Friday, June 02, 2006

The Water Goes Woooosh!

I didn't get the inspection this week...but it's scheduled for Monday and I'm ready to go. However, when I called to schedule the inspection, I found out my electrical permit had expired, because I hadn't had any inspections done on the electrical yet (there having been no electrical to do before there were walls). So I had to run down to the permit office and get the permit extended, which cost about $67, and took about 67 minutes of waiting.

I ran the 4-3 gauge wire from the main panel to the new sub-panel, and it was a lot of work. Each part of the wire that size is basically 7 strands of 14 or 12 gauge wire twisted around each other, so it's like wrestling with 7 pieces of Romex at the same time. Heavy and not very flexible to say the least. But after running it and hooking up the sub-panel this afternoon, I flipped the appropriate circuit breakers and brought the sub-panel up. So far so good--no sparks or flames, for example. I tried each of the 4 new circuits in turn, and everything worked except one of the loft lights, until I got to the circuit for the outdoor lighting. I suspect the light fixture above the front door, but we'll see tomorrow.

The DWV pipes have been ready to go for a bit, and this week I put in the shower pan liner. The drain is plugged for testing, and it's held water for a couple days with no leaks. I plugged the toilet and sink drains, and put another plug just above where the new DWV pipes tie into the existing, and with Kat's help filled it from the roof to make sure the pipes above the floor level don't leak (below floor level had been tested earlier).

It held water all day with no problems, but I didn't want to leave the pressure on it all weekend (it only has to hold for 10 minutes for the inspection). So I let air out of the bottom plug to let the water out, and woooosh! Most of it went down the drain as intended, but the partially deflated plug got pushed down by the water, and a lot came up out of the clean out. It was refreshing, to say the least. Unfortunately, the plug got turned upside down, so I had to stab it to let the rest of the air out and get it out of the drain. Which means I need another for the inspection.

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