After the slow start, it was a wicked productive day. I went to the evil that is Home Depot, and picked up the makings for a new electrical service, that my garbage disposal might begin to churn and munge. This included a 250′ roll of 12 gauge wire (50′ for $30, or 250′ for $50). Anyone local who needs 12 gauge, 2 conductor (plus ground) wire … you’re welcome to it. Also, a 20A, “Square D, HOM” breaker, a small box for the switch, a switch, a large box for the electrical termination, and a grab bag bucket of stuff for attaching electrical cable to other stuff. I love those Home Depot “do it yourself” books. They have pictures.
On the way out, inspiration struck and I picked up a programmable thermostat. What the hell. It’s Sunday, man. Par-tay.
Ripped the old thermostat off the wall. Did you know that some old thermostats include a sealed capsule of mercury? I didn’t. Mine did. Wheee. Turns out my thermostat is the dead simplest one in the entire universe. Two wires. My schmancy new thermostat from Honeywell has sockets for heat, fans, cooling, and the rest. Of all of these connectors, I used two. “Power” and “Heat”. Ground is for wusses, apparently. Anyway, because the new thermostat is both way cooler AND smaller than the old one, I decided to go ahead and paint the circle of ugly that had been left by the old one. So, smacked some paint on it and moved on to other tasks for a bit.
Other tasks included the second dark and terrifying hole in my house: The crawl space. Ran the electrical wire as far as I could in the primary basement area, and then made a hard left into the crawl space. Decided to get two birds with one stone and spread plastic in there, as a moisture barrier.
It went pretty well, actually. The plastic made it easy to sort of scootch around on my belly. The only serious low point was when I had to squeeze under the new plumbing drain pipe. The crawl space is perhaps 2 feet high. Once you get used to it, that’s plenty of space to work. However, there was a point about halfway up the length of the house where the new plumbing had to cut across it at about the 1 foot mark. I decided to scootch under, rather than over (applying the “what’s the worst that could happen” test) and in pretty short order I discovered that my chest is the thickest part of my body. Go me. So there I was, not stuck at all, but gently touching the ground with my chest and the plumbing with my shoulder blades. I picked that point to move the work light forward. It picked that moment to unplug itself from the extension cord. The extension cord had apparently been hanging in space, pulled taut by my forward motion…and the end of the extension cord went whipping back out and clattered to the floor in the basement.
So now it’s dark, and I’m still being gently held in place by my plumbing. In the crawl space. Did I mention that it was dark?
I’m proud to say that I didn’t freak out, and that, having gotten back out and roundly cussed out the extension cord, as well as the cats … who had been observing the entry to the crawl space … I went back in and finished the job, including the scootching under the plumbing bit.
But, I think that’s about enough not-fun for any one day. FInished up the thermostat, it seems to work.
Now, off to eat really spicy korean food.
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