needs?

Murphy said...

I was unaware that my namesake and patron saint was moonlighting in the construction industry. My apologies.

Looks good so far, though!