Today continued the interna(tiona)l festival of wiring. Outlet after outlet succumbed to the combo of wire strippers, snipe nose pliers and a screwdriver. They were thrown, cajoled, prodded, pushed and in some cases somewhat forced into their little boxes.
After a while I reached an end point. That point where every outlet box I could reach contained a fitting of some sort. And so began testing. Bathroom fan – check. Many outlets – check.
Some outlets… not so check. Odd.
Multiway switches in the hall… First one… yes. On and off. Second. On and off. Third… Noooothing.
Poot.
So then there was the period of time where I rechecked the package (not obvious, at least to me) before finally searching on t’internet for t’instructions. And it turns out that on a four-way switch, unlike an socket, or a regular light switch, or a dimmer switch, or a timer switch, or ANY OTHER BLOODY OBJECT, the colour code does not indicate ‘hot’ and ‘neutral’. Ooooh no.
That would be too simple.
No, on a four-way switch, the colour – which is incidentally the same colour used for “hot” in other circumstances – indicates which two connectors are connected together. The IN/OUT does not operate across the switch, but down each side. Because it makes perfect sense to use the same sodding colour to mean something different on different switches. Obviously.
That resolved – I gleefully posted a video of it working.
Hey people. Wonder what I get up to in my copious free time? pic.twitter.com/0lNznzafPa
— pyoor exists, persists, and resists. (@pyoor) August 28, 2019
And then I got down to working out why the outlets in the office don’t work. And, err, I think it’s because…
…and this is evvvver so slightly embarrassing…
I may. And this is currently just a theory, mind. But I may have forgotten…to….connect them to the fusebox.
A bit of gazing at photos, and a count of connections in the room suggests that the point where the cable should enter from the fusebox does not, in fact, have sufficient cables coming in to make that possible. Indeed, looking at the photos, I strongly suspect that the cable goes around the room, then up to the attic and then stops.
I will check this on Sunday morning. But that is my current working theory.
I think, for reasons that escape me, I decided to move the office circuit off the bedroom circuit, but never actually made that connection. I clearly decided that the other bedroom would no longer be on the same circuit, because the bedroom works. As does every other outlet in the house.
But not that room.
Sooooo. It’s actually a relatively easy fix (she says optimistically). I just need to join the office to the lounge circuit. Neither is likely to be heavily loaded, so… and handily, they share a space between studs. So that may be a Sunday/Monday/Tuesday activity. Along with buying…housey things, like a fridge and a cooker. And a washing machine. And so on.
