IVB
Senior Member
Today's my last day of vacation, and I am excited about what I did today. I got completely and utterly sick of playing "guess which circuit this light is on", and spent all morning first creating a house layout of every single light & outlet in my house in photoshop, then going to the breaker box and tripping each circuit and walking around the house to see what was off. I used my daughter's small nightlight for each outlet.
Very interesting findings too - we have 19 different circuits total in our small box (some are the half-size, some are double pole). Last year the electrician was trying to sell us on putting in a bigger box as ours was totally full. I found 4 different circuits, 3 20A, 1 15A, that I don't think run anything. I've traced every light & outlet, the furnace, stove, dryer, every other major appliance in the whole house (incl basement), and they don't trip any of those. To confirm that they're unused, I left them off - if something doesn't work, i guess we'll find out.
This also saved me some $$ as I was about to going to call the electrician in as we needed a seperate circuit for some stuff - turns out the prior dude had done some reshuffling already without my knowledge, and we're totally fine on that run. Finally, I'm going to measure the wattage off each appliance so I can make sure no circuits are overloaded - our electric bill was $400 last month for a 1600sqft house, so somethings chewing up something somewhere.
If any of you have similarly old or just mega-extended houses where the prior electricians had a sense of humor, i'd advise the same. It makes life sooo much simpler when I can look at a house layout diagram, then at a grid where I see what circuit to trip, and go right there.
Very interesting findings too - we have 19 different circuits total in our small box (some are the half-size, some are double pole). Last year the electrician was trying to sell us on putting in a bigger box as ours was totally full. I found 4 different circuits, 3 20A, 1 15A, that I don't think run anything. I've traced every light & outlet, the furnace, stove, dryer, every other major appliance in the whole house (incl basement), and they don't trip any of those. To confirm that they're unused, I left them off - if something doesn't work, i guess we'll find out.
This also saved me some $$ as I was about to going to call the electrician in as we needed a seperate circuit for some stuff - turns out the prior dude had done some reshuffling already without my knowledge, and we're totally fine on that run. Finally, I'm going to measure the wattage off each appliance so I can make sure no circuits are overloaded - our electric bill was $400 last month for a 1600sqft house, so somethings chewing up something somewhere.
If any of you have similarly old or just mega-extended houses where the prior electricians had a sense of humor, i'd advise the same. It makes life sooo much simpler when I can look at a house layout diagram, then at a grid where I see what circuit to trip, and go right there.