Electrical wiring the Ecuadorian way.

It has been a while since I have spent more than a day or two in La Paz, so it was nice to go for three days this week. I ran the underground electric service to the guest house, put in the sub panel and wired up lights and recepticles.

There are some major differences in wiring techniques between here and the U.S., as you can see by the picture of the sub panel. It's a Square D but is built for 240V single phase, as you see I have jumped the two incoming busses for 110V. It has a space for thermal overload but they don't sell them here, and there are no provisions for grounding or an isolated neutral - so I wired the neutral straight through.

The part of the building I wired was the pre-existing part so I needed to plumb it in since the wiring would be exposed. The conduit here is really thin plastic stuff and there are no fittings except real bad fitting elbows and PVC glue doesn't work on this stuff. I was going to use pvc plumbing pipe but there are no fittings for that either. All the metal junction boxes and handy boxes are real thin so what's the sense, there is no thin wall conduit anyway, and of course no fittings. There is no color coding here, if it were a big job I would be in real trouble. The plastic junction boxes and handy boxes are pretty nice with perforated knock outs and metal screw tabs, but no connectors, no couplings, and no screw threads in the metal screw tabs.

I have found ways around most of my building materials needs here in Ecuador but it really hirts my feeling to do such a jackleg job on the wiring of the pre existing building. The wiring is safe and functional but it just isn't ( as an old master electrician would say ) very mechanical. Cost - 300 feet of #10 stranded wire (thhn) $59, 300 feet of #12 solid $39, plastic conduit 85 cents a stick, elbows 15 cents each, switches ( single pole 15 amp ) $2.65 each, recepticles ( 20 amp ) $3.65 each, 4X4 junction boxes 65cents each, 2X4 handy boxes 26 cents each, Square D sub panel $7.85, bag of 100 - 1/2" finger straps 85 cents, cover plates 15 cents each, Square D 16 amp breakers $2.50 each, 100 feet of 1/2" pvc plumbing pipe ( for the outside feeder line ) $30 -$3 a stick.