Jesse Landis, owner and operator of Wireworks Electric talks electrical safety with Mike.
You'll want to tune in to hear Jesse discuss the often hidden dangers lurking within our home electrical systems. He also debunks myths surrounding outdated knob and tube wiring and addresses the advantages of aluminum in certain contexts. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or in search of professional assistance, this episode provides you with the insights you need to ensure your home's electrical system isn't just powering devices but protecting your family as well.
Learn more at their website here.
Jesse Landis, owner and operator of Wireworks Electric talks electrical safety with Mike.
You'll want to tune in to hear Jesse discuss the often hidden dangers lurking within our home electrical systems. He also debunks myths surrounding outdated knob and tube wiring and addresses the advantages of aluminum in certain contexts. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or in search of professional assistance, this episode provides you with the insights you need to ensure your home's electrical system isn't just powering devices but protecting your family as well.
Learn more at their website here.
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we discuss the people, places and events all around Kestrel Country. Jesse landis, thanks for coming in today well, hello. Thanks for the invite yeah, of course, always good to take the time to sit down and talk and ask questions. I always learn about you know people I've known for a while. I always learn more about them. So, that's what's fun. I was commenting the other day with somebody. It's like, I think, especially for guys, we don't end up just kind of sitting and talking very often.
Jesse Landis:Right Reading out our bio.
Mike Church:Yeah, exactly, so it's kind of fun. I always start with kind of where'd you grow up? What was your background before Moscow? You know, podcast kind of is about the Moscow area, but what's your history? Where'd you grow?
Jesse Landis:up. I am certainly a Pacific Northwesterner Grew up in Southern Oregon, the Medford area, little towns around Jacksonville, ashland, kind of spent more time in those areas probably, but went to school in in, uh, medford, um, yeah uh, family, um, my, uh, my immediate family all stayed there for a while. My, my folks, they've moved out here to Troy now They've followed us. I have a brother, one sibling and he's still there in Southern Oregon.
Mike Church:Now I don't know Southern Oregon very well. You said Medford area, Mm-hmm. Where is that in Southern Oregon? Is it out by the coast?
Jesse Landis:It is. It's one valley in from the coast. So there's the Siskiyou Mountains and the Coast Range, I guess. So it may be a few valleys over, but it's the first major valley. It's in between the Cascades and the Siskiyous actually.
Mike Church:Is that I-5 corridor and the I-5?
Jesse Landis:corridor goes right through there, so it's the last stop, basically, before you go into california um and it doesn't it doesn't meet the the uh oregon typical id idea. You know of the rain. Um, I think the rainfall is similar to here, probably. Okay, A little warmer maybe more like Lewiston temperatures, but very beautiful, a lot of sun in between that rain. It's known for, or it was known for, orchards. A lot of fruit growing there Is it similar to the Willamette Valley.
Jesse Landis:No a lot drier, okay yeah, but the fruit growing has transitioned to similar to the Willamette Valley, although obviously they must be different varieties of grape growing. So the wine culture is growing up there and doing well, the marijuana culture made an inroad there as well. I think that's dropped off a bit.
Mike Church:It wasn't helping the area, so yeah, that kind of that's like because just across the border that's Humboldt, is not too far.
Jesse Landis:Oh, that's probably. Is that a ways?
Mike Church:in the North, that's like Northern California, right, it's kind of famous for that, yeah.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, um, it is because of the hot summer. It definitely gets hotter there. So the hot summers I think, uh, definitely favored that that crop, but I think there's, yeah, some market trends that that slowed it down.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, the wine seems to be doing better. I'm no expert on this, but just being down there visiting family, it looks like the wine growing is going better again. So, yeah, beautiful place, like I said, cascade Mountains, siskiy Mountains, you have the Rogue River that goes through there, a lot of whitewater rafting, fishing, and so, yeah, I grew up there enjoying outdoors and the construction industry. My dad was a custom home builder for 30 years there. Oh, okay.
Jesse Landis:He won awards for some of his homes 30 years there. Okay, won awards for some of his homes, and my brother is also a junk contractor and still building houses there.
Mike Church:So did you grow up doing that with your dad? So something you thought you would do?
Jesse Landis:I grew up, um yeah, from a very young age on job sites picking up nails, tearing down walls, cleaning demo, that kind of stuff, and that did. That wore on me a little bit. I maybe have too short of a attention span to be able to hang out in at that pace. So after high school I was just killing time and I got a. I got a job on a ranch. It's kind of a dude ranch.
Jesse Landis:It was up on the cascades, beautiful oh really yeah, and I started enjoying seeing the sun come up over the mountains and the Cascades every morning and realized how much I like doing that and being outdoors. And that job actually ended up rolling over into a woods job, got into the logging industry. There's connections there. At the ranch. They liked me and it was a seasonal job, so they got me a job with somebody they knew Setting chokers, and actually I worked on a landing first and then I went to choker setting.
Mike Church:And that was in the Cascades.
Jesse Landis:That was more in Siskiy's, but I mean yeah.
Mike Church:In the same area Same area Out of Southern Oregon. Yeah, Okay, so you were pretty fresh out of high school.
Jesse Landis:Fresh out of high school Doing yeah, I had planned to go to college, that's what everybody did, that's what I figured I'd do, but started doing that and just enjoyed being outside.
Mike Church:Yeah, well, we had the other Jesse, jesseesse haynes, on a little while back, so learned a little bit about that. So the landing up where all the logs get hauled right, yeah, but then when you're setting chokers, you're down tying them up essentially, I don't know, I'm terrible at all this stuff, but tying them on to get them hauled up the hill right, which is the more dangerous job as I understand it I think I don't know statistically it's all day, it's all dangerous?
Jesse Landis:uh, I never. I never got hurt doing any of that but, eventually we're fairly quick. I saw the guys um the fallers would be headed home around noon and because it's uh, it's typical that fallers work six hour day, and at least in the northwest, and that looked good and it looked pretty exciting to fall the trees. So I wanted to do that, but I couldn't get anybody locally to to let me learn or teach me, because they all would say the industry is dying and you can't get this, but I found through.
Jesse Landis:There was a helicopter company that was training fallers. They were out of Portland but I got on with them and I got, I went through a training apprenticeship type thing with them and, uh, stayed doing that with them for probably five years or so and then I moved on ended up traveling all over with them.
Mike Church:When you say helicopter company, they're logging it, it's helicopter logging.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:Yep, Okay, so that's like remote areas. I'm assuming that kind of stuff where you can't.
Jesse Landis:Sometimes it would just be too costly to build a road to where the wood was, government sales they. It would be prescribed that it'd have to be flown to um to keep soil and you know the impact of conventional logging equipment from damaging, or however that works out, um. So yeah, and that was in the 90s. I believe things have changed. I think that industry has slowed down quite a bit, but my head isn't in that space anymore.
Mike Church:How long did you do it for?
Jesse Landis:So I worked in the woods almost 10 years and most of it was as a faller and, like I said, I was tramping around with helicopters most of the time.
Mike Church:That sounds like fun.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, it was.
Mike Church:It was good for a young man All over the Northwest.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, I worked from Tahoe right around the houses of North Lake Tahoe. That was a fire firebreak job we did to. East Idaho Never went further than that. And then I worked at a catch can Alaska for a season off Prince of Wales Island and that was interesting Metal kind is an interesting people and managed to not get any major injuries, a few small ones and statistically I was ready to get one one.
Jesse Landis:So it's time to move on, all right when I came home from alaska I started thinking more in terms of changing, because the tramping life had kind of run its course and I was thinking I should be more centralized and be able to be part of community, maybe get married even someday. And so, yeah, started transitioning, looking for options. I did go to, I started into community college, I think for a year or two at that point, but bounced back and forth Woods, some community college and looked at some of the mechanical trades. I looked at plumbing. My dad had connections with trades, obviously, and so I tried to get into the plumbing trade first. And it's very difficult to get in in Oregon. The state has a lot more oversight in Oregon compared to Idaho and I couldn't get in even though a plumber wanted to hire me and I wanted to work.
Jesse Landis:Wow, you had to get in line, so I was too far back.
Mike Church:They weren't even open.
Jesse Landis:The apprenticeship wasn't even open when I was trying to get in.
Mike Church:Crazy, so it didn't matter, yeah.
Jesse Landis:And then the electrical apprenticeship opened and I cast my lot there and actually came up pretty high on the list and got in pretty quick. I think, after I applied through the state, about six months later I was out of the woods and working my last day in the woods. I smashed my leg and showed up as an apprentice on crutches.
Mike Church:Oh man, you're like this is good, then I'm done.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, it was a good time.
Mike Church:So that's interesting. You didn't pick electrical because of some real serious interest in it. It was not easier necessarily to get into, but it was the opportunity versus plumbing.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, and the mechanical trades were appealing to me, coming from, uh, general construction, which my dad had exposed me to, um, I like, I like the mechanical aspect, building things, putting things together. And, yeah, since the plumbing was the easy one, in the sense that we had a connection to a guy that wanted to hire me the electrical was. That was more appealing. I think electrical works more interesting than plumbing. Water is terrible stuff. It leaks all over the place.
Mike Church:I know Somehow it's. I feel like it's a little less intimidating. There's like this maybe we can talk about that, but there's like this fear. I feel like there's a bit of a fear of, like, serious injury or death with electrical, which is maybe a healthy thing. You can speak to that, but it's like plumbing is also intimidating because you're like I could flood this. This is going to be terrible. Right, but it's a little less immediately scary, like should I touch this or not, right?
Jesse Landis:Yeah, and that caters more to my personality. I like things with high stakes and that you get results quick and you know if it worked or it didn't. And electrical has that aspect at points which is appealing. I like that, but it's not a continuous thing like that. You're not operating at that level all the time.
Mike Church:But there's moments You're probably not doing it right if you're always operating at that level all the time. But there's moments You're probably not doing it right if you're always operating at that level.
Jesse Landis:I'm sure there's probably. I'm sure I could probably find a special niche in my trade that operated in that area. But yeah, that does wear on the nerves after a while too.
Mike Church:So you I know you're married and have a family, so where you kind of came back back, felt like you needed to settle um yeah, when did you get married in that?
Jesse Landis:so a lot of life frame yeah, life changes happened right about that point, because I I got married. No, I got into the apprenticeship probably while I was engaged to anna brown, the time now Anna Landis and we were married while I was a first-year apprentice.
Mike Church:And this was all down in.
Jesse Landis:Medford area, yep.
Mike Church:Okay, so you were there, for were you there for a while? Was that your last stop before Moscow?
Jesse Landis:Yeah, that was. And yeah, leading up to that, when I was 21, I bought my first house. So by then I was 28, I think. So I had a house. I kind of had to restart my life, which was good it's good for everybody to restart once or twice, maybe more and I went through the whole being. I was an expert in one field and had to start over and be the newbie and not know anything and go through the humility and all that it takes to restart later in life, which many people know about. And at that point, yeah, starting a new life with my wife was part of that too, figuring that out, but we were established I guess that's where I was going and so went through the apprenticeship four years there.
Jesse Landis:It's four years everywhere in the northwest um, and after I was a journeyman I had some time there in southern oregon. But both ann and I had traveled a bit me when I was a tramp, uh, timber faller, and she uh, and she had been had traveled a bit. She's always been an adventurous woman, had made some various trips to Europe and she had been to South America and we had been to South America on some trips together, mission trips, and some short ones, some trips together, mission trips, some short ones. But we were up for another adventure and we had some friends here in Moscow and they were telling us what a great place it was and Southern Oregon was growing kind of in the same style as California, a lot of strip malls and you know urban sprawl kind of stuff, and that didn't appeal to me a ton.
Jesse Landis:In the electrical trade I was doing a lot of repetition. I did work in the Ashland area quite a bit, which some ultra custom houses we did there, which those were interesting, um, but yeah, I just we were both ready for something new.
Mike Church:I guess that's to and had you had your own electrical business there, or you were always working for somebody else.
Jesse Landis:No, I was working for somebody else there.
Mike Church:So moving to Moscow was also new jumping into business.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, and I didn't. I got a job here with a local contractor and worked for them for a year and that was a great experience Worked. Yeah, I think a little over a year before I okay decided to do my own, my own thing yeah, so how long have you had?
Mike Church:well, it's wire works now where works now.
Jesse Landis:Carlton Electric was the original company and now I think about five years ago, we changed the DBA Wireworks to be more unique in who we are. There's a few Carltons out there, it can be confusing. So that was in 2008, I believe.
Mike Church:okay, so yeah yeah, coming up on 20 years yeah, a few years away. Yeah, that's 16 or so yeah yeah, so it's been a while I'm sure that was a transition, um, is that a transition that you enjoy? I know a lot of people get in, you know, grow a business, because it kind of seems like the thing to do. It's like I actually just like working, like I like the physical stuff, and now I have to run a business.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, um, I really, I really like working with customers, um, and I like to serve the customer's community, like to improve things, um, so, yeah, I think that drives a lot of our business. Um, we're we're very customer service oriented. I think most of our customers are return repeat customers. I was just talking with my son about this.
Jesse Landis:He helps me with some marketing nowadays and nice and we were uh thinking about you know who we're actually reaching out to or where, maybe, where we're not exposed and, um, since so much of our customer bases repeat customers, I think there's probably a fair margin of of moscow and the police that we could reach out to, uh, because we, uh we haven't been there marketing much or trying to advertise much.
Mike Church:So yeah, that's a new. There's always new things to yeah considering when you're running a business so are you? Um, that's interesting to me because are you looking for more work? Um, if that makes sense? So it seems like a lot of the trades mechanical trades in particular around here are just short-staffed, don't have enough capacity. It's hard to get a hold of them. All that kind of thing have you guys been able to staff up? Have you been able to find? Is that one of the biggest challenges? Finding the people?
Jesse Landis:Well, I think we're unique in that. I don't know for sure because I don't know the details of my competitors, but I have had a lot of employee retention. So I've had several employees that are at or over 10 years with me, and I generally hire guys as first-year apprentices and train them all the way through, and right now we're at 12. We have 12 electricians, apprentices and journeymen put together, so that's quite a few bodies to keep working. We get a lot done too.
Mike Church:Yeah.
Jesse Landis:I'm always having to you know that's where the marketing comes in is thinking about what's next. I was in business through 2008 or in 2008, so I know what big shifts in market can do and I really didn't notice back then because I was too busy working. But um, over time, just watching where, where things have gone since then, it's clear and obvious it's it's a lot different than it was back then. What I'm doing is completely different than what I was doing back then. So, yeah, just trying to be a step ahead. I guess that's where the marketing comes in.
Mike Church:And you said a combination of journeyman and apprentices, four-year apprenticeship is how it works.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:And then you're a journeyman yeah, and then is there a next step after that? Only if you own your own business.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, idaho requires a master. Well, they just changed this, actually, I believe. If I understand the changes correctly, master license is no longer going to be required for a contractor. Um, so I might myself. I have a master's license in idaho, and when I became a contractor that was required in order to be a licensed electrical contractor. Um, I could have hired somebody else as a master and I could have been the contractor separately. But I hold the license and so I know I'm not going to leave and make things difficult.
Mike Church:So yeah, but that's changed. So what does it take to become a master?
Jesse Landis:A master requires another four years as a journeyman. Okay, so you are going to have somebody that has eight years in the trade and then a larger test.
Jesse Landis:And a journeyman requires a test in order to get their license. The master's test is just more comprehensive and you're not even a candidate for the test until you have the additional four years. So on one side it becomes more of a free marketplace, which in general I'm for free markets. That's a good thing. The downside is there are going to be contractors who are less experienced coming in, and so people should think through those things and hopefully we'll all benefit.
Mike Church:Which, yeah, I mean, in some ways the consumer should not be relying on the fact that, oh, the government is just going to make sure that my electrician is a good electrician.
Jesse Landis:That's right Right.
Mike Church:So in some ways like maybe, but are the consumers too used to that? And then won't ask those questions.
Jesse Landis:Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. There's probably some downstream consequences, but eventually they'll probably be worked out well. Hopefully we'll be here doing great work and have happy customers and that'll be great, and there'll be other electricians out there doing the same.
Mike Church:Yeah, given that we are in the real estate business. I know you talked about this at our meeting a few weeks back, but maybe just give a quick rundown of kind of what are some of the most common problems you see with people's houses. What should people be looking out for and maybe calling their electrician more frequently for, I don't know? Yeah.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, that's. That's a great question and an easy one.
Jesse Landis:I think there's many things that we encounter in life that get a lot of attention from whatever corner of the marketplace or world we're in, um marketplace or world we're in, and uh, the real estate market in particular gets certain red flags. Um, all the time when there's a property turnover, we see several things. You and I work through those often. Um, some of those are, uh, certain panels, panel types, electrical panels and then some more basic things like GFCIs, which all have their place and can be safety factors. Which stands for oh, ground fault circuit interrupters.
Mike Church:Which keeps you from getting electrocuted.
Jesse Landis:The idea well, uh, yeah, simplest, simply saying or in a simple way of speaking yeah, it would hopefully keep you from getting electric electrocuted or having current flow through you, um when you're wet or something's wet, or it creates a opportunity for um current flow where there wouldn't have been if you weren't wet.
Mike Church:That's why you see them outside bathrooms, kitchens, I think with the little reset button.
Jesse Landis:Yep, those are the ones, so those are common. But the one thing that gets overlooked, which I've mentioned to you before and I have seen over 20 years I've seen more near catastrophic fire situations than any other and it very rarely gets addressed, and that's simply the plugs, the outlets, where you're plugging cords in to your house. That's where you're plugging cords in to your house.
Jesse Landis:And what happens is they get installed improperly by a well-meaning homeowner or handyman possibly, or who knows who did it, but just didn't take the time or have the knowledge to make the connections in a really clean and tight way. And those connections get loose over time and wherever there's a loose electrical connection you have the opportunity for heat, because eventually, if it's loose enough, the current will jump the airspace in an arc and that makes it even hotter and heat creates more resistance and it's a compounding effect that will eventually lead to a fire. That will eventually lead to a fire. The devices themselves can also fail and do that as well.
Jesse Landis:An older device that's been abused over 50 years we see it all the time. I mean, many houses have devices that have been getting plugs plugged into them for 50 or more years and nobody or it's rare when that's even a question unless maybe the cord's falling out of it. It won't even hold the cord. Um, so my advice to most people to make to add value to their home and to provide the best layer of safety is to go through and either have an electrician change out all the devices in the home or a homeowner could even do it themselves if they really invest the, the effort and and get getting the knowledge to do it properly and to to make the connections really tight and any splices in the box to make sure those are good is.
Mike Church:Is it like YouTube?
Jesse Landis:If I had a specific YouTube video to reference, I would. I don't, and there probably is one.
Mike Church:I'm just curious when you say, like a homeowner doing their research, you're making sure that they do it really well If somebody wanted to do that.
Jesse Landis:Well, they could. Even they could hire us for a onehour consult and we could give them a lesson. Or I'm sure any other electrical contractor might be willing to do that as well.
Mike Church:I know everyone hates it asking about cost because there's a ton of variables.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:But when you think about, okay, replacing all the devices in my house sounds super expensive. Is it super expensive? Well, that is a relative I know it's a relative term, but is there, let's say you were doing, you know, a 1500 square foot house, 1500 square foot house, um, is there a general average kind of per device Are you talking? Is this going to be?
Jesse Landis:a hundred dollars per thing and it's going to cost me thousands of dollars per floor. Well, there's certainly an? Uh, an economy of scale. Uh, it could be done much cheaper if you did the whole house. Uh, and especially in between a real estate transaction when it's empty, that's going to be much easier not moving furniture not unplugging stuff and plugging them back in.
Mike Church:That makes a lot of sense how much does like an?
Jesse Landis:outlet cost even an outlet is only a couple dollars, okay, so that it's mostly labor the device is not that expensive no, um, yeah, a whole house, a 1500 square foot house. If you changed out all the devices would probably be um around a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars. A smaller home like that, um, if you got into the switches too, you probably would want to to match color at least, and switches can wear out as well. It's prudent probably to change all the device at the same time. You could be up to a couple thousand dollars is the switches thing?
Mike Church:is that as big of a safety issue?
Jesse Landis:it's not because you're not pulling power from the switch itself. The switch is a device that has power passing through it, um, and so it's just a lot more or a lot less likely that you'll have something fail there and fail in such a way where passing power is passing through, yeah, or passing out of it instead of just through it. That's if that's clear. I think so.
Mike Church:Yeah, yeah, interesting. So devices is probably one of the bigger things that people don't do that they should. Yeah, how often there's a lot of old homes. In fact, we were just. I was just looking at this article about the age of housing stock in the United States. So for owner-occupied housing, the average is now up to 40 years old is the average right? So there's a lot of homes that are older, older wiring and that kind of thing. Yeah, how often do you end up rewiring a whole house?
Jesse Landis:that kind of thing. Um, how often do you end up rewiring a whole house? That's pretty rare, Uh, but does happen on occasion. Uh, that does bring us to one of the other hot topics which is knob and tube, Um so scary, scary to three words. Yeah, those provoke fear in most people. However, I just double-checked myself because I've been telling people you can still use knob and tube as an approved wiring method according to the National Electric Code and.
Mike Church:I just looked in my 23 code book and, yes, it is still there. So you, in theory, you could build a brand new house and wire it with knob and two yep, would almost be worth doing it just for because it'd be funny yeah, and it's beautiful.
Jesse Landis:You know if you, if you look at well, some people think it's scary. But um, it's, yeah, it's an interesting system, intrins, the system is a safe system. There is no problem with knob and tube wiring or the National Electric Code would not have it still as an approved means of wiring a home. I don't think anybody's using it. It's not practical because it'd be very expensive.
Jesse Landis:But, like I've told you before, the problem with knob and tube, the biggest problem. There's two problems. The biggest problem is, again, people who lack the expertise to be engaging with it and don't do a good job of extending it or cutting it or however they're engaging it. They don't do a good job and it creates loose connections again, like the, the bad outlets that you have in your wall and you have fire possibilities there. So it's where tampering is done improperly. The other thing which I think is less of a concern, it's more of a theoretical problem At least I haven't seen a practical problem with it in my experience and that is the covering. If it's covered with insulation, the heat ratings are, it's not rated to be covered actually.
Jesse Landis:It's supposed to be in free air to keep it cool. Now I think, where you run into those problems, it would be hard to do in the real world.
Jesse Landis:So that's why I say I think it's mostly theoretical. So anyway, NamaM in tube is a great system, especially if it hasn't been tampered with, and we see that from time to time. You'll see an old house that's built in the 20s and it's got NAMM in tube and nobody's ever done anything with the house, Hasn't had any updates for 100 years, and you look at the wire and it's in great shape. One other thing to mention with NamaTube is all of the connections. Anytime it was tapped or spliced it would be soldered. So they're all soldered connections which those connections will not lose.
Mike Church:Partly why it would be prohibitively expensive to do it now.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, exactly, yep. So those yeah. If it's an original connection of an Omnitude system, it's never going to fail. How well the electrician or homeowner put the wire nut on Modern-day splice wire nuts, well, if they're put on properly, they're not going to come loose either. We twist all our connections, so if you pull the wire nut, off the wires still stay together. Interesting. I think most professional electricians do that nowadays.
Mike Church:Most homeowners probably don't.
Jesse Landis:Most homeowners probably don't.
Mike Church:I don't know that. I've ever even thought about that. So you literally just twist the wires up and then put the wire nut over it.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, if you use a heavy set of pliers, so we use lineman pliers, but any flat-jawed plier you can twist the wires together so that they will remain together whether or not the wire nut is on them. So almost as good as the heritage method of soldering, but still not quite. Yeah, the soldering is the best way to do it Huh.
Mike Church:Yeah, what about aluminum wiring? That's one that again real estate related. It's on the disclosure forms you're supposed to say if you have aluminum wiring.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, it's like I don't know.
Mike Church:I mean mobile homes, Mobile homes.
Jesse Landis:I've encountered it in mobile homes and when we're talking about aluminum wire, we're talking about smaller wires that are used for what's called branch circuits that would go to your lights and your plugs, to each device. That is where aluminum wire for feeders and service entrance conductors and they're not going to come loose, Whereas over time the smaller wires under a wire nut could oxidize or other, I guess dissimilar metals possibly if they're terminated on a device, could create a situation where they're going to become loose through those methods or reasons.
Mike Church:So you use aluminum wiring in certain applications. It's not an inherently bad thing, but it needs to be in the right.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:You don't want it for.
Jesse Landis:If you encounter aluminum wire when you pull a plug out of your wall, then that's something to be concerned about.
Mike Church:Gotcha.
Jesse Landis:Behind your meter and in your main service panel you're probably going to have aluminum wire. We use it all the time. Still. It's used in commercial and residential buildings.
Mike Church:Why do you use it then? Is it cheaper than copper? It's cheaper. It's less in commercial and residential buildings. Why do you use it, then? Is it cheaper?
Jesse Landis:than copper. It's cheaper, it's less than.
Mike Church:Probably, especially when you're in a large gauge, small gauge, large gauge, larger diameter.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, larger diameter. And yeah, the smaller the gauge number, the larger the wire. Yeah okay, there you go Up to a point and then it converts to circular mill area. It's a different set of numbers, so anyway, don't even need to know that.
Mike Church:Yeah, yeah, any other, yeah, any other homeowner type issues Um any other yeah. Any other homeowner type issues? Um, is there again. We talked about a while back electrical being somewhat scary. Is there? Are there ways that you can feed that? You should feel very safe working with it. So you got a panel shutting stuff off.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:How would a homeowner check and make sure that things are safe to deal with?
Jesse Landis:That's another. You're full of great questions.
Mike Church:I'm a homeowner. I have these questions.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, turning things off is obviously the safest way to work on electrical.
Mike Church:And not just the light switch.
Jesse Landis:And not just the light switch, work on electrical and not just the light switch and not just the light light switch. You have in a panel what you'll have, usually depending on what, where the panel is, in your entire system. But you're going to have a main breaker which is a larger breaker that will shut off most everything or will shut off everything in the panel. There's's some exceptions but we won't get into those. Some older homes could have what's called a split bus panel and that's going to have.
Jesse Landis:Well, yeah, depending on who's worked on it or changed things, it should only have six main handles that will turn off everything. Again, if it's been tampered with or things have changed over the years, it could have a few more, but under the code six handles is still acceptable. So you have those mains to turn everything off and then what you have below that are branch breakers which individually will turn circuits off. And if you can isolate the circuit you're working on to a branch and turn that off, it should be safe. But the only way to know that you got the right one because we have human factors, labeling and whatnot to get involved- or lack thereof.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, so it's good to have a high-quality tester. There's many types of testers and a multimeter or a voltage tester are the best, most reliable. They're a contact tester, where you actually physically are touching the terminals with the probes of the tester. Um an easier, no contact. Uh testers can work, they're just not quite as reliable that's the with the little red light, yeah they'll have a light or an audible signal.
Mike Church:Those are less reliable.
Jesse Landis:Less reliable. They're going to give you phantom false positives, I guess more than anything.
Mike Church:See, this is partly why I'm asking the question.
Jesse Landis:Yeah.
Mike Church:I'm like I know this is off, right, and yet shoot. I was showing my kids like yeah, see how this thing works. I'm like that just beeped a little bit.
Jesse Landis:Yeah. So then it, yeah, you get this um uncertainty and then, before you know it, you're just well, I got to get it done, so I'm just going to do it anyway. And then, if it was right, then you just got shocked, probably. And if you're wrong, um were wrong, um, well, then it it was. It was good enough, um. So if you're shopping for those, one tip is to get one that is um not very sensitive, because the overly sensitive ones you'll walk. You could walk into a room and it will tell you that power's on in the room and that's not helpful because you want to find out which wire has power on it or not. Um. So, uh, there's. There's some better quality ones. Fluke is a brand name that makes high quality testers. Those ones are generally going to be pretty accurate, um, and yeah, I guess that's probably the most reliable one.
Jesse Landis:I would go to there's others, but yeah, that one's easy yeah, okay yeah, that's helpful I think yeah, another safety thing just keeping an eye on the electrical service metering. A lot of older neighborhoods have overhead services. Some of that equipment just can get abused over the years. Tree limbs fall on them, maybe water intrusion, that kind of stuff can just wear that equipment out over time. Can just wear that equipment out over time and could be something to keep an eye on.
Jesse Landis:And keep the maintenance up on. But yeah, everything else is very safe nowadays. I think house fires have dropped a tremendous amount over the last couple decades. Tremendous amount over the last couple decades. Um, one thing to comment on, maybe arc fault protection, that's. That's a the only fire specific protection that your, uh, your electrical system is going to provide, and that's relatively new. I think that started coming out in 2000 and probably 2002 or 2005 somewhere in there. And um, those are breakers. Typically they do make wall devices, but usually they're installed as breakers and those will. They have a small circuit board in them that is reading the sine wave of the power that's passing through and they can see a signature that is specific to an arc. So if there's arcing that's happening on the circuit which could be fire, and they have to be smart enough that they don't, your basic light switch is gonna arc when it connection opens and closes, and so they have.
Jesse Landis:They're smart enough that they don't uh your basic light switch is going to arc when it the connection opens and closes, and so they they're smart enough to not see that as a fire. And whether it's a time specific sustained arc or there's something specific to the, the sine wave, um, I'm not totally sure the details on that one, but but they do provide some fire protection. They do false trip also, which can be frustrating and hard to track down.
Mike Church:Is that a? I mean, do people put those in houses generally? Or is it like oh, I want an upgrade, I want arc fault breakers in my house. They are required in new construction. They are yeah In Idaho, in Idaho.
Jesse Landis:Only in bedrooms at this point.
Mike Church:Okay.
Jesse Landis:Yeah, any circuit that is in a bedroom needs to be arc fault protected and that's been in place for several years. Okay, the reliability on them has gotten better. When I say that then I hesitate, because everything post-covid maybe got worse again, but we've seen electronic problems and more callbacks for repairs on some of those types of things, but I don't recall arc fault breakers being particularly bad in that area.
Mike Church:Yeah, yeah, so if you had an old house you were to upgrade the panel, those would be upgraded as well.
Jesse Landis:Yeah or not?
Mike Church:necessarily, not necessarily, because they wouldn't have to be. They wouldn't have to be. They wouldn't have to be. It would be an elective kind of thing.
Jesse Landis:If you wanted it, you'd have to be open to the possibility of getting nuisance tripping possibly, especially with an older home, some wiring methods will trip them that were acceptable in the past but aren't now, or errors that may or may not cause a real world problem. Um, and they can be difficult to find. So the breaker will tell you they're there but they won't tell you where in the house. So they're not that smart yeah, uh, but things that people could consider. Surge protection is another one.
Jesse Landis:That's more not for personal protection but for equipment, household items. The new electrical code is requiring that in new construction. But electrical surges can be very hard on home electronics and they are helpful in alleviating some of that.
Mike Church:Yeah, interesting, good um major switching gears, but you're doing something other than just electrical now yes, I have uh ventured into the uh, the carpet cleaning and flood restoration business. Yeah, and more restoration.
Jesse Landis:I guess on top of the flood, we're working towards fire restoration and mold abatement. So yeah, I own Castle Carpet Cleaning Service as well, and I've owned that for about a year and a half.
Mike Church:Okay, yeah, how's it going?
Jesse Landis:Great. We have a great crew of skilled guys that have been in the industry for many years now. All of our guys are seasoned experienced guys or seasoned experienced guys. And yeah, it's been just great to be in another service business, that we get to work with the Palouse and be in people's homes and help improve people's homes and their values and just way of life. Hopefully that's the goal.
Mike Church:Yeah, Nice, Been fun learning a new business. And are you, how involved are you in terms of you mentioning getting into fire restoration, mold remediation, that kind of stuff? Are you involved in that you know? Learning that stuff, or is that? Are you still mostly focused on the electrical?
Jesse Landis:personally, I am that stuff, or is that? Are you still mostly focused on the electrical personally? Um, I am, my hands don't get dirty enough anymore. Um, I have enough to do with 12 electricians and four um carpet and flood technicians that I don't get the opportunity to dive into the actual work as much anymore.
Jesse Landis:I would love to spend more time personally learning about the restoration and cleaning side of things and will eventually over time, but I am still only one man and it's tough to get everything done already, so it'll be slow in personally getting myself trained, but eventually, hopefully, I'll get there. But we do invest in training for the crew. There's several certifications, classes, trainings that are available, that we are sending guys to classes trainings that are available that we are sending guys to.
Mike Church:But if the electricians are preventing all these house fires, then how are you going to have any fire?
Jesse Landis:Yeah, wow, well, we could work on that. We can see what we can do to get a few. Hopefully we don't get house fires.
Mike Church:That was a joke for anyone.
Jesse Landis:Not electrical house fires. House fires happen. Joke for anyone Not electrical house fires. House fires happen with other things too, that's true. That's true.
Mike Church:Yeah, well good, how do people find you?
Jesse Landis:Not you.
Mike Church:You probably don't want people to find you.
Jesse Landis:You can jump online, of course, and if you Google Wireworks Moscow, idaho, or Castle Carpet Cleaning Moscow, idaho, you'll find us right there, and we're located at 1008 South Jefferson. You could swing into the office and we'd be glad to see a new face or an old face either one there you go.
Mike Church:Yeah, Good Well, any closing thoughts for us? Um, no, I uh just appreciate the conversation and look forward to having more. Yeah, Thanks for joining us. Like, share, subscribe. We'll see you next week.