I had a little wiring project to do over the weekend – had a broken electrical outlet to replace. \u00a0It had been broken before I moved in, but I don’t use that room on the third floor a lot and there wasn’t a rush.<\/p>\n
I had a new outlet and cover and a plan. \u00a0I plugged my radio into the unbroken outlet, turned it on, and aimed it down the vent. \u00a0While in the basement I listened for the music and when it stopped, I would know that I had the right breaker.<\/p>\n
Which is quite clever – only had two set-backs.<\/p>\n
1. 80% of the breakers were labeled “General Purpose”. \u00a0Really, who does that? \u00a0Just leaving them blank would have been better – I could have written them in myself once I figured them out. \u00a0I had to re-diagram the chart and make several random guesses before I finally found the right one. \u00a0The music went quiet and I headed upstairs.<\/p>\n
2. The old outlet fell apart in my hands – good that I was replacing it – and I checked the new one to see where the wires would go. \u00a0One side had two arrows pointing to two holes – one labeled white and the other black. \u00a0It wasn’t the same configuration as the old one had, but I figured that this new one was set up different. \u00a0I put the white one in the white hole, the black in the black, and put the outlet back in place and put on the cover. \u00a0Back to the basement and flipped the breaker back on \u00a0– and it instantly tripped itself.<\/p>\n
Swearing, I headed back up to the third floor to investigate. \u00a0 \u00a0Turns out I had misread the back of the outlet. \u00a0That one side was only for white wires – not Black, but Blanco.<\/p>\n
[Insert head-shaking here]<\/p>\n
Even with my Sesame Street grasp of Spanish, I should have caught that. \u00a0But the lighting wasn’t good and it was cramped work-space. \u00a0That’s my story, anyway.<\/p>\n
I struggled to get the black wire loose and moved it to the correct position – then plugged the radio in again. \u00a0Back to the basement and threw the switch to success and music. \u00a0Then back off and back to the 3rd floor to put the outlet back in place and add the cover. \u00a0Then back down again to turn it back on – then back up for the clean up.<\/p>\n
I got a good workout, replaced the outlet, and tried out some new swear-word combinations. \u00a0My minor house projects continue – next up, the ceiling fan on my back porch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a little wiring project to do over the weekend – had a broken electrical outlet to replace. \u00a0It had been broken before I moved in, but I don’t use that room on the third floor a lot and there wasn’t a rush. I had a new outlet and cover and a plan. \u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}