Arsonist!
I just came across an old photo of our newly remodeled sauna back in about 1983 engulfed in flames from the fire set ablaze when I installed a triple wall stovepipe chimney in it. Course, not having access to the internet and you-tube, I assumed the cedar shake roof could actually touch the stack, you know, since it was insulated and all. The mizzus wanted to call the fire department but I said it’s way too late for the volunteer basement savers now. That was before the adjoining wellhouse began to smoke from the paint reaching combustion point. The wellhouse goes and our adjoining house, without water to fight a blaze, would be history.
A few years back I nearly burned that house down anyway trying to solve some mysterious electrical issues. The panel box was outside wired directly to the street with no cutoff switch, necessitating working on it live with enough voltage to kill an elephant. If an elephant was an electrician. Neither me or the pachyderm were electricians. I shorted out a 60 amp breaker trying to replace it, sent sparks flying out of the prybar like a transformer had been hit by a tree, managed to melt down fat 6 gauge wires in the 100 year old tinder dry walls and of course this time decided to call the fire department. Except I don’t own a cellphone and don’t have a landline in the shack.
Apparently I’m my own arsonist. A slow learning arsonist to boot. Last week I was up at the rental house trying to install a 240 volt in-wall heater, replacing the 120 volt one I’d installed a month earlier, moving that one to the bedroom to replace the old 240 volt one. The panel box is outside but the power from the street can be cut off. No need this time to stand on two rubber tires for what I hoped back then would be somewhat adequate insulation from electrocution. Right. I got the first heater replaced okay. The bedroom one was a rat’s nest of strange wiring but undaunted I proceeded to screw things up, rewired hot wires to grounds, white grounds back to hot, you name it, I couldn’t make the thing work. When I finally hit on one wiring scheme that did, the bathroom heater quit working. Somehow they’re connected in ways that I never figured out.
But persistence is the enemy of safety, let me assure you. I kept at it and finally melted down a couple of wire nuts which, needless to say, alarmed even me. At some point I got the bathroom heater back but not the bedroom and so, ever the prudent do-it-yourselfer, I decided to live with it. Last night we were up there having a dinner away from home and lo and behold the bedroom heater worked and so did the bathroom. For an hour. Now neither work. You tell me and the elephant I rode in on. Today I’m screwing up my courage to try it one more time. I look at that photo of the sauna engulfed in flames and I may have to reconsider things.
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Tags: Call the Electrician!, Electrical for Dummies, Slow Learner