4 new entries added after 7/22/08
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Once the stairs were up I noticed two things. Dirt and wires. A new shop-vac made short work of the dirt. The wires, inspired me to do some updates on what I could access. Tracing the wires around downstairs I found the two wires that went up on the left side of the stairs. Oddly, they both went to the same outlet, one in, one out. I traced things around a bit more and this is what I found. Breaker 2 runs to the following locations: |
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Basement -1 light, 1 outlet and the furnace The wierd part, is that it goes in that order for the most part. instead of branching out, it goes from one spot to the next all in series. Access to this one outlet gave me a line on half of the old wiring in the house. |
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One part at a time I pulled the old black nasty wires. Jul gave me a hand by keeping me from pulling things too far through. After I got a few pulled through, I figured out a better path to pick through and decided to use an outlet box as a gang box. Power comes in on the left, and then goes out to the kitchen/upstairs, living room outlet and the furnace. A bit more direct. |
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The next mess was the light in the basement. It was the original gang box. It had three lines out, and no good reason for half of them. With the help of a crowbar and Jul's patience, I managed to get the switch to the light wired in. The three outs were reduced to one that was sent to the new box, and split there instead. |
| Kos came over and helped with the madness that was putting things back together. The gang box and outlet were the first to get put back together. Next thing was getting the dimmer set up in the kitchen. This was the point where we realized that the main power for the upstairs hopped through the switch. After checking to see which set of ugly wires went to the light and which went upstairs, we hooked everything up and hit the breaker. |  |
| TADA! oh wait.. no.. the dimmer now controlled the upstairs... a whole floor of lights all being controlled on a dimmer switch! Kos was quite amused when he noticed the upstairs lights going up and down as he flicked the switch in the kitchen. Oh well. Once we fixed that and made an adjustment to the downstairs light. Everything was happy, and my alarm clock was no longer on the dimmer. |  |