To finish the electrical on the boat house, I deviated from the original electrical drawing. In the plans which I came up with, I required a GFI outlet at the boat house. But that's before I realized how GFIs worked. See my previous blog on how they work.
Instead I put a GFI breaker in the house. This in effect covered the whole boat house electrical circuit.
When the inspector came, I told him what I had done and he was ok with the changes. But then he looked at my panel and said, "that's not a GFI breaker" and then claimed it was an arc fault breaker.
In this area arc fault breakers are now required. They are supposed to prevent fires when there is arcing between wires and what ever else they are arcing with. Here is a link on what they are and why they are used. They are much more expensive than the old style breakers at about $40 a piece at at this link. (Lowe's).
If I had been doing construction under the new building rules (and I wasn't because my plans were grandfathered in) I would have had to put in a GFI ARC fault breaker. In any case I had put in a GFI breaker and I assured the inspector it was GFI. He was not convinced. Luckily he had a tester and he plugged it in the boat house receptacle and caused the breaker to trip. This convinced him that it was indeed a GFI breaker.
One reason there has been so little progress is that I felt that once the boat house was done it was time to party. I think it is very important to celebrate the accomplishments in ones life and this was no exception. I invited all my friend's over. We ate 30 lbs of brisket which I smoked with hickory and apple wood chips and my friends brought over some wonderful dishes of their own. And of course there was plenty of alcohol. I do believe I gained 5 pounds in just that day alone. The party morphed from a boat house completion celebration to a football game watching party and then when it was dark we took boat ride to see the ruins of statue known as Annie the dragon.
Another reason there has been little progress is that it was Thanksgiving and my birthday I took a trip to Wyoming to visit my sister and parents. It was a real good time and I got to enjoy cutting down 50' dead trees in the national Forrest (we had a permit). I had never cut down a tree before and was using this experience to practice since I have two 50' palm trees in the back yard that have died and needed cutting down. Unfortunately, the two trees I did cut down in the forest didn't fall the right way. Here are some action shots of a tree that my dad cut down:
I ain't going to do that. For $150 I can get a professional to take a tree down.
So here I am back in Florida, and Christmas is right around the corner. I will be working on installing a paver driveway soon.
Since it is nearing Christmas, I thought I would put a Christmas tip in the blog. For Christmas I hang lights on the house. I have used the hooks that use adhesive to stick to the drip edge in the past. This process takes along time and is expensive. About $8 dollars for 10 hooks. It is possible t reuse the hooks for next year but then you have to buy new adhesive strips. Kind of a subscription plan for 3M. These hooks are at this link. After doing this for a couple years, this year I thought to myself there must be an easier way.
Since I had installed the roof on my projects (for example see my previous blogs on roofing at this link and this link) I realized that the drip edge I installed has a lip on it that is spaced out from Fascia about 3/4". I though to myself this would be an ideal place to hang a hook on for the lights. The hook just has to grab on the edge of the drip edge somehow. After searching for hooks that would do the job the nearest I could find is shown at this link. That's a 500 pack for $17.
However, after a couple days of inaction an idea just popped into my mind out of nowhere. It is shown below:
Yep that's a clothespin. Clothespins are cheap and I bought 100 of them at Walmart for $1.88. I put up 150' of lights by climbing up on the roof and fastening them with clothespins. It only took me an hour and I almost used all 100 of them. Now it is true that clothespins don't look as nice as the other hooks, but it is possible to paint them with Christmas colors or maybe even buy colored clothespins. I think they are fine the way they are. Besides who's going to see those clothespins at night anyway.
And that ends this blog,
Merry Christmas,
The Dr.
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