Thursday, February 17, 2011

Injuneering Pop Quiz

Keeping My head Warm Like A Serving of French Fries Under a Heat Lamp....


Tonight I'm going to wander around in the basement with a pair of wire cutters in my hands and try to finish installing the six recessed Can Lights and three or four outlets in the new Wee Pub A.K.A. "The Turbopup Bar and Grill."

I mentioned earlier that I had pulled the two new electrical service feeds into the basement through a new conduit run bolted to the wall in the carport from the breaker panel, and then Tuesday I drilled out all of the floor joists and pulled the wire up overhead out of the way.

Tonight I'm planning on finishing up the wiring to the Can Light Fixture bodies in the Bar ceiling  and anything else I can think of because...

I have two brand new unused TWENTY AMP BREAKER CIRCUITS!

(My bellybutton has been puckering and unpuckering for the past few days I'm so excited.)

For the laymen in the crowd and those of you that went to engineering school at Fatima Tech or LSU, let's review the design calculations:

Assuming 110 Volts AC as the input power source, a 20 Amp breaker can in theory handle 2200 Watts (2.2 KW) of load, but then reducing things by a 80% safety factor that's still 1760 Watts total...

or an amount equal to a little more than seventeen 100 watt light bulbs.

Since I'm only using six fixtures and the fixtures are rated at 65 Watts each, my lighting load is only 390 Watts.

And then I want to add two wall receptacles and a dedicated 110 VAC outlet for a recessed flat screen TV behind the Bar area, and thus I still have 1370 Watts of capacity to serve the receptacles with all of the lights turned on and Bing Crosby or Elvis playing on the faux wood grained enclosed eight track tape deck.  I also have an old turntable which might appear to play a few albums I still have in vinyl format.

Come to think of it I also have an old Victrola sitting under a layer of dust in the back corner of the basement so I may end up with an addition which is "standing room only" when it is virtually empty.

Things will be getting out of hand if they keep going like they are, and people in Egypt and Iraq probably envy the dirt I walk on these days, if they even have electricity or live in houses with basements and floor joists to drill holes into.

Excuse me for gloating I guess...but still...

Now...has anyone seen my wire nuts and electrical tape because it's time to get to work?

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