Quinnlos OP t1_j11s9ej wrote on December 21, 2022 at 1:09 AM

Reply to comment by twoshovels in Shitty landlord, what do we do? by Quinnlos

Thank you for the advice here! I knew at this point that the circuit had to be fucked if it was getting tripped up by so little, but I hadn’t considered the possible fire element.

ProgMM t1_j12nhnw wrote on December 21, 2022 at 5:31 AM

What do you mean “so little?” It’s an air fryer. It puts out a bunch of heat to cook your food. That’s energy, and quite a bit of it. Desktop computers ain’t exactly light users, either. Gaming PCs can have PSUs as high as 1200W, that’s as much as a space heater that’ll max out a standard 15A circuit. This is expected behavior.

Furthermore, if we say for the sake of argument that there was some hypothetical wiring deficiency that would mean it can’t actually carry the current it’s rated for... your breaker wouldn’t somehow detect that and trip at some lower level of current. It only trips to prevent overcurrent protection. (I’m going to leave out the advanced tripping for ground faults and arc faults, which your old breakers probably don’t have, and which do not sound applicable to this situation.) What I’m trying to say is, it sounds like everything is working as intended.

Just out of curiosity, is your landlord one of Daniel Greer’s property management companies? (Edgewood Corners Inc, Edgewood Elm Housing Inc, Edgewood Village Inc, F.O.H. Inc, Yedidei Hagan Inc.) I only ask because those bastards own a lot of old homes, and take a very... “hands-off” approach.

snorkelbagel t1_j13jetg wrote on December 21, 2022 at 12:17 PM

…. You understand that just because a pc has a 1200W psu, it doesn’t mean it pulls anywhere near that right?

PSUs are spec’s out ideally for around 70% total capacity power draw on the reg since thats where your typical power efficiency curve peaks.

And you haven’t needed to pull that kind of power on a system unless you are 1) cryptomining or 2) running multiple flagship gpus which runs in the order of several thousand dollars in the past few years, which if OP had the liquid capital for, probably wouldn’t be renting from a slumlord with roommates.

ProgMM t1_j1jtbm3 wrote on December 24, 2022 at 10:53 PM

Sure, but it still doesn’t mean that OP should be going around acting like he’s tripping breakers with two lightbulbs, and then acting like that they tripped because they somehow knew that the wiring was substandard

Quinnlos OP t1_j12pzkd wrote on December 21, 2022 at 5:58 AM

That would be the company unfortunately. I also totally understand that the air fryer is a large draw on the circuit, my concern is that for the whole of our two floors there seem to be about two individually operating circuits, which are also connected to the basement seemingly. Of course, I’m no electrician by any means, but I feel that for two floors to share so much of the grid of a house, and for a separate grid to be cordoned off to about one room in what’s considered an “apartment” is almost malicious oversight on behalf of whoever updated the wiring (if it’s ever been). But please correct me if I’m wrong or just making incorrect assumptions here.

ProgMM t1_j12rbd8 wrote on December 21, 2022 at 6:12 AM

Ah well okay, in all fairness that’s a bit worse than I assumed. But it still sounds like old wiring imo, from the days of far fewer appliances. Ideally, they would’ve replaced that by now, but as you can probably tell, those guys buy fixer-uppers and then never fix jack shit.

My good friend lives in one of their houses. Their furnace was locked out. The oil company wouldn’t send a contractor without authorization from the landlord, and they couldn’t get the landlord to authorize it. For fucking heat. My buddy would’ve even paid for it. Still got ghosted. Thankfully, between me and his dad, we ultimately got it working, but that just goes to show what you’ve already figured out— they’re negligent slumlords. And that’s hardly the headline when it comes to the scumbag who leads them.

Best of luck with all this. Hopefully withholding rent helps out. I doubt you’ll get anywhere when it comes to getting a basic standard of wiring, but the rest of this stuff sounds plausible.

Old_Size9060 t1_j141jl1 wrote on December 21, 2022 at 2:51 PM

If you’re connected to the basement electric - does that include a shared dryer? That could be a lot of additional electric that you are paying for and even if it isn’t, technically (as I understand it) in CT, if you are paying for any electrical in a common area, your landlord owes 100% of your bill.