Today a friend came over and helped me install two new main cutoff switches to my house. Or, maybe it was I who helped him. I at least knew where the tools were and did a fairly good job of keeping him supplied with the right tools at the right time.
I am not getting consistent power in my house. Particularly the upstairs. I have two boxes, one that controls downstairs and the other for upstairs. The old fuse boxes are old. The lever that you throw to cut off the power on one of them was mostly broken. The way you would have to cut the power was to reach in with a pair of pliers and pull the interrupter switch out manually. Not good.
We mounted the newer, smaller, boxes inside the old boxes. That gives them one more line of protection from the weather. And we did something novel. We actually grounded the new boxes. Now there is much less of a chance that you will kill yourself trying to cut the electricity to the house.
I have asked 3 different electricians on 4 occasions (one of them I asked twice) to come and replace these boxes. They never came back the next day to do the work. It only took 2 amateurs 3 hours to do the replacement, not including the almost 2 hours spent yesterday shopping for the items we needed. I am not sure why an electrician would not want to take on a job that should be easy money.
Now the next project is to run a ground wire to a couple of outlets so that I have some grounded ones for my computer equipment. That will be a nice change.
If there were only something we could do about the 190 Volts coming into the house. We should have 220 V. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It just fluctuates. The electric company won’t do anything to investigate the problem until you get a certified electrician to write a report saying that the problem is them and not the house wiring. All 3 of my electricians said they would write the report when they came back to replace the boxes.
Still waiting.
