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The Daring Dufas[_6_]

On 8/26/2010 10:30 AM, wrote:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:02:35 -0500, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:36:20 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
I was in the electrical dept the other day having some wire cut. A
lady pushing a cart comes along to ask the guy, who from all
indications didn't know much, which wire is the right one to use to
hook up her new stove. In the cart are Romex and armored cable, both
14 gauge. She was most concerned about getting the right kind to use
in crawl space. She asked him if the armored was intended for use
outdoors, which he avoided. It was also clear that she had spoken to
him earlier before picking out her wire. After watching this for a
couple mins, I did my best to get the lady pointed in the right
direction, which was to tell her she most likely needs a 40 or 50 amp
circuit, heavier wire capable of that kind of load and to go back to
the appliance dept to find out what the stove installation manual
called for and to seek an electrician.

I find it curious how someone with no technical knowledge can go from
buying a stove to picking out 50ft of wire to hook it up.

What is even scarier is that she probably had more electrical knowledge
than the store clerk in the electrical department.
Not hard.
I went to buy some single pair 22 ga cable to hook up a phone
extension on the old Nortel digital PBX at the office - 27 phones
already connected and working using that wire, just needed to add #28
and the "expert" who had apparently worked for the phone company as
well as holding an electrician's licence, told me I needed cat5, or at
minimum cat3 cable - 4 twisted pair. I told him he was wrong - all of
the exixting phones were connected with single pair and had been
working for years.
He argued with me so I went elsewhere to buy my wire.

You could use CAT3 2 pair. Even though the Nortel will work with a
single pair. It's advisable to use twisted pair because the Nortel
phone will get noisy if you don't use twisted pair. I've never seen
any single twisted pair phone wire except for the very old cloth
insulated stuff. I know this because I've installed and programed
a lot of Nortel systems. Nortel has merged with Avaya and a lot of
Nortel stuff will no longer be manufactured. What kind of wire did
you wind up using?

TDD