response 53 of 191:

Jan 31 03:03 UTC 2013

You are supposed to unscrew a fuse or turn off a breaker before working on
light fixtures, not just turn off the switch.  

I will make sure everything gets labelled from now on (and get my friend some
better reading glasses at the dollar store).  

We turned off the lighting circuit breaker overnight to inspect everything
again in the daylight (which will NOT be morning tomorrow).  

The third outside motion sensor works as designed.  Or it would if we had
not turned the breaker off.

response 55 of 191:

Jan 31 05:17 UTC 2013

resp:53 Yes, it is a best practice to turn off the power when working on a 
circuit. It is also a best practice to wire circuits in the order of 
neutral, ground, then hot. Or was it ground, then neutral, then hot? 
See...this is when it pays to have an expert. :)  The point is that some 
day, someone else might be living in your home, and he/she may not follow 
best practices.

As an aside, ask an electrician if he/she has ever seen a circuit breaker 
stay closed in the open position. There is a reason why they carry a test 
pen to verify the power is off.

response 57 of 191:

Jan 31 06:10 UTC 2013

When in doubt, lick the wire like a 9 volt battery

response 59 of 191:

Jan 31 10:01 UTC 2013

Jim is trained as an electrician and worked as an apprentice electrician for
a few years and is supervising from a distance and drawing up diagrams of how
to wire.  I need to follow my friend around and make sure he follows the
instructions such as labelling things before you start.  I will ask him to
get some more colored tape since the K and D labels on the cable housings did
not seem to keep things straight.  And we will check each switch instead of
waiting to check five at once.  Only two bathroom switches.

If it is not safe for Jim to go there
before we get inspected I will hire an electrician to check everything over
first.  We already had one stop by for an hour and tell us to add ground bars
to the electric panel and be sure to leave 6" wire in the boxes - he said the
rest looked okay.  Everything was wired correctly until now except for one
loose wire in a junction box.  Yesterday the errors probably multiplied
while redoing things repeatedly after too long a day. 

We are wiring up switches, outlets, and fixtures temporarily before rough 
inspection to test that it all works, rather than just leaving wires dangling
to be hooked up later.  (This also gives us light and power for a few months).
Most of it needs to be undone, wall and ceiling boards put up with holes for
the wires to go through, then redone (with different boxes and fixtures).
I presume in standard construction you put the boxes in before the wallboard
and we are putting them surface mounted.  

We own several hotplates and bread machines but don't have space to set up
a kitchen there and it is inconvenient to wash dishes in dehumidifier water.
I don't want to add more humidity either - it finally got down to 60%
after several days when we did not add any mortar to the walls.

I get this morning off to cook (unless Jim insists on typing things instead).

I am still waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night from the
stress but don't feel like getting up to cook then.

response 61 of 191:

Jan 31 15:59 UTC 2013

I am allowed to put white tape on the cables and label them N or S (north or
south).  I want to also put colored tape on each wire the same color as each
screw that it goes to so they get reconnected propertly when we take apart
all the switches to put on wall board, which the switches will end up on top
of surface mounted.  I am NOT supposed to used the following colors of tape:
red, black, white (these are used in other ways such as when a black is
labeled red or vice versa or a white is labelled black).  I need to reserve
yellow for interconnects.  I can't use green for some reason.  This I think
leaves blue, brown, grey, and purple.

Jim showed me the diagram he printed with two 3-way and one 4-way switch and
lots of red, black, white, and white labelled with black lines and said to
just label everything like that.  Which means nothing to me.  I think what
happened is one of the red lines ended up on a screw that should have had a
black line - maybe I can put a red dot next to that screw?

response 63 of 191:

Jan 31 16:41 UTC 2013

Is labeling wires N and S a standard practice? I've never heard of that
before.

response 65 of 191:

Jan 31 16:51 UTC 2013

The N and S are so we don't end up controlling the north light with the south
switch and vice versa.  It is probably not common to have two pairs of three
way switches and two sets of lights in one room.  

The little tags are called wire markers.  Stadium Hardware has them - a big
$10 package including letters and numbers.  We can relabel the breaker box too.

The 3-way switches for two lights are in one box.  It is required to label
the cables in machine wiring but not residential.  We have three doors so
there is also the 4-way switch.  You can now come into one end of the kitchen
and turn on lights at that end, then go into the bathroom while turning off
the kitchen light, or turn on the light at the other end of the kitchen and
go there, then go out the front door and turn off that light.

Most people don't wire all their switches twice while building, or change
two switches at one time, so don't need to be so careful.

The idea now is to put matching numbers next to each pair of wires and screws.
Jim says this will impress the inspector.

response 67 of 191:

Jan 31 22:01 UTC 2013

The older cables had ground wires smaller than the others.
We accidentally used some and had to replace it.

Today we replaced an extension box with rounded corners with one with square
corners so there was less of a gap.

We then discovered Lowes had said they have wire markers with letters and
numbers (0-15, A-Z) but sold us 1-45 (10 copies of each) so we will mark
the cables and wires another day.

We planned out where to put bathroom and living room 3-way switch boxes (gang
boxes in the bathroom adjusted for 1/2" or 3/4" wall thickness depending
whether it would be wood trim or backer board and tile, and square handy boxes
in the other two locations fed through holes in the board behind them
eventually) and where to drill more holes to feed the bathroom switch, then
light, then switch.  First we need to plan the two bathroom outlets (bath
and laundry circuits, one outlet each) to know how big a hole to drill.

We chose and placed two gang boxes for the two bathroom 3-way switches
(one of which may be lighted if it fits in the box which is embedded in
a post).   

We may need plastic conduit rather than EMT metal in the bathroom, like
what we used on the porch.  

The conduit may go through the kitchen ventilation shaft.  We need to plan
and maybe install some of the ventilation ductwork first, or maybe put in all
the wiring and then some wallboard before the ductwork.  Everything comes
first.  It gets worse with plumbing fixtures and tile.

response 69 of 191:

Feb 1 04:07 UTC 2013

The screw cutter was part of a wire stripper (we have about five of them).

It turns out that the 1/2" deep ceiling pans (round boxes) that we planned
to use for our surface-mounted fixtures are 6 cu in, and if you run two cables
into them you need 10 cu in.  Jim had drawn the bathroom wired with the light
last and one cable, and we wired it with the light in the middle and two
cables.  So we decided to use round 5.5" wiremold ceiling boxes above our 5"
round IKEA 3-bulb adjustable spotlights ($7.18 box, $9.99 fixture) in the
bathroom and also for the two kitchen lights with two cables and we may as
well use them everywhere else.  Instead of rewiring the bathroom.

Stadium Hardware has wire markers with 2 sets of A-Z and lots of numbers up
to about 60.  Lowes sold us 1-45 (10 sets each).  We need to trade for 10 each
off A-Z and 1-15.  The hardware store is used to seeing us twice a day and
when I returned an unlighted 3-way switch with no receipt asked if I was
getting the 5% discount.  Turns out I am eligible as a 'senior'.  

Jim is researching bathroom heat.  There are rectangular models that fit in
or on the wall and blow up, down or sideways depending how they are installed.
Our only free wall is next to the toilet.  They could go on the ceiling and
blow sideways.   They are available with built-in thermostats (not so useful
on a ceiling) or you can buy a wall thermostat.  About $150 on ebay with
thermostat.

Ebay also has fan-forced bathroom ceiling heaters, round, 3" deep, by Broan,
for $95 plus $8 shipping.  1250 watts.  Should be enough to heat my entire
downstairs, with a programmable thermostat to get time of day rate.  Just
leave the bathroom doors open to the other two rooms.  I also have two new
in box 750W hydronic electric baseboard heaters for those rooms.  The
programmable thermostats are an extra $45, which is about half what I expect
my annual heat bill to be, but since I am trying to prove a point (keep
heating bills down while not overtaxing the electric company at peak hours)
I may get them anyway.   Also a time of day timer and a minute timer for the
water heater.  In winter run it during off peak hours, during non-heating
season (April through October) only for 10 min before I shower.

A 1250W hydronic heater (quiet, runs cooler, temperature stays more constant)
is about $200 on ebay.  Plus thermostat.  I only paid about $1000 for the
insulation which is making it possible to use less heat.  9" in walls, ,15"
in ceilings.  

I think we need some sort of ceiling box for the smoke alarms....

response 71 of 191:

Feb 1 14:10 UTC 2013

Light switches do wear out like other mechanical objects.

The Broan heater is common on ebay for $45-65 buy it now.  I bid $45 on one
that is $60 buy-it-now.

Thermostats (this needs one added, or an on-off switch) can be 24V (commonly
used with furnaces, require a relay and transformer) or line-voltage (SP 120V
or DP 240V).  The non-programmable ones start at $1 (plus $4 postage - for
some reason most of the thermostats, which are very small and lightweight,
are being sold with postage up to $12 - probably so nobody will return them).
The programmable 24V start at about $7, programmable line-voltage are about
$50 or more.  I should probably get at least one for the house so I can set
the heat to go on from 7-11 am and again from 7-11 pm when the rates are
lower.  I don't want heat at night.  The heat might drop as much as 5 deg over
the day if it is really cold out and I don't cook.

We need to exchange the 1/2" deep round ceiling pans for 1" deep wiremold
ceiling boxes that can legally hold the connections from 2 or more wires.
2 wires needs 10 cu inches and the pans hold 6, wiremold 22 cu in.

I need to go cook breakfast, pack my cold potato for lunch, etc.  

With luck, the holes in the bathroom joists made for lighting are large
enough for two more wires for heat and thermostat.  I wish we had the time
to plan further ahead.  

response 73 of 191:

Feb 2 11:37 UTC 2013

Spent the morning determining that Lowes does not sell the cheaper round
wiremold ceiling box listed at their website except mail order, and bought
the more expensive ones designed to hold heavy fans instead.  Then spent two
hours with our builder friend figuring out how to use square wiremold boxes
for light switches on interior walls (two doubles now need replacing) and went
to the dollar store and got him some reading glasses that don't fall off so
he can see what he is wiring.

Did our usual snow shoveling of two neighbors (widowed, divorced) with health
problems and had tea with one who offered to help plaster and will also take
us to IKEA Wednesday for light fixtures.  

Played recorder at a house with both kinds of bathroom heater that we are
considering.  He told us not to get the ceiling kind if we had any wall space
because the heat does not reach the floor, so Jim will use the one I bid $45
on at ebay.  The other is now available for $80 including thermostat, which
simplifies our wiring.  I need to order it so we can wire the bathroom light
switch around it this week.  

The replacement wire markers were supposed to be numbers and letters but were
marked 'living room', 'garbage disposal' etc. so we took apart five switches
and marked them with colored tape to make sure they go back together right.

This weekend my builder friend promised to work for two other people.  I will
be plastering with architect friend from 10 until we finish, and working with
the other friend in the evening on more wiring while the neighbor mixes
mortar.  I get Monday evening off after 7 pm.  

A very kind friend took away several large cardboard boxes of Jim's collection
of dead-battery power tools with the dead batteries, plus two jump starters
with dead batteries, to see if any of his batteries fit and recycle what
needed recycling, so there are now a few more square feet of living room space
to walk through.  He offered to also find homes for some other stuff.  
Restore had some power tools without batteries.  New tools are cheaper than
the replacement batteries ($15 at Harbor Freight for a cordless drill).

I wish I could stop waking up at 5 am.

response 75 of 191:

Feb 3 00:56 UTC 2013

No more mortar mixing for a while.  IN 8 hours we finished skim coating all
the downstairs exterior walls except the bathroom (which will be tiled if we
have time, or left dotted where the screws were for inspection then remove
the toilet and laundry tub to tile after that.

My architect friend started investigating how to run ductwork for ventilation
- in the unheated crawlspace under the joists?   Makes it harder to get around
the crawlspace and cools the air (or maybe heats it since it is coming in from
outside).

My other friend is figuring out how to get power to the smoke alarms and also
connect them all up as required.  They can be in a row, or radiating from a
central point, or some combination.  We need to run the line(s) upstairs and
to the cellar under the porch.  They can go through a junction box (which can
be a motion sensor at the same time).  

Upstairs lights will be either on the wall or in conduit or wiremold.  He said
wiremold is much more expensive, $15 for 10'.  I only need 10' for two rooms
so will splurge.  We have the cheaper round conduit already for free.  THe
expensive part about the wiremold is corners.  You normally run thin wires
through it but I think you can use Romex (NM).

We need to place a bathtub drain upstairs, and a floor drain, and decide
whether to slope the upstairs bathroom floor, and cap all the upstairs drains
before moving the temporary toilet upstairs so we can finish putting screws
in the bathroom wall and maybe even tile it before doing the wiring and
plumbing that should go on top of the tile.  

I need to choose a bathtub so we know where the floor drain will go.  I was
hoping they were all standard (other than the clawfoot one which I already
have used for downstairs if we can move it from the crawlspace).  Alibaba had
a nice Chinese one deep enough to bath in.  Fiberglass/plastic, I think.

My architect friend suggested placing the bathroom wall heater higher off the
floor so we could put a toilet paper holder below it and it would not blow
on the toilet.  She pointed out that I ought to find some place for a towel
rack.  Since the heater will block access to some shelving from the toilet
side, and it is deep shelving if accessed from the front, she suggested a
roll-out deep cart (for dirty laundry?) with a towel bar on the front of it.
You don't want it over the heater so the towel won't catch on fire.  The only
other wall space is over the tub or the laundry tub.   Corridor bathroom.
I could put a drying rack over the laundry tub and use it for towel too.

What experience do other grexers have with bathtubs?

response 77 of 191:

Feb 3 11:48 UTC 2013

Thanks, jep.  Jim did plan ahead for the bathroom drain and trap.  
We do need to locate where it goes and get the correct slope (1/2"/foot?).
There will also be a floor drain.  Jim thinks the upstairs bathroom floor
should be sloped to it.  The downstairs bathroom floor must be sloped
because the room will have washing machine and water heater and either
could leak, also it should be usable for showering in mid floor by
someone who cannot get into the tub.

Wiremold is probably designed for the THHN (separate wires) but you can put
romex in instead (fewer total wires because of the insulation).  The upstairs
ceiling cannot have wires run through it so will use wiremold to the ceiling
lights, and maybe use lights high on the wall in the smaller rooms, but that
decision can wait a year or more.  We put wires through downstairs ceiling
joists and interior walls.  The exterior walls will have conduit (much 
cheaper than wiremold) eventually hidden by wood.

The upstairs smoke detectors can go high on the wall, or in conduit on
the ceiling - another year.  

I read about bathtubs.  Fiberglass/resin is poor quality.  Most people now
buy acrylic, which is not as durable as cast iron.  Most of the built-in
tubs are shallow and flat bottomed, designed primarily for showers.  The 
soaking tubs tend to be free-standing.  The shallow tubs are 14" deep.
I have a used clawfoot tub (hope I still have the feet for it).
Lowes cast iron tubs start at $350.  Alibaba lists Chinese tubs starting
at $10 if you buy in large enough quantities (plus shipping?).  The local
suppliers seem to sell Kohler and American Standard, not Chinese, of which
there are a huge variety of soaking tubs.  American soaking tubs tend to
be larger than the standard built-in ones and have fancy features.
I suspect the Chinese, like the Japanese, soak to get warm.

I can use some standard drain location upstairs and build around the
clawfoot tub downstairs.  

We need to clear many years' accumulation of potentially useful plumbing
parts out of the upstairs bathroom to get at the drain plumbing.
It will end up in Jim's living room in the spot just vacated by several
large boxes of power tools with dead batteries that a kind friend took
away to see if he had the batteries and then donate somewhere.  He will
see what he can do with the dryer cord collection another week.  Jim has
trouble parting with potentially useful things that other people got
rid of.  The rules about bath faucets have changed.  They and sink faucets
need a temperature limiting device (110F?) now.  The faucets for clawfoot
tubs can't go through the holes in the tubs, but have to be above the rim.
So I can probably recycle our old faucet collection, or donate some place.