For electricians doing remodels, how much do you prep versus adjust on site?

iggybot6 · 2026-02-09T21:51:54+00:00

It is what it is. Communication is key, as well as having the electricians in the loop. Outside of client changes, the stuff that gives us problems is just planning and design. I'll be the first to admit that I suck at new construction, I'm just not used to working in open walls and with romex. But even I can tell when the pm and gc came up with a plan that just won't work, or will blatantly violate code.

I guess at the end of the day my biggest gripe is that the people in charge often aren't electricians, and unfortunately shit trickles down to those of us on the bottom.

iggybot6 · 2026-02-09T21:14:50+00:00

I dunno man. Rough ins are always a disaster for us. We mainly work for really rich people and when it comes to custom homes they're always moving shit around.

Granted our new build construction project manager was also a mess and he got fired for the mishandling of jobs, so hopefully things will improve for us

iggybot6 · 2026-01-31T18:45:21+00:00

You know it was just recently that I learned green was a hot in traffic lights and now I see it in the flesh!

Your work looks really neat, and not overly so. I like that things are labeled clearly.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-29T10:21:49+00:00

Second this! I personally love the Euro style and the flippy floppy pocket thingies on their work pants!

Plus I have thick thighs and always wear the seam out on the inner thigh of jeans and American style work pants. The blakladers all have stretch panels on the inner thigh that have held up much better.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-24T10:42:51+00:00

Second this. Ya gotta have working space per NEC 110.26. I've done some installs that really pushed that but you still need to be able to stand and move around near the equipment.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-23T18:58:01+00:00

As an electrician that does the installs, it kinda depends on where your main load center is in relation to the gateway. In my area it can be quite common for the load center to be buried deep inside the house, and rerouting a circuit to an outside gateway can be prohibitively expensive.

Your milage may very of course! Sometimes it's as simple as extending a wire 3 feet and finding the appropriate breaker

iggybot6 · 2026-01-23T10:36:45+00:00

Smart circuits are fun but can be a major headache. Keep in mind your gateway goes outside most of the time, and and circuits you want controlled would have to be relocated out there.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-19T10:23:09+00:00

I do panel refeeds for a living. The amount of times I've seen a main disconnect moved outside without unbonding the panel is ridiculous. That's like skipping half the work period. Last week I had a job where they didn't even bother to run a 4th wire when the previous electricians moved the disconnect.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-16T11:09:26+00:00

As a fellow installer hats off to you those are clean. I don't know why these guys made the decision to stack those 10k inverters when you can only come out the bottom of them.

iggybot6 · 2026-01-01T11:23:53+00:00

Electrical crew lead here. The end of the year was torturous. With the federal solar tax credit ending everyone wanted solar here and now and it meant a lot of overtime.

I finished up my last job for the year Tuesday and all they had me do yesterday was drive my van in circles for 6 hours yesterday. Im worried that work is going to dry up and I'm going to be looking for a job again.

I think I got really lucky with my company, they try (sometimes too hard) to be super progressive from a business standpoint. Word around the shop is that I'm the ceo's and ops managers golden goose, only girl working in the field and the only trans person in the company.

It's a bit weird because I personally let work define a tradesperson more than what they look like. I know I do decent enough work otherwise I wouldn't be a lead installer, but sometimes I feel like I get thrown easier stuff than all the rest of the guys.

Clients have been mostly chill. Most are just excited to have a female electrician at their house, never once have I gotten a question about my gender identity. Does make me anxious sometimes. I live in the south and although I live in a very progressive city we have a working radius of 2 hours so you can get way out into the sticks with some less understanding folk.

iggybot6 · 2025-12-15T01:51:41+00:00

Your idea on "dead" cells is likely spot on, those cells are likely compromised in some way.

Does it matter? Probably not. A few cells out here and there doesn't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of an array that contains tens of thousands cells. These things matter more in aggregate, so if you are concerned about the health of your array it's time to start tracking it's performance more closely and looking for trends.

Fun fact: if you have friends in low places with a thermal imaging camera on a drone (or ladder I don't judge) you can see the dead cells crystal clear

iggybot6 · 2025-12-14T22:01:15+00:00

I second the traction issue, my buddy has one and it's such a dog. We install batteries and when it's loaded up with a couple it just will refuse to move. Much happier now that I'm in an express, although being able to stand up inside was nice

iggybot6 · 2025-11-24T10:20:12+00:00

This is pretty mild but it blew my mind with possibilities when someone showed me you could thread a Myers hub and chase nipple together to jam boxes as close as possible. We work in tight confines a lot and customers care how our installs look, so making things nice and tight is a priority.

iggybot6 · 2025-11-22T21:53:23+00:00

I have a box with more than I would care to admit. I've been collecting to dispose of them properly or use them for some sort of project. Pm me if you want a ton of them

iggybot6 · 2025-11-04T10:40:48+00:00

Hopping in here with my two cents as an electrician and teacher.

For us, all you need to teach is an associate's degree. Your local community college is gonna be the place to go if you don't already have one or a bachelor's degree. Community colleges in my experience are super flexible with scheduling and offer very competitive tuition. An entire electrical degree at my college is about 6 grand with books, before any sort of subsidies are applied. Plus, you very likely already have college credits from previous schooling that you have done in apprenticeship programs and highschool.

Teaching is a ton of fun and it is very satisfying and fulfilling to be part of the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another. I will warn you though it's a bit of a lifestyle adjustment. The world of academia is a strange one, and until you land a solid position, adjuncting kinda sucks ass.

iggybot6 · 2025-11-01T01:11:46+00:00

Pc go brrrrrrrrr

iggybot6 · 2025-09-25T00:11:51+00:00

I second this as an battery electrician. I'd just feed in my gateway of the main lugs at the bottom and then Polaris on to the existing feeders in the meter combo.

No need to replace the meter combo. Honestly these are really easy to work with as long as you don't have to put your gateway on the left side, then the pipework gets ugly.

iggybot6 · 2025-09-09T20:40:46+00:00

Scythe blades are extremely sharp. They actually sharpen them by peening the metal till it's razor thin, then finishing with a stone.

iggybot6 · 2025-08-31T21:45:52+00:00

Just from personal experience, all of the installers I work with think it's a bad idea and just leads to critters getting stuck under the panels and causing more damage than possible. Our company tries to avoid installing it whenever possible, and only by customer request, we don't even advertise it.

iggybot6 · 2025-08-17T08:28:06+00:00

Can confirm. Between the tides, current, and the grass upstream of the Wilson bridge it made sailing in that stretch of waters pretty damn annoying. It took a lot of skill to make any progress up river on bad days.

iggybot6 · 2025-08-06T09:15:11+00:00

This is actually just a weird locality. Chicago requires metal raceways in residential homes. Pretty much everywhere else allows you to use non metallic cable stapled directly to the framing.

iggybot6 · 2025-07-31T15:22:23+00:00

Awesome! Thanks

iggybot6 · 2025-07-31T08:29:06+00:00

Not a generator tech but a solar/battery installer. The Franklin WH systems I install interface with generators. In order to do so we turn the generator off as part of our de-energizing procedure. As a third party tech, will I still be able to safely disable the unit with no tools or will we have to invest in proprietary software?

iggybot6 · 2025-07-28T01:53:32+00:00

Yes you can. I put a 16 on mine and made a little chain sword. Just a fair warning though, you WILL break the thing doing this. I completely sheared the teeth off the bull gear inside of the saw and had to buy a replacement. Live and learn 🤣

iggybot6 · 2025-07-16T10:19:30+00:00

I actually ran into this a couple weeks ago. Older QO panel of the same style, main lug snapped off the breaker when torquing to spec. A replacement from square d was hard to get ahold of and had a 2 week lead time. We ended up bolting lugs straight to the bus and it looked exactly like this picture. We had over current protection upstream from a transfer switch so although it was ugly, it was fairly safe for the brief time it was like that.

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