New House Blog: Episode XXXXIIII - The Blackout!

It was not a dark and stormy night.  It was, in fact, a dark and calm evening, shortly before full sunset.  I was driving home from work, as I usually do when my work day is done, and I received The Call.  There had been a blackout!  A blackout at our new house, to be precise.  A mysterious blackout, to be more precise.  It was mysterious because it only affected Becky's home office and not the rest of the house.  It was doubly mysterious because none of the circuit breakers had tripped.  What would I find when I arrived at our new house?  What could possibly cause one room to go dark without tripping a breaker?  Would we be able to piece together what had happened and formulate a plan of action before it was too late?  Would we be able to restore power to Becky's home office in time?  And was time really running out for the successful resolution of this mystery?  The answers to these questions, and possibly others, can be found by reading...

The Blackout!

I arrived at home and we ate a quick supper (also known to some people as dinner) and then started our investigation.  Using a combination of process of elimination, sniffing outlets, and calling awesome brother Matt (a man with many years of professional electrical experience) for advice, we deduced what had caused the power outage in Becky's home office.

The victim: an innocent light switch by the office door.  It was not its fault that the pre-Bishopians had used inferior wiring techniques when the switch was installed.

The perp:  A powerful new ceramic space heater that was a birthday gift from a thoughtful husband.  The space heater requested that we not publish its picture for fear of possible reprisals.

The conclusion:  There was no malice involved on the part of the space heater.  It had simply caused a power surge that burned out some wiring in the light switch.

I think I see the problem.

Black = burned.

It appeared that the burning had originated where two wires were improperly spliced.







Since all of that room's electrical power comes through that light switch it naturally follows that burning out that light switch caused a complete loss of power in the room.



We got to work on the replacement light switch right away.  There was no real time limit, but Becky did want to be able to work the next morning.  We did not have any light switches in our stock of electrical supplies, so a quick run to OSH was necessary.

After cutting away all of the burned and damaged wiring in the old light switch j-box we did not have enough slack to even try to make new, proper splices, so we had to cut a new hole for the new light switch, mount a new j-box, add a length of romex to the romex coming down from above (which required a second new j-box) splice all of the wires together in the new j-box and connect and mount the new light switch.  Below is an illustrated version of these events.

The new hole

Look at that awesome splicing!

The old and new romex

The new splice (above) and new light switch

We know that this is not the prettiest thing you ever saw, but it is functional and safe.  We plan to prettify at some point.

One last look at the victim

More Blackout Items

Since we had to take off outlet covers to inspect them all for possible burning, we thought it would be a good time to replace the rest of the outlets in Becky's office (except for the one we had already replaced prior to moving in).  Here are some pictures of that project.

The old outlet comes off.

Look at that dust.

Happy new outlet

Satchmo likes to help out with home repairs.

Mounted and awaiting a faceplate

The Second Blackout

This was not really a true blackout in the sense that we lost power again: it was more like a blackout that is caused by light bulbs burning out.  In the big room we have two light fixture boxes (we don't know if there's a proper term available), and each light fixture box contains two twin fluorescent tube fixtures (I learned to spell "fluorescent" many many years ago).  The tubes in one fixture box had ceased all lighting functions.  This was not surprising to us, as we had not ever opened up the light fixture boxes to inspect the lighting inside.  Off to Home Depot for new fluorescent tubes (40-Watt) and new acrylic lighting panels.  The old lighting panels had become cloudy and brittle, so we decided to replace them.  The new panels had to be cut to size before we could insert them in the boxes.  The room is much brighter since we completed this project.  See for yourself.

The light fixture box after tube removal

We updated both light fixture boxes at the same time, but we only photographed one of them because they are both identical.

 I used my new homemade workbench  (first seen in this Episode) for cutting the light panels.

The light fixture box with new tubes

With new lighting panels

The Third Blackout

A third blackout?  Yes.  This one was also of the burned-out-bulb type.  The bulb in the main light fixture in the kitchen had ceased lighting.  We opened the cover and discovered that of the three light bulb receptacles, one had a CFL bulb, one was empty, and one contained only the metal base of a light bulb.  We also discovered that the fixture had what appeared to be old-style fabric covered wires.  We decided to replace it.  We did not take pictures of the old fixture.  It was about 24" in diameter, and the largest we could find at Home Depot was 16" in diameter, so there is a nice ring around the new light fixture where one color of paint stops and another begins.  We have no plans to paint the ceiling, and we like our new light fixture.

 This is the light fixture mounting box.  It is not quite flush with the ceiling, and it is a bit not-level.  It is, however, quite securely attached.  Because of this, and our lack of desire to open the ceiling, we decided to use it as-is.  We respliced all of the wiring in the box, however.  Notice the various color rings surrounding the  box.

This is the new light fixture with its three 60-Watt equivalent CFL bulbs.



















The future looks so much brighter now.
          bIsh