Summer Update; Swimming Pool; Underlying Preparation Issues

I just realized I haven't posted in nearly three months. Summer is very busy for me with overtime, projects, etc. Not much time for hobbies. Hopefully I won't need to work this hard much longer.

Every time I say to myself, "Self, you really need to build a model railroad", I end up looking at the eyesore that is my corner of the basement where my electrical panel is located. I have finally realized I can't do anything else until this gets taken care of. Room preparation needs to be a priority over everything else.

Electric Panel

and the corner directly underneath it. In 1965 it was ok to sink your electrical panel ground into your basement floor.

The ugly corner underneath the panel at one point in time had some water seepage from a clogged downspout drain outside this corner of the house. The downspout was fixed over a year ago and no new water has come in but the corner needs cleaned up. 

As I look at this electric panel I also realize that the electrical system in my house, and especially the basement, is severely lacking the ability to handle not only a model railroad but also all of my workshop tools such as table saw, band saw, etc. As an example, the entire 13' x 46' half of the basement where the train room is located only has ONE permanent wall outlet.


A few months ago I did add a couple new 20 amp outlets on the ceiling to power my workshop tools. I used the last empty circuit on the panel which fortunately was a 20A breaker. I really didn't want to run my 15A table saw on a 15A circuit.

Swimming Pool

About six weeks ago my wife and I decided to purchase an above ground swimming pool. I wanted a hot tub and the wife wanted a pool, so a pool it is...

No, we did not get the red one... ours is sand color

The pool is supposed to be installed sometime in the next week from now. It took me more than a month just to get all the permits inspected. It's a nice pool, 9'x17' with a salt water filtration/chlorination system. No nasty chlorine additive, just salt. There is a special device attached to the filter that naturally chlorinates the water from the added salt.

Anyway, enough about the pool. As I have said several times throughout the history of this blog I have ulterior motives for model railroading with just about everything I do around this house. The pool will be no exception.

To put a pool in at your house, most municipalities require several inspections and permits to be pulled. One of the codes requires a swimming pool to have two separate dedicated permanent electrical circuits, one for the filters/pumps and another to power any lighting and accessories.

Remember the old electrical panel? It's history.

Take a look at my new electrical panel. The corner is also cleaned up and painted. Eventually all of that ugly Key Lime green paint from 1965 will be painted over.

The electrician told me that somebody (not me...) had put some new circuits on the old panel at some point and instead of putting them on new breakers like you are supposed to do, since there was no room to add any more breakers they just added them to existing circuits by doubling up new circuits on existing breakers. One breaker actually had three separate circuits attached to it. Not only is that quite a fire hazard but it also uses much more electricity than is needed. The new panel has one breaker per circuit and room for 8 more circuits to be added.

Next step will be to add two 15A circuits for the train room by adding a surface run in conduit mounted to the wall. I will also re-run part of the existing 15A circuit feeding the rest of the basement. These two new circuits will be just for the train room half of the basement, and will power overhead lighting in addition to wall outlets on three of the four walls, with half the lighting and half the outlets divided among the two circuits. The 20A circuit I added previously will be re-run to a different section of the basement as I move my power tools and work area out of the train room.

Progress!!!