I think they wired my house wrong

November 29, 2005

One of the deals I picked up on Black Friday was an over-the-range microwave oven. Just $99 at Lowe’s. I am going to try and intall it myself, may not work and I may end up paying a professional to fix the mess I create. But I want to at least give it a try.

So yesterday I went about taking down the vent hood that’s currently in the space above my stove. Whoever installed it was really lazy–they tore a huge gash in the drywall to pull the wiring thru. Could have done it with a lot less drywall damage, but clearly they figured since the hood was going to cover that part of the wall anyway why bother. Just poor craftsmanship.

But the part that concerns me is the wiring itself. My breaker box in the basement was not labelled, so every time I do a project like this I am adding in labels to let future owners know which goes where.

The thing is, it appears the circuit to my kitchen is shared by half the basement and by half of the living room. Because when I found the breaker that trips the kitchen, it also shut off the lights in the far half of the basement and in my living room.

It appears whoever wired was just lazy and put those areas all on the same circuit since they were physically close. I’m surprised that kind of wiring job passed muster–the kitchen should be on its own circuit. All those appliances that you could be running in the kitchen should not share the circuit with the living room, where you run other energy hogs like a TV and electric heaters and such. Very bad design.

Unfortunately I’m not prepared to fix that problem. All I want to do is install a standard plug for the microwave oven, and that’s what I’m going to do.

If I stay in this house long enough I will eventually want to deal with this electrical issue, probably whenever I get around to finishing the basement. But for now it stays as-is.