I'm NEVER going in the attic again!!!
OK, I'm DONE in the attic!!!
I spent much of yesterday and today rolling around in fiberglass removing weird wiring and adding proper wiring to relocate some ceiling fixtures in the house.
Fiberglass is a drag enough all by itself, but it's even worse when there is pretty much no headroom so you are literally rolling around in it. The only way it would have been worse is if it were hot up there because when you sweat, your pores open up and let in more fibers than when you are cold. (I used to work with fiberglass covered high-temperature wiring at BTU Engineering in a previous lifetime and am all too familiar with it's properties - Wendy's Dad worked there at the same time, but we never met)
The attic is really more of a crawlspace than an attic. If you get up on your hands and knees, you get skewered by the roofing nails sticking down through the sheathing.
The wiring done by the previous owner of the property is fascinating. At some point, they had even rigged up a 3-wire, 8 gauge cable that ran from the main breaker in the house up through the wall into the attic crawlspace, then through the outside wall and attached it to the electrical service upstream of the meter to steal electricity. They did this by standing on the roof and connecting the wires to the live ones coming from the pole with radiator hose clamps. Not smart or honest, but pretty daring!
There were all sorts of live wires laying around in the attic from various aborted wiring projects they had done, but I only got zapped once. Ironically, I got zapped by a white wire, which is connected to ground in the real world, but they had used the white as the "hot" conductor here. There was one jury-rigged setup that involved two ratty old extension cords that were tied and wirenutted together up inside the ceiling.
In one of the junction boxes was a connection made with a white porcelien wire nut. In case you don't know what a wire nut is, it's one of those things that electricians use inside junction boxes that looks like a cap from a magic marker. There is a little spring inside, you twist it over your wire ends and it makes the connection for you. (I remember my shop teacher stressing that the connection must be "electrically and mechanically secure without solder" per the 1978 National Electrical Code Book, my formal training is as an electrician) These are made of plastic today, the porcelin on I found is probably from before WW2.
Tomorrow the insulation guys are coming to blow in 14" of cellulose into the crawlspace to improve upon the 6" of pink fiberglass that is up there, which should radically increase the efficienacy of the house. To do this, they need to install a 14" high dam around the trapdoor that leads to the attic. The good news is that all of my wiring is done and I will never need to go up there again!
Thankfully, it is all torn out now
I spent much of yesterday and today rolling around in fiberglass removing weird wiring and adding proper wiring to relocate some ceiling fixtures in the house.
Fiberglass is a drag enough all by itself, but it's even worse when there is pretty much no headroom so you are literally rolling around in it. The only way it would have been worse is if it were hot up there because when you sweat, your pores open up and let in more fibers than when you are cold. (I used to work with fiberglass covered high-temperature wiring at BTU Engineering in a previous lifetime and am all too familiar with it's properties - Wendy's Dad worked there at the same time, but we never met)
The attic is really more of a crawlspace than an attic. If you get up on your hands and knees, you get skewered by the roofing nails sticking down through the sheathing.
The wiring done by the previous owner of the property is fascinating. At some point, they had even rigged up a 3-wire, 8 gauge cable that ran from the main breaker in the house up through the wall into the attic crawlspace, then through the outside wall and attached it to the electrical service upstream of the meter to steal electricity. They did this by standing on the roof and connecting the wires to the live ones coming from the pole with radiator hose clamps. Not smart or honest, but pretty daring!
There were all sorts of live wires laying around in the attic from various aborted wiring projects they had done, but I only got zapped once. Ironically, I got zapped by a white wire, which is connected to ground in the real world, but they had used the white as the "hot" conductor here. There was one jury-rigged setup that involved two ratty old extension cords that were tied and wirenutted together up inside the ceiling.
In one of the junction boxes was a connection made with a white porcelien wire nut. In case you don't know what a wire nut is, it's one of those things that electricians use inside junction boxes that looks like a cap from a magic marker. There is a little spring inside, you twist it over your wire ends and it makes the connection for you. (I remember my shop teacher stressing that the connection must be "electrically and mechanically secure without solder" per the 1978 National Electrical Code Book, my formal training is as an electrician) These are made of plastic today, the porcelin on I found is probably from before WW2.
Tomorrow the insulation guys are coming to blow in 14" of cellulose into the crawlspace to improve upon the 6" of pink fiberglass that is up there, which should radically increase the efficienacy of the house. To do this, they need to install a 14" high dam around the trapdoor that leads to the attic. The good news is that all of my wiring is done and I will never need to go up there again!
Thankfully, it is all torn out now
posted by MVTCoPete | 7:44 PM
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