This is a composite of three photos of today’s work. You can tell where the photos interlock. Vickie is the gray blur on the floor at right.
I asked for lights under the upper cabinets, and the contractor went to the attic to pull the wire. He used a 4 foot drill bit to reach all the way… and it went a little astray, as you can see below:
The drill bit actually hit the frame and scratched it a little. If it had damaged the picture it would have been a very expensive mistake. Inside the wall the bit hit a piece of 2X4 that was set at an angle, and changed direction.
Here is a shot of the light at the top of the right cabinet, which has glass doors and shelves:
This shows another light and the switch, in the area he was aiming for.
The hole at the far right is where the bit finally emerged, much to his embarassment.
I’m not upset about this. I know he’ll fix it, and I could see exactly how it happened.
This was nothing compared to the fire on my shingle roof on Monday, caused by my dish tv dish. The ground wire caught fire and the shingles were smoldering. Yes, you read that right: the ground wire caught fire. We couldn’t understand why the ground was “hot”, but the cable guys came on Wednesday and blamed it on an outlet that our tv was plugged into that was not grounded…. and that makes absolutely no sense at all. The ground wire that has been in place for four years was the wrong gauge, much thinner than the standard 14, and it caught fire. When they attached the new ground to the dish on the roof, the repairman said he could feel a charge going through it with his fingers, but it must not have been a full 110 because he wouldn’t have just had a tingle.
We have two tvs on the cable, and the one they blamed had been plugged into a surge protector since the cable was installed, so they said that was why there was no problem until now, when I had removed the surge protector. This tv sits in the breakfast room and we removed it for the remodeling, but then I took it back in a couple of days ago to tell it to record a baseball game, and didn’t bother to find the surge strip. I forgot to unplug it and a couple of days later we had the fire.
But still, this does not make sense. An ungrounded outlet should not bleed current into the cable.
Something really strange there. I thought the ground wire for roof mounted dishes, antennae etc. was to ground lightning strikes. There should be NO current in it at all.
You’re right. There is no explanation that satisfies us yet.
We are still investigating.
And the cable guys replaced the ground wire with the correct gauge.
Some adventure, huh?