Electrical

There are several places in the basement where a previous owner had dropped electrical wiring from a room above. This makes turning off a particular circuit at the breaker panel difficult: you wouldn't ordinarily think that shutting off the circuit for the master bedroom on the main floor would also shut off the ceiling light (and just the ceiling light) in the laundry / storage room immediately below it.

This is one of those situations. The only wiring into the lab came from the hallway and bedrooms above it. I had no idea how much load was currently on that circuit, so I decided to replace it altogether.

I ran a new circuit from the breaker panel. I wanted lots of power in the lab, so I got some heavier duty wiring (red heater wire) and a 20 amp breaker. The rest of the family was watching a movie so — wearing rubber gloves and runners, standing on a plastic stool, and keeping one hand behind my back — I popped the new breaker in without shutting the main breaker off. I can't decide if that was really clever or particularly stupid.

The old circuit didn't just end at the lamp fixture; it continued on to power other things. So I removed the fixture and tied the circuit together in a junction box.

First light for the new circuit!