The bulk of today was spent on the demolition of the back of the house and filling the current dumpster. There are three really small rooms: mud room, bathroom, small bedroom – yet the demolition is slow going. This section of the house was added on at some point, and all the exterior siding was left in place and layered over with various layers of lath, plywood, insulation, drywall, and other assorted materials. It’s just a nightmare to demolish as there aren’t many cavities to get a pry bar (loosely a smaller crowbar) into and they used an overabundance of nails and screws here. This may take another day or two!
The only area in this part of the house with any airspace is the roof; and, sadly, they didn’t seal this area properly to the outside. So with open soffits, critters of all kinds have called the roof cavity here their home – probably for a number of years. Each section I opened was packed to the gills with shredded insulation, leaves, twigs, acorns, and evergreen shrubbery. And this photo is just a small example. I filled six contractor bags full of debris just from inside the roof.
The bathroom is located in this addition as well, before this was added, there was likely only an outhouse. For some reason, they didn’t bother to close in the flooring around the bathtub, so this area, as well, was full of critter housing. It’s a good thing I was wearing a mask because the stench when removing this stuff was heinous.
And, for good measure, here’s one more photo of critter housing in the ceiling. It’s truly amazing that the framing of this house is not completely rotted through. Considering that much of the stench was from critter urine and excrement, it’s also amazing that the house really didn’t smell that bad – until I opened all of this up.
When I reached a frustration (and exhaustion) point on the demolition, I moved on to some electrical work. If you’ve never seen it, this is the inside of a circuit breaker panel. In this case, there are only three breakers installed (3 standard, 1 double) at this time. The main service comes in from the bottom, runs along the right gutter to the top of the box, and then comes back down where it is attached to three large lugs. Each of the large black service lines is 120-volts resulting in 240-volt service. The bundle of silver lines without sheathing is the neutral that attaches to the circuit breaker bus. Basically, the black lines bring in the power and the neutral completes the circuit out to the power lines.
Below the lugs there is a large 200-amp breaker – that’s the main shutoff. When the box has the cover on as it usually will, none of the service lines can be seen or touched and only that main breaker (and all the other smaller breakers) can be accessed. This is because the service lines are always hot (live) even when that main is off. And while each of the service lines can be handled separately and safely while live, there’s always a chance of shorting the connection and taking a full 120-volts (or 240-volts) of electrocution through your body. So, even though you can turn off the main and install new breakers, I use an abundance of caution and disconnect the meter outside resulting in a completely safe circuit box.
Today I simply rewired the water pump (that we’re working to replace) to assure that the wiring is modern and up to code. I also added two new circuits to power outdoor lighting – one existing and one to be installed later. Lastly, I began working out the wiring plan for the rest of the house.
I probably won’t do much, if any, more electrical work this week. The house needs a good wiring diagram drawn up and I’d rather do that from home and use the time locally to do physical work instead.
Regardless, today was a huge success as it’s the first time I installed an entire circuit from scratch, including the new breakers! Having done this successfully (tested and all) I feel confident in my ability to do the rest of the wiring as planned. This is a huge cost savings for us, even if it will likely take me many days to execute the full plan. I think I’ve earned myself some Bourbon (and Buddha!)