Teleidoscope

Tue, Apr 15, 2008

Power Lines, the ongoing saga

Posted at 4:55 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I got a call today from a woman named Lori at the power company. She has been assigned to get my project taken care of. She is coming out Thursday morning at 9:00am, and so is Art, from the electrical contractor company.

I don't expect anything real to happen this week, but I now have some hope that I will finally be running on undergound power lines sometime before my birthday (which is the first week of July).

In other exciting news, Lori actually found the paper from the county Land Use department that I sent them in 1999 saying that the street address was being officially changed. She is faxing it to the people who are supposed to take note of such things, so there is a chance that in less than 10 years after the notice they will actually fix their records to match the real world.

I had an electrician and a HVAC guy out here today, too. My maintenance contract with Candlelight gives me free annual inspections of the electrical and HVAC stuff. Of course, they always try to sell you stuff while they are on an inspection, but that is OK. The whole point of the annual inspections is to catch things before they become dangerous or expensive emergencies.

The electrician installed a GFI on the kitchen outlet between the sink and stove, which is a place that really needs onee. I had a GFI on that circuit several years ago, but the refrigerator is on that circuit, and the fridge and the GFI interfered with each other. The electrician knew an alternative way of wiring the GFI so it would just affect the outlet without interfering with the fridge. So now my kitchen is safer.

The HVAC guy found that the AC compressor was pulling too many amps when it started up. 77 when it is rated for a max of 72. This explains why it occasionally blew the breaker last summer if it came on when I was running the microwave and coffee maker. Considering that the breaker box is now outdoors and harder to get at, I'm glad to get that fixed. He added a package that includes a big capacitor that charges between bursts to kickstart the compressor, and said that the two cycles he tested after adding the package peaked at 25 and 17 amps.

I don't think much of the Candlelight office (dis-)organization, but they seem to have very competent field techs. And they are very prompt. And its nice to have someone under contract in case of emergencies. I may give them some more real work if the powerlines ever get finished outside.

The phone lines in this house are pretty marginal (I think they are wired with intercom wire instead of actual phone cable). I'd like to run ethernet to the same locations as most of the phone jacks, and get some speaker wires put inside the livingroom walls, and the coax run from the dish receiver in the livingroom to the bedroom TV. And the exhaust fans for both the kitchen and the bathroom really need ot be replaced.

At least fixing the GFI and probably stopping the AC breaker hits check off two items on the list.

And now

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