Yesterday morning, while showering, I found that I'd run out of hot water. I figured that I'd just run the shower a big longer than I usually do, mainly because I'd slept so long the night before that I was stiff and sore. However, an hour or so later, I discovered that we had no hot water at all. Uh, oh.

There is a circuit breaker right next to the water heater (our plumber said that's a safety requirement) downstream from the main electrical box. I confirmed that it was turned on. I then went out to the main box to see what might have happened.

Oops. That water heater is on its own separate 50A circuit running from the main box, and somehow when we turned everything back on yesterday, we forgot to turn that breaker on. It had not tripped; it was firmly in the OFF position. I turned it back on, went inside, and could hear water heating. After a while, everything was back to normal.

In order to make proper use of the "studio lights" we bought a few weeks ago for Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories, Lisa wanted to install a switched outlet in the ceiling. This will allow her to mount the lights up there and get them aimed the way she wants them, and then when we're going to record, she can just flip the switch without having to spend a bunch of time setting up lights. This afternoon after I finished with Day Jobbe for the weekend, we set out to to the wiring.

( Wires, Wires Everywhere )

Lisa turned the circuit breaker back on and tested both the rewired light fixture and the new outlet, and everything is in order. Once we have more electrical face plates and the mounting hardware for the studio lights, she'll finish the installation. She thanked me for my help handing her tools and parts, disposing of discarded pieces of wire insulation and conduit packaging, and otherwise serving as an electrician's assistant. The saved her a lot of time because she didn't have to keep climbing up and down the ladder.

Cleaning all of the computer wiring, the table, the area underneath and around the desk, and putting all of the computers, wiring, monitors, etc. back into place took around as long as the wiring project did. I'll have more to say about the computers and monitors tomorrow.

While working on the electrical wiring in the garage, of course the circuits to the garage had to be turned off, so Lisa ran an extension cord from the electrical pedestal we had installed when we bought the house to provide service to the travel trailer.

( On the Pedestal )

To Lisa's great annoyance, the original outlet grabbed the ground pin on the extension cord and it broke off in the outlet. She can replace the plug by cutting it off and wiring in a new one, but as the original plug is molded into the wire whereas the replacement will only be clamped, it won't be quite as good.

With a pin jammed in the original outlet, Lisa needed to take it out and replace it. When she did so, she had bad things to say about the electrician who installed the pedestal.

( Getting Inside )

As it happens, the electrician who installed this never got around to billing us. Given the shoddy job Lisa discovered, I feel far less guilty about this than I once did.