Depends On Your Definition of "Progress"

Documenting your life's work outside of work is really time-consuming. Let's play catch up.


Remember way back in last year when we dug up half our yard to uncover the large pieces of driveway underneath? Well we finally did something with some of the concrete amalgam: enter the fire pit. Perhaps fire pit is a misnomer, considering we're not sure if it's legal to start large fires in our yard here. We'll just call it the decorative hole in the ground for now.

Now, also remember from that same old post where the squirrels had eaten through some of the insulation on the power mains into our house? There's more where that came from. In fact, just a week ago we woke up after a particularly ornery storm had come through to find that half of the electrical circuits in our house didn't work. Did the usual checks, no breakers were tripped, no lines were loose, no water damage, no squirrel damage....then I got out the digital multi-meter to start probing (yeah, that's right).

First checked an outlet that was working and saw ~121 VAC (volts) as normal. Checked an outlet that wasn't working and got ~20 VAC...so they were still getting power, but not enough to run anything designed for 120. Went back to the breaker box and discovered that every other breaker exactly in order was reading 120-20-120-20-120-20 (-ish). Traced it back to the two big mains coming into the house. Every house has two 120 mains coming in and one ground. The breakers are wired such that each main services every other breaker so when you add breakers they end up evenly distributed between the two mains. The other reason is so when you put in a double breaker for a 240 VAC outlet (to run your dryer or range for example) it will take the two separate 120 VAC lines to be able to essentially add them together and get 240 at the appliance. As a result, our dryer and range were only getting ~140 VAC...

Anyways, this means the problem is outside of our house. The two possibilities are that we have a problem inside our power meter box, at the weatherhead, or in the lines to the transformer up on the street poles. For reference, pretty much every electrical company says the customer is responsible for anything from the weatherhead IN to the house (except for the meter, which you aren't allowed to screw with). We called the power company to come check their lines before I started scaling our house and electrocuting myself.


As it turns out, our mains are routed through a couple decorative trees that were planted in our front yard. Over the years the three lines that are twisted together had rubbed up against tree branches so much that it had worn through the insulation and one main and the ground started to fuse together, creating a resistive short, which made the wires get even hotter and melt together (they were permanently one piece) while corroding due to atmospheric exposure. They replaced them with all new lines from the pole to the splice outside the weatherhead and we were back in business!

And that catches you up on everything in the past 5 months. But not really.

Tom

Currently listening to "Lost" by Avenged Sevenfold

Decoding Construction Terms.

For those of us who are not familiar with building and repairing houses, I will attempt to decode some of Tom's construction jargon. This may take time and just one or two more posts.

GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter): a type of electrical outlet typically used within 6' of a water source. These are usually placed near the sinks and their purpose is to automatically shut the outlet down if there is risk of shock. GFCI's detect risk of shock by monitoring the amount of energy going through the circuit. If that energy decreases somewhat significantly, that means something else is picking up the current. That is when the GFCI cuts the power to that circuit. For example, if you wanted to dry your hair in the tub and accidentally dropped the hair dryer in the water, the GFCI would most likely protect you from dying. You'd still get electrocuted, but not totally fried. In our house, we had NONE of those. Now, we have 2!



Romex: the current (haha...get it?), most commonly used type of wire to run electricity throughout a house. Romex is a brand name, but most widely known of. Basically, this type of wiring is wire wrapped and protected in a plastic coating. Any generic wire of this type is also referred to as NM which means non-metallic (the plastic coating). NM wire is used quite a bit because it is easiest to work with, easier to cut than other electric components (all you need is some pliers and/or wire strippers) and it is WAY lighter than the metallic sheathed wire. Don't let that fool you though. Romex is freaking HEAVY for how small of a package it comes in.

As you can see from this picture from Easy Home Improvement Projects, there are three wires in the plastic coating, which are the ground, common/neutral and hot.

FUBAR: Looks like a hammer, but is primarily designed for demolition work. It's heavy, comes in many sizes and has multiple tools built into it, such as a hammer head, pry bar, ..... and a ton of weight to make it super difficult to actually use. We have matching FUBAR's, but mine is the mini one. Tom uses mine instead of his big one.

Image from Gizmodo:


More construction explanations to come. If there are things a normal person wouldn't understand, please let us know. Sometimes we forget when we're talking shop.

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone Loc

Stage Two: The Hole

Come on in. It's warm and cozy.

What you are looking at is a hole that was poorly cut in the original roof boards between two joists to get to the rear gable. The front half of the attic has windows on three sides, which is great for having to do wiring work up there (though not really useful for heating/cooling efficiency). Well, The Hole is the entrance to the back half, which has exactly as much natural light as will reflect through said hole, which is not a heck of a lot. Thankfully, I have a propensity to put high-efficiency LEDs in everything, so we had plenty of light available. That being said, still not fun.

At least there were only two fans/light fixtures, plus a couple switches to wire back there. Just for the record, this picture was taken with a flash, which is why it looks bright and inviting. That is incorrect. There's also an old chimney back there that is capped and doesn't appear to have any purpose whatsoever. Also also, we found the smokestack from an old wood stove in another portion above the kitchen.

For each fan that was not properly mounted (6 of the 7) we had to cut a hole for a new junction box. In drywall, this is super easy. In plaster, this is an adventure. Plaster walls and ceilings are essentially thin wooden strips with tons of caked on brittle plaster which falls apart like cheap concrete. You can crack a hole in the plaster layer, but then you get to the lathing strips (as seen in the picture to the left), which are nailed to the joists. The big problem is if you have any type of vibrating or reciprocating saw to cut it, it bends the strips of wood back and forth at high speed, which ends up rattling the plaster until it falls off in major chunks. Once you get through one side it's just easier to grab the strip, push it up and snap it, rather than try to cut it. You end up with holes like this one that require a serious amount of joint compound, among other things.

Each fan has a switch in a wall in their respective rooms, so we have to run one wire to the fan (hot), one wire from the fan to the switch (traveler) and one wire to the next fan in the sequence. Now, pulling cable through uninsulated drywall-clad walls is fairly easy because everything is empty and smooth inside the walls. Not so with plaster, all the walls have the ridges of smooshed plaster pushing through the lathing strips for the wire to get caught on as it's being pushed through. Next we have the knob-and-tube wire that has knobs every two feet down each stud. There are literally hundreds of nooks and obstacles for the wire to get caught on. As if this wasn't fun enough.

Sometimes, wires are run in really stupid ways, like, out through a floor joist, up through a floor, and out through another wall, all of which are concealed. Cue the crazy tricks and trade secrets. In comes some dish soap that may have actually been a prop in a TMNT movie to make the wire a little slicker and easier to pull through. We knew that some of these outlets were on the old knob-and-tube because they were the original 2-prong, ungrounded outlets. Even better, they were literally disintegrating. Take a look at the picture on the right and see if you can tell me which one doesn't belong. Of course, several of these outlets were just screwed into the wood molding with no wall box, so we had to break out the sawzall and open up the holes to fit in new plastic wall boxes to properly mount them.

Then some circuits were obviously routed through walls that were not original (so, before the wiring was run through studs prior to covering it with drywall, or plaster...or beadboard), so tracing wires became a matter of guess-and-check by flipping breakers and disconnecting outlets. Then there are some even more exciting developments, like ants.

I'll explain: most kitchens that have been updated in older houses are wired into a specific GFCI-protected circuit with 12-gauge Romex equivalent for safety and to give enough current capacity to power modern appliances like 1,100-watt microwaves. Well, our kitchen was updated, so it was all run on 12-gauge from one main outlet. Problem is, that outlet was not a GFCI, so nothing was protected anywhere down the line. Even bigger problem is, they ran 12-gauge wire to all other outlets from the main one, but the power feed coming from the breaker box was 14-gauge (for those unfamiliar, larger gauge wire = smaller diameter = higher resistance = lower power handling capacity). This comparable supercharging your car, installing a race-tuned suspension, and then putting bike tires on it. It's dumb, it's not safe, we re-did it.

Oh right, the ants. So about 5 minutes after we energized the circuit, we noticed this constant stream of ants coming out of the back of the molding, going directly into the outlet. Apparently, ants are attracted to the electromagnetic fields created by current flowing through wall circuits. That was a nice little surprise. Speaking of which, there are a few more of those coming in the next installment. Happy 4th of July everybody.

Tom

Currently listening to "3's and 7's" by Queens of the Stone Age