Power OFF Day!

Power off day! I could say that we're being Eco-conscious by not using electrical power today, but it's off more from necessity. When I renewed my maintenance subscription for the local company that maintains my furnace/AC, plumbing, and electrical, they said, "Oh, you're due for your free annual inspections!" Heh, heh. 

 

So of course after the inspection, the electrical guy reminded me again (I've been hearing this from electricians for years) that my 31-year-old power distribution box with all the circuit breakers is long overdue for refurbishment. I've been ignoring those recommendations in the past, but this time he pointed out some termination screws that have changed color, from a nice clean silver to a dirty orange from overheating over the years, some miswired neutral connections, and a bunch of leaves, spider webs, a hornet's nest, none of which matter. But then he also demonstrated that several of my ground fault circuit interrupters don't disconnect when the test button is pushed. OK that got my attention. One of them even buzzes, which is a symptom of electrical arcing inside. Bad news overall. 

 

So I bit the bullet and scheduled the work, and this morning they're on their way, to refurbish my panels, which in this case means replacing the original 1995 vintage circuit breaker box entirely, and then replace all the circuit breakers in the "new" 2008 vintage box. One benefit of all this, will be the re-labeling of all the circuit breakers to identify where in the house is affected by each one. I'll love having that, as the original labeling was washed out many years ago, when someone left the electrical door open to the weather for a few weeks, until I finally discovered it one day. 

 

I expect that it will be quite interesting, for this technology-dependent couple, to be entirely without electrical power all day. And I wonder about possibly tomorrow, if the work runs long. The good news, is that I have a battery backup on my Internet & WiFi, so we'll be able to use that for a few hours, until the battery runs down. 

 

It's cold, foggy, and even somewhat drippy out there -- great weather for our nice hot breakfast and homemade latte, so I'll hurry to finish all that, before they get here and shut off the main bus.