I have been very busy indeed!  Other than school and all the other things I am currently trying to do, I have a broken electrical line that I need to be fixing.  I finally got my chance this weekend since all the snow has melted, and it was rather sunny.  This is just to continue my previous posts about my range/oven problem here, here, here and here.  First off, the disclaimer!  I am not responsible for any of your actions resulting from reading this web page.  What you do is your responsibility.  Leave this to professionals, or really cheap people only!  You have been warned.

This project took me two whole days!  At first, I thought it was going to take around 3 - 5 hours, boy was I wrong.  Running those wires in the conduit took especially long since I have to be underneath my mobile home crawling and sniffing on spider poo.  I did not take all the pictures, but these are the items that I found useful for this project:

• Wires
• 3/4" conduit (couplings, elbows?, glue and the works)
• Wire cutter
• Exacto knife
• Hacksaw
• Electrical tape
• Screw driver
• Brain
• Old clothes that you're not afraid of getting ruined
• Drill
• Flashlight

Here are some pictures of the above items, not much, but you can see what they sorta look like.

 

When dealing with electricity, please make sure that you have turned off the power.  Nothing ruins your day more than shocking yourself.  So, I started off by taking the skirting off of my trailer and examined what is down there before I started.  I see that I have an i-beam that runs the length of the mobile home, so I decided to run my pvc conduit on it.

 

After analyzing for a few hours and still haven't any clue of where to start, I decided to just do something.  I'm one of those people that overanalyze things and actually never get any work done.  Anyway, I started by going to where my range is and drilled down.

Sticking the conduit down the hole, I measured exactly how much I needed to cut.  Although it isn't terribly expensive, the conduit still costs money and I want to save as much as I can.  Be sure to measure multiple times before committing the cut, same goes for gluing the conduit!  Once it is glued, you cannot take it apart.  Be very sure that everything is measured exactly!

Although you are supposed to run the conduit first, then pull the conductor/wire through, I didn't do that.  I did not have the means or time to figure out how to run the wire once I've got everything hooked up, so I just ran the wire as I go along.  Be sure to plan ahead, otherwise, you will have wasted a lot of time like I did.  As you can see, I have four wires, black, red, green and white.  Green is for ground, white is the neutral/return.  Black and red are hot wires.

 

I used electrical tape to tape the four wires together, be sure to stagger the ends so that it is easier to push them through the bends in the conduit.  I ran the wires through a 10" conduit piece, a few bends, and the piece that I had measured and cut earlier.  I placed them where I wanted them to be and glued them down.  Just this simple step took me about an hour of running in and out of the house as well as finding ways to hold the pvc conduit down.  However, once I was done, I was so proud of myself that I needed to take another picture break!

 

Now, the dirty part is to crawl underneath the house and run the conduit/wire down to the other end, where my electrical panel is.  My predicament is that I now need to be on my elbows and knees, put the conduit in place while running the 80 ft wire through it.  Although the above three actions can be individually accomplished by any 8-year-olds, but to do them all simultaneously, it takes a man of men like me to do it :D.  The rest of the conduit job is just tedious, hard work.  It took me nearly 8 hours just to run the wire and conduit.  Of course, I tried to make mine look professionally done too.

Something I thought was funny when I was working on the conduit.  I read the warning label for the conduit glue and it says to "use in well ventilated area".  I thought that was funny since I imagined that most wiring needs to be located at places where it is not well ventilated.  Of course, I am not a professional so don't take my word for it.

 

The rest of the job took about two hours, and that includes cleaning up and putting everything back into place.  I did the range receptacle first, I connected the green wire to ground (which is usually a green screw), white to the neutral (white screw).  Red and black to the copper screw.  I went to the electrical panel, I had to make sure that the main power is off!  You should have a big breaker for two big wires going into the electrical box.  This needs to be switched to off.  When it is off, nothing in the house will have power.

 

 

I disconnected the existing connection to my range breaker by unscrewing the screw on it and pulling the wire out.  I followed the ground and neutral to disconnect those two also.  Be sure to remember which is ground and which is neutral.  I pulled my new wires through, making sure that I have more than enough to run them anywhere in my electrical panel.  At this point, I just eyeballed how much wires it takes and cut to the right length.  Leaving a little slack here doesn't hurt anyone.  Stripped the wire and connected to the right place.  I never took the picture when I was done with the panel, I was too tired.  My range now works and I can cook once again!  The mighty A.K. can cook Pho once again!