Went over to the new house today intending to sort out the lights. There were a dozen of so lights that weren't working and a couple of switches that didn't seem to do anything. The lights are probably just burned out, and if we get those replaced, the function of the mystery switches will likely be revealed.
We get there and the temperature inside is 45 degrees Fahrenheit. What's going on? Did somebody turn the furnace off? I had it turned down to 60 as no one is living there right now, but I didn't intend for it to get this cold. First thing is to check the breaker panel to see if the circuit breaker has been tripped. Well, where is the breaker panel? My wife and I searched for it a few days ago and came up empty. Osmany and I made another pass through the house and didn't find it either. Okay, so maybe it's in the pump room, which is outside, down the hill, around the side. Nope, not there either. Check all around the house. No sign. Osmany finally locates it behind the door in bedroom #3. Open the door to go into the room and the door covers the breaker panel. You have to go into the room and close the door before the panel is revealed. Very sneaky, whoever designed this house. Or we were befogged by the unusual layout. Or we are just dense.
Okay, found the breaker panel, and no, the breaker for the furnace is not tripped. Turn the breaker off and the light in the furnace closet goes off, so there is some connection here. But the
furnace controller has a couple of LED's and none of them are on, so it's like it's not getting any power at all.
I drive over to
Harbor Freight and pick up a volt meter for $7 and we start tracing the wires, seeing where we have power and where we don't. Finally notice the light switch inside the closet. Light switches normally run lights, but this one doesn't do anything. The light has a pull string. Is this switch supposed to control the furnace? We pull the wires from the switch and connect them together, turn on the breaker and Voila! The furnace, she burns!
4 comments:
I thought you guys had 110V AC, not 1000V DC as selected on the multimeter???
Snort! No wonder I was having such a hard time sorting out the problem.
When we built this house, I found that the electrician had put the breaker boxes behind the door in what was to be the "kiln" room (housing clay working room) in the basement. No! No! No! I had the breaker boxes moved to the outside wall of that room - just through the foundation from the electrical service entry. This not only made for much easier access but provided a shorter run for the 220v line to the kiln. The breaker boxes are finished nicely with oak framing and doors.
Cop Car
They let you put oak doors on your breaker box? Or maybe you didn't ask. Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said anything.
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