One Hot Electric Summer

We have a list of fun projects for the house but they always seem to get waylaid by emergencies, as we’ve come to expect in a home that’s 96 years old. This past summer it was the electric.

We probably wouldn’t have noticed it fluctuated had it not been for Jonathan’s servers in the basement. We checked with the city and the first thing they did was add another transformer on the street since it was likely overloading.

After that was fixed, we turned to the old electric panel. Looking at the panel, it was amazing how few outlets the house actually had, even in an era where air conditioning was available. When we first moved into the house and upgraded the wiring in the basement, we realized the owners who remodeled the kitchen and bathroom didn’t do a complete overhaul of the electrical system. Instead they merely ran a second loop through the house, meaning that outlets in a room were on multiple fuses. It made for a lot of confusion but at least it wasn’t knob and tube.

Not surprisingly, this location is no longer Bill’s Electric Service. It’s now a guitar repair shop.

The basement electric was still on but the main house was fading fast–it was also mid-summer and while cooler than normal, still in the 80’s outside. We moved all the food to the basement–thank goodness for beer fridges–and called in a favor to get an electrician out on the weekend.

The folks at the city were great–changing out our meter and getting everything approved quickly.

 

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Our new electric panel is a thing of beauty with Jonathan’s excellent work mapping out the various circuits.