Well, almost. We were up and dressed by 7 AM, had some of the granola that Linda made yesterday (soooo good), and got to work while it was still cool in the garage attic. Our first task, however, was to straighten up the garage as we were expecting a shipment of HVAC equipment sometime today. We cleared off the north wall and moved the plastic shelving unit there. We gathered up various tools and supplies and organized them on the shelves. Other things got put other places and eventually we had enough space for boxes in the back and pipe on the floor.
While we were working on the garage the landscaping crew showed up but not Steve. They worked all day trying to finish up the job based on Steve’s verbal directions but they either got bad directions, did not understand what they were told, did not understand what needed to be done, or just did not care about the fine/finishing details absent Steve’s direct supervision.
Our next task was to pull a 50′ 12-2+g NM cable into the attic from the sub-panel location and across to the west side of the attic where I coiled it up and left it for now. This cable will eventually provide a 240V/20A circuit for the new library air-conditioner condenser/compressor on the west end of the garage. I will complete the installation of the outside disconnect and connection to the condenser once Darryll sets it in place and gives me the go-ahead.
I turned off the main breaker in the sub-panel and started pulling five NM cables into the panel box and making the connections. I was part way into this work when a tractor-trailer showed up from Behler-Young with our HVAC equipment and parts. (B-Y is the largest HVAC distributor in the State of Michigan.) I helped Bill unload the iron pipe and the smaller and/or lighter boxes. He unloaded the palleted equipment and heavy parts boxes using the lift gate and a hand truck. It was a good thing we had cleaned and organized the garage when we did as the boxes of stuff took up the whole east half of the north wall.
By the time Bill left it was noon so we stopped working and had lunch. After lunch I finished connecting the new circuits in the sub-panel, put the cover back on, and turned on the main breaker. I tested the west and northwest outlets and discovered that the three duplex outlets closest to the back door had an open ground. Hummm; I did not see that coming.
I tested all four of the outlets closest to the door and all of them had open grounds. I went to the next pair of duplex outlets and found that the ones closest to the door also had an open ground but the other two tested correctly. I turned off the circuit breaker for that circuit and took the cover plate off of the pair of duplex outlets closest to the door. The outlets were grounded but there was only one cable feeding that box so the problem was upstream somewhere.
The box with one good and one bad duplex outlet was the likely spot. I took the cover plate off and pulled the outlets out. The incoming power went to one pair, the hot and neutral were bridged to the other pair, and a cable ran out from the second pair, but the grounds were not bridged through. Really? Yeah, really. So I fixed it, turned the circuit breaker back on, tested various outlets, and everything was now OK.
I had assumed that that power from the attic went to the outlet box closest to the door and then ran around to the southwest corner of the garage but in fact it did not go to either of these first two outlet boxes. Old houses often have strange wiring configurations. We have one circuit breaker in the sub-panel that has a wire attached to it and the cable runs up into the attic but we have been unable to find what, if anything, it powers. I also found a cable in the garage attic yesterday that runs through the attic above the library and disappears into the house attic but is not connected to anything on the garage end. The cable is not energized and its location suggests that it may have been powered from the sub-panel at one time, but what it might have powered is a mystery at present.
Since the HVAC equipment arrived today as promised I figured Darryll would be here tomorrow to start on the installation. We still had a lot of stuff in the garage that was potentially in his way so I moved most of it into our temporary storage pod. It was 3:30 PM and I had apparently accomplished everything that needed to be done today. That was an odd feeling but with nothing else to do, construction wise, I sat down and had a cup of tea.
Steve (Village Landscape Development) called to make sure it was OK to come by in the evening to inspect the day’s work and, hopefully, collect the final payment. Linda and I did a walk-around and found so many little details that were unfinished or wrong that I called Steve back and suggested that coming this evening would be a waste of time as he would just have to come back tomorrow with a crew to fix/finish the job correctly. He agreed.
No longer content to take someone’s word, we found our auto-level, elevation pole, and 100 foot tape measure. (An auto-level is not a typical homeowner tool, but we have one, so I guess we are not typical homeowners.) I set the auto-level up on the basement walkout deck and leveled it. We pulled the tape straight out from the center of the deck 70 feet and took elevation measurements every five feet. The grade for the first 45 feet was not clearly downhill like it was supposed to be. At best it was level and rose slightly at two points. There was an obvious high spot to the left headed up the slope, but I did not even bother taking a reading on that. I really wanted the landscaping done before the HVAC work started but it looks like there will be at least a little overlap. That means I will have to split my time and attention. I spent a lot of my working life “multi-tasking” and now find it tiresome. I prefer to focus on one thing at a time when possible.