No Explosions

Man, I am beat. I haven’t been working that hard. And it’s not really that hot outside. But it’s so muggy, the sweat gushes out of you, and somehow, it’s exhausting.

I ripped out the conduit running from the AC disconnect box to the outdoor floodlight. I rewired the floodlight. I ran wire in through the garage wall. I opened a hole going from the garage into the air handler closet, where there is a handy, unused length of Romex.

The drilling was too easy. I barely got to enjoy it. The rotary hammer just farts once or twice, and then you’re through the wall. As tool experiences go, this is hard to beat.

I experienced severe confusion, trying to figure out how to take wires running from the floodlight’s EMT conduit and run them through a concrete wall. There are a lot of rigid conduit parts made for this, but I couldn’t find any EMT stuff. I guess EMT under an outdoor soffit is less than kosher. I don’t know. I solved it by screwing a 1/2″ EMT connector into the side of a PVC box and screwing the box to the wall. I popped the plug out of the back of the box, and I ran the wires through it and into the wall. I pumped the opening full of Alex caulk to keep bugs from using it as a highway, although I guess that’s kind of pointless in a garage. I may blast the cavity inside the cinderblock full of foam, purely out of spite. This is Miami. SOMETHING will make a home in there.

I suppose a real man would replace all the EMT conduit with rigid. I don’t know what the code is. Virtually every piece of outdoor wiring I’ve seen in houses here has been EMT, but that doesn’t mean anything.

The rotary hammer makes a bigger hole on the way out than it does on the way in, so I patched the holes with crap from a can, and now I have to wait until tomorrow before I can finish.

The wiring from the AC box to the floodlight was fascinating. It passed an outdoor outlet on the way. There was one color code on the way from the box to the outlet, a second between the outlet and the light, and a third in the light. So part of the time I was just replacing wires so things would make sense.

Fixing the outdoor wiring is not what’s exciting here. What’s exciting is getting a new 20-amp outlet in the garage, a new 20-amp outlet in the air handler closet, and two sets of lights on the wall in the closet. But that won’t happen until tomorrow or Thursday.

I am the king of all tools. Fear me. Etc. Etc.