Burning Man!

Headed off to the glorious playa tomorrow morning to set up our Freestyle Palace. We have all the required power; two generators, one deep cycle boat battery and a couple invertors. Lighting is under control, got the hardy rope lights, stage lights, and a burn barrel with our camp name carved into it. We will be performing every night of the week at 9:00 and Portal, near the 9:00 plaza a few blocks from the esplanade. So come check us out!

Splicing

My cousin opened up a part of the wall at his house, only to find open splices. Every electrical splice must be enclosed in a junction box. It can be metal or plastic, but it must be accessible (in case the splices need to be checked or reinforced later on). My recommendation for this situation is to re-run sheathed romex to the last receptacle on the circuit. This solves two problems. It brings the splices into the box shown here, and it protects the wiring all the way to the next receptacle. I'm guessing that the last outlet was an afterthought because the rest of the circuit is enclosed in conduit.

Buzzing and Crackling

Just got a service call from a fellow Burning Man attendee. Her outlets in the living room worked sporadically and then would suddenly lose power. I first checked all of the breakers, nothing had tripped. I explored a mysterious fuse box in the closet, but there was no power at all. The last step was checking to see where the knob n' tube in these outlets were being fed by new wiring. I crawled under the house accompanied by the shoeless homeowner (burners are hard core that way), only to find several junction boxes. The first had no power, the second only had 48 volts (instead of the required 120) and the third was buzzing, sputtering and crackling. I had found the problem. Any movement led to more sparks. The wires had been loosely twisted and taped with non-electrical tape, so even the movement of walking on the floor above shook the wires enough to cause loose connections. I re-spliced with wire nuts and real tape in all three boxes and headed upstairs to find the outlets completely functioning. I love quick solutions!