Lucas Electric LLC

20/05/2024

A reminder to the customers, be careful what kind of light fixtures you purchase. I recommend against buying any fixtures with built in LED light pads. The LEDs are great but if you have several matching fixtures, when one goes out, you have to call an electrician to come look at it. Not like the old days when you went down and got a new bulb and you were off and running again.

If the failed light as lost its power supply or LED pads, they are typically NOT replaceable so you have to buy another new fixture and, given that the LED's last several years, that fixture is most likely not produced any more. If there are several matching fixtures in the area, you have to replace them all to get them to match.

So always ask your architect or fixture supplier for fixtures with replaceable lamps (bulbs) so you can fix them your self and not have to worry about buying other fixtures to match.

Good luck.

28/10/2022

19/09/2022

Take a look at this cat 5 cable installed in 2007 in a Richmond American home in Corona de Tucson. Note the breaks in the insulation on the individual inner wires inside the cable jacket. Pretty sure it would not have been this way when it was new.

04/03/2022

Well, we had to get rid of the landline during the Covid fun and frivolity. Keep in mind, the 861 number is our only phone contact but the [email protected] is our email. Thanx, Mike P.

01/03/2022

FYI, we shutdown our 762 prefix landline and are exclusively using the 861 number now.

22/10/2021

Watch the landscapers. Just had a call where the landscapers placed a sprinkler head that directed water right into an exterior 120 volt receptacle with a weatherproof cover. Filled the box and the connecting conduit underground with water and shorted out the system. Totally amazing lack of intelligence.....

22/09/2021

Had a potential customer tell me that there are no-fail romex connectors that can be legally left, unaccessible within walls instead of made inside an accessible electrical box. I advised to avoid using these as I have never come across an electrical connection that could NOT fail......Good Luck....

18/09/2021

If you come across this kind of connection in your home wiring, your electrician used a drill gun to set the twist wire connectors. I feel for you if you ever have to do any mods to your wiring, but at least they did not cut the wires too short like most of the wiremen these days. If your electrician is doing this, suggest to them to let their finger off the trigger sooner so your wires are not so uselessly intertwined.

18/09/2021

Customer recently contacted me about a tripping breaker. A custom BBQ installed a couple of years back would not stay set. Found the installer had used a piece of MC cable as an underground feed. Metal clad is approved for indoor above ground installation and it had been chopped with a shovel and shorted out by a landscaper. In replacing the feed line with PVC conduit, we also found that the MC was too short so the installer lengthened it with a piece of romex. In my experience, the people who can do beautiful masonry work on BBQ's should not be allowed to touch the electrical portions of the project. None of these outdoor receptacles was protected with a GFCI.

18/09/2021

Looking at the top of a breaker plugged into a buss on a main panel. Note the damage on the aluminum buss created from the heat produced from the bad connection. This is a view behind the deadface installed in the panel to protect the owners from touching high voltage portions of the panel, but you can feel the tops of the breakers where the on-off handles are located. If you feel an extremely hot breaker, contact someone to inspect it before it ruins your panel.

17/05/2021

If you are looking at an older home for purchase, keep in mind that two wire, non grounded systems were installed back in the 50's and 60's and are still acceptable. In fact, we can only legally replace two wire receptacles with two wire receptacles and they are still offered for sale at the local home improvement stores.

NEC allows us to install 3 wire receptacles by running an additional ground wire to the box or protecting the circuit with a ground fault circuit interrupter and labeling the receptacle "No Equipment Ground".

A long time realtor client called me last week about upgrading circuits with ungrounded three prong receptacles that the home inspector had reported not meeting code. When she sent me pictures, it appears they are labeled as described above so it appears another false alarm by an uneducated inspector.....

21/10/2020

Worked for a client getting a house ready to sell. Several home inspectors had come through for people who were interested but did not buy.

The 1960's era home originally had two prong receptacles and definitely did not have GFCI protections, however, these were called out as being required for the buyers to consider the purchase.

The problem we have is that the home inspectors do not appear to understand the difference between a repair and a home improvement. Adding GFCI's and three prong receptacles to a house that met code of its time of building are home improvements and the seller is not required to add them. An easy way to look at this is like purchasing a 1960's automobile and the buyer is requiring you to add air bags, seat belts and a padded dash, all items that the vehicle was legally manufactured and sold without.

It seems that the buyers and sellers need to beware of home inspectors that are not aware of these issues when doing evaluating a home.

10/08/2020

When you get ready to build a fence or patio separation wall, make sure you get input on wall lighting and power receptacles before you pour the footings. Calls come in to add lights to brand new block fences and running the lights via exterior conduits makes it really look like an afterthought and cost more to install.

07/08/2020

A lot of calls come in about hooking up a spa. I try to urge people to consider running the feed for the spa underground to come up in an open space adjacent to the controller. This alleviates a conduit laying on the ground extending from the side of the unit. Here is how the electrical connections look when run this way.

12/06/2020

With the hot weather, it is a good time to go out to your main panel and check the breaker faces for elevated temperatures. Here is a 4 year old panel that suffered a bad connection between the back of a circuit breaker and the buss bar.

22/04/2020

Worked at a house this week that was purchased from "flippers". 'OMG Lord give me strength'. The customer wanted the bathroom fans to be separated from the bathroom lights. I told them I would have to determine if the fan was fed from the light switch box or the light fixture box. Opened both boxes, a three wire romex comes from the switch and goes to the light and no two wire fan feed in either box, ta-da, they cut into the three wire somewhere in the wall between the two boxes. I am so impressed with this "electrician's" work.

12/04/2020

Probably the largest misconception that I come across with homeowners is that the GFCI receptacles in the garage, on exterior walls, in the bathroom or in the kitchen, only control the power at those individual receptacles.

Some times this is correct, but in most cases, they monitor several other standard looking receptacles for ground faults and cut off power to them, should they detect one.

If you ever lose power to the plugs listed above, always check your GFCI receptacles (those with a push to test and rest buttons) to see if one of them has been tripped. They should reset, if the device with the ground fault has been unplugged from the circuit, and you are back in business. If you can't get a reset and everything is unplugged from the affected circuit, then you need to have someone come out and look at it.

Good Luck

17/12/2019

04/09/2019

Great time of the year to self check your panel. Go to main panel, open door so you can see breakers. Using your fingers or the back of your hand, feel the faces of the breakers for elevated temperature, like you are checking your fid's forehead. If you detect a 'hot' breaker, good chance breaker is starting to get high resistance to feed buss and you need to call us to come checkout buss and breaker. If it continues to get hot, buss can melt off and you will need a new panel. A way to save you money and unplanned power loss. Good luck!!!

04/09/2019

Another satisfied customer! Told him to go out and push all breakers to "off" til they click and reset to "on". Got him going again at no cost.

29/11/2018

During an IR audit, found this feed to an MCC bucket. Customer can plan a fix before unplanned high temperature failure takes the system down.

06/03/2018

Just hooked up an EV charging system. Understand the unit was around $500. I always imagined these units to generate the DC that would 'charge' the batteries.I justified that in my mind thinking that no EV company would want to haul the charging equipment around built into their car, resulting in reduced performance capability. Was I wrong!!!! The expensive charger is only a smart 2pole relay with a fancy charging plug attached, maybe 4 or 5 lbs. Yhe charging cord weighs at least twice the housing weight. The "smarts" are an interlock from the car and a selectable time delay. I wonder if these companies just bet that the customers won't check on the actual equipment they are paying for?

29/01/2018

Heat damage on a range breaker. This breaker was mounted at the bottom of the panel so the heat propagated up through the breakers above it.

15/08/2017

Hey you do it yourselfers, don't hide boxes inside the drywall. This is where problems always develop. See the box up and behind the horizontal 2 by?

12/06/2017

Lucas Electric LLC's cover photo

11/04/2017

Hot Connection

08/04/2017

For all our prospective customers out there, don't ever cut your electrical metallic tubing (EMT) with a plumbing copper tubing cutter. If you see someone doing this on your project, stop them right away.

Note the razor sharp edge that is created around the internal end of the pipe. You see what happened to this conduit when the edge sliced through the wire's insulation and shorted the conduit.

26/03/2017

Now offering Infrared inspection of panels and switchgear.

Great at identifying problems before they become electrical failures. This is accomplished by showing us unusually high temperature wires and connections that will continue to get hotter until they fail, all without contacting any electrical components and, some ID can be done without even removing electrical deadfaces.

15/01/2017

Quick Check you can do for your panel, plugs or switches.

On your trip through the house, put the back of your hand on the top of receptacle or switch plates to feel for heat within the box. Likewise, you can check the surfaces of breakers in your distribution panel to see if they are hot internally.

These devices should not feel like there is an extreme source of heat within them. If you feel there is a hotspot within, you should get the device checked out.

Emergency call on Saturday found two panel busses getting so hot that the metal was oxidizing. Had it gone much longer, they would have melted off.

21/12/2016

Power out in your house but no breakers look tripped, try this before incurring a service call:

Run your fingers along the breaker handles, lightly wiggling them back and forth, with just enough pressure to make them move but not switch them. Often times, a tripped breaker handle will stay in the "On" position after the breaker trips. This "wiggling" usually helps it move to the "tripped" location identifying the problem child. If the overload is removed from the circuit, you can reset the breaker by pressing it to the "Off" position until it clicks and then turning it back on.