Our friendly neighborhood electrician came over yesterday morning and spent most of the day working on the lights in the living room. The ceiling light presented some problems beyond those caused by trying to work with your hands over your head. As I mentioned in my post on June 26th, the wires had been clipped quite short, which left very little to attach the new fixture. In addition, the ground and the live wires had been switched around. (I swear, Laurel and Hardy had a hand in the construction of this place!) It took several tries and a blown fuse (yes, a fuse!) to get the light working – finally.
There were also two outlets that had gone dead. They are on opposite sides of the same wall, and went dead at the same time, so we all – The Squire, the electrician, and I – assumed the mice had chewed through the wires. Oh, joy. Meditating on this revolting development, The Squire remembered that he and my dad had installed those two outlets, and they were also fed from the fuse box in the corner, with the wires coming down from the ceiling. All of the fuses looked fine, but because he is the “do the obvious first” type, The Squire replaced all of the fuses in the box, and lo! and behold, the lights came on. So easy. Yeesh.
We were also informed that according to today’s code, you are not supposed to have electric outlets above hot water baseboard heat pipes. Huh? Where are you supposed to put them? I can see not putting them on, say, the floor where they would get water in them. But why not above them?
This would mean that there would be no outlets in the living room at all, and the only one in our bedroom would be the one behind and under the bed, where the table lamps are plugged in. There would be one in the dining room, and one in the den – on the wall opposite the computer. And unless we wanted to put an outlet over the tub, there is no place suitable place in the bathroom at all.
“Don’t look at me. I’d didn’t make ’em, and I don’t understand ’em, but those are today’s rules. I don’t know nuttin’ about what you guys have here now.”
And the electrician picked up his tools and departed.
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