Reboxing

As much as we enjoyed our little fire hazard in the basement, all good things must come to an end and we had to say goodbye. This afternoon found us back under the house installing the new junction box.

Here is where we started. Noel finished the last of the conduit to the junction box this morning, and he was ready for the new box. Of course, the new box is larger than the old one so first he had to install another board under the joists to attach it to (the existing ones were VERY firmly attached, so just moving one over was not going to be the easy option).

The additional board turned out to be the big deal in this project. For some reason all the 2x4 stock we had was inexplicably hard to nail through, and I will just vaguely mention putting the board in the wrong place twice. Whatever. It seems like no matter how well you plan a project you always end up being sideswiped by some weird little unexpected quirk.

What, the photos taken in the dark with a flashlight are a little to art-house for you? OK, fine, I will use the flash.

Once the box was in place, it was not too hard to reverse the process of taking all the wiring out of the box and putting it all back in place. There were a few details that needed correcting, like a missing anti-short bushing and so on, but nothing we didn't have the materials to get done. And there's plenty of room in the new box for the new wiring to fit.

You can see the wires from the old fusebox there, draped over the side of the box, ready to be replaced by the new subpanel. I can't wait.

We also talked through the process of pulling the new wires through the conduit and that sounds like it will be a whole lot of fun, though I'm not sure how well it will photograph.

posted by ayse on 04/13/14