We have spent 3 days fixing a wiring problem in our attic, which is one of those low-profile roofs, requiring a body to be jockey-sized. Or smaller. Today—noonish—we got the sucker. When wiring has to connect across an old ‘addition’ boundary, ie, old to new section, strange things can happen, especially regarding accessibility of things.
In this case we had a three-way switch that wouldn’t three-way successfully, and it wasn’t possible just to pull all the wires (which were trapped at the joining of old section to new) and rewire. It was a matter of logicking it out, involving about 8 wires, including what are called ‘travelers.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching
Travelers carry current to a second switch in the system—say you want to be able to turn on the same set of lights from two widely separated switches, at opposite ends of the kitchen.
Well, after a great deal of pretzeling and misery—the problem lies in a broken wire. And we now have an on-off from either end of the kitchen, in a switch plate that also serves a fan and used to serve an overhead light. Now we have sleek in-ceiling lights in place of the old fluorescent fixture with the broken wire, and the kitchen is acquiring color — more paint—and light. Lots of it.
Meanwhile the city has decided (by throwing darts at a board, I think) to repair certain east-west streets in our 2 mile section, at random intervals, and to also lane-restrict some repair work in alternate lanes on the north-south arterials, and if you think you have successfully escaped those, up on the east-west arterial, they have blocked the left lane without warning people to get over soon enough, which results in traffic lines piling up blocking off people who have just escaped the east-west restrictions crossing the likewise bollixed-up north-south arterials.
Can you say—city traffic management and our broken wiring system do seem to have a lot in common. I hope by tomorrow it too may have found a resolution, as we did by replacing one 15′ length of house wiring.
I hear you about street repairs. My city decided to resurface large sections of the Loop (and its access roads) that goes all the way around what used to be the whole city when it was built 40 years ago. Its southern end is now a major arterial and is heavily traveled. We had large sections of the loop and major intersections all along it bollixed up by road resurfacing and we are talking “yarn barf*” grade traffic snarls EVERYwhere. I do have to say, though, that now that it’s FINALLY all done, it’s very nice.
Oh, and any remodel is going to uncover all these little cans of worms that a previous remodeler’s shortcuts have left sprinkled about. Like the man says, “Nothing is ever simple.”
Just be thankful that the wriggling about in the attic happened now and not deep in the throes of an unusually hot summer.
*”Yarn barf” is the knitter’s term for what you will get if you don’t wind pull skeins into a ball before you start your knitting project. About 3/4 of the way into your project, the pull skein suddenly won’t and implodes into the biggest most frustrating snarliest tangle. Personally, I think pull skeins are a tool of the Devil.
Yarn Barf now enters my knitting vocabulary—most applicable. I’m currently knitting “two socks at once” (on a pair of so-called “circular” needles with one end of each needle connected to the other by a large length of wire). To do them, I draw on both ends of the semi-skein of yarn: one sock is being knit from the outside end of the yarn, the other from the end buried in a mess of yarn in the center. The worst part of this otherwise very clever and efficient way of knitting (both socks are done at the same time, rather than one only and the other one never even getting started due to the lure of new knitting projects) are the horrendous snarls of yarn inevitably created when drawing on both ends of the skein-ball at once.
I’m attempting to do my first crochet project since college. It involves some ‘chenille’ yarn, which is so fluffy I’m having trouble finding the proper loops to crochet into; you can’t see the individual stitches because they’re buried in fuzz.
‘Yarn Barf’ 😀
I haven’t tried that, but I’ve met hanks that refused to be wound into balls. (I think it’s partly uneven tension in the way the skein was wound, but even then, it shouldn’t refuse to be wound.)
Oh, and any remodel is going to reveal the cans of worms that previous remodeler’s shortcuts have left for their successors to uncover. Like the man says, “Nothing is ever simple.”
I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the city to come up with a resolution as quickly and easily as you did with the house wiring……it’s hard enough when I navigated out there…..
Our house wiring dates from the 70s. I replaced a number of our switches with rockers, including a couple of single pole two throws (the one in your kitchen that let you control 1 light from either end), but was stymied by the light I wanted to replace with a ceiling fan light combo, with the light on a separate circuit with a dimmer. Turns out I would have had to rewire, not just from the light to the switch, but all the way back into the attic where a junction box contained all the wiring for all the lights. Nope nope nope. The light on the fan goes on and off, no dimmer, and we’ll deal.
Once upon a time my sister decided to replace light switches with something more stylish and with a “better feel”. She didn’t know about two-way and three-way switches! In the aftermath, when things didn’t work right, it took my late brother-in-law and I hours to figure out what was going on and how to fix it. The old switches had been disposed of, nobody’d paid any attention to what the new switches were and disposed of everything they’d come in, and we had no clear idea of the wiring plan–just had the wires coming out of the walls. As you say, we had to logic it, well, I did, Mike didn’t really understand what he’d done.