At the end of last week I had a conversation with our contractor about a wire. It was dangling from a spot near the back bedroom window to a place in the siding just above the basement wall.
Once upon a time, previous owners of Hedgehog House (that’s what we call our home) wanted to run an air conditioner in the back bedroom window. They ran a 20-amp electrical cable from the basement, up the side of the house (bending it to confirm with the siding, then under an eave, up a short bit of roofing shingles, into the shake siding and ultimately into a wall outlet next to the window.
The installation was unorthodox, hardly up to proper electrical code requirements, and certainly was not done by an electrical contractor. On the other hand, it was robust (20-amp breaker and cable, and it wasn’t terribly visible. Sure, it was a DIY special, but it was safe and it looked okay.
With our new construction, that changed. The cable was attached to a part of the house that was torn down. And so, for the last several months, it has been dangling, occasionally catching my hat, and generally looking like a problem that needed to be addressed
The Contractor Solution
Last week, we were preparing to insulate the new addition, and we would soon be installing drywall. I brought up the problem of the dangling wire. Wouldn’t we want to cut it off, pull in inside the basement, run a new wire up through the addition and in the space above the eave to the outlet? I had figured it out—what logically ought to be done. It seemed obvious.
My contractor thought—not so much.
Nope—if it was run outside the building, up the walls, under the edge of the shingles and whatever, that was good enough. He told me we’d just to the same thing the old DIY experts had done.
My Meltdown
I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. On Saturday I looked at it all again. And on Sunday, I had a meltdown.
The stupid wire was going to be impossible to “blend in” to the siding. It would be going right in the pace where the addition was (quite expertly) joined to the original structure. It would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. It would be ugly. I sent an e-mail message to our architect, describing the problem, looking for validation of my thinking. A few hours later, I sent another message to the architect
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“Never mind,” I said. “I made up my mind.”
An Electrician’s Definition of Fishing
When you are trying to run cables inside walls, under floors and in other relatively inaccessible locations, the term of art for what you are doing is “fishing.”
My problem was running a wire about eight feet, from a spot high on the side wall of the addition, through an empty space over the eaves at the back of the house, through the (hidden) back wall of the house to the outlet.
I’m not an expert. I had some ideas, but I didn’t have the same tools an electrician would use. I was a typical DIY home owner trying to do a very simple thing.
And so I spent Sunday afternoon, drilling a couple of holes though the newly insulated addition wall into the eave space. I used my circuit tracer to determine which breaker controlled the circulate, turned it off, and pulled the outlet. .
I cut the dangling cable off a few feet from the basement window. I left enough to pull it back inside and be able to run it to a new box for a splice. And I cut it off outside the back bedroom window. The die was cast. A new, hidden cable would now be required
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The Long, Winding road
I spent Sunday in a futile effort to “fish” the new wire though the space. It was, I estimated, about six feet. Easy peazy.
By the end of the day on Sunday, I decided to call in professional help. I contacted one of the men who has been working on the project. I asked if he could come early on Monday to give me a hand. He suggested later in the day, about 6 pm.
I spent the day waiting. Oh, I took a couple of shots and fishing the wire through. (Actually, I spent at least four hours.) No luck. And by seven pm, it was clear my helper had forgotten my request (I’d picked up cash to pay him) I was on to plan B.
Extra Hands
I called my across the street neighbor. All I really needed was someone to work one end of the piece of electrical conduit I was using to try to get the line from one spot to the other. We texted back and forth, and came up with a plan. He’d come over before work.
But wait—that meant someone in the guest bedroom at 9 am, before Jane was up and dressed.
On to plan C. My neighbor would work the ladder end of the job. I’d take the bedroom
Follow the Light
Somewhere early in the process, I had put my LED work light into the hole in the wall behind the electrical socket. Then I looked through the hole I had made in the addition wall. I could see the light. I was positive I could get a wire from here to there.
And so, on Tuesday morning, before my neighbor arrived, I made one last attempt. I put the light in the hole in the back bedroom wall. I attached a lightweight rope to my conduit and fed them through the hole in the wall. And by looking around the edge of the hole, I could aim the conduit at the light.
This time—it worked!
I made the trek upstairs and I could see the pipe and the rope. Huzzah!
There was more fiddling, creating some slack, figuring a way to “hook” the rope and pull it in, but finally, I had the connection I needed to pull the electrical cable through.
I texted my neighbor. “Mission accomplished—you don’t need to stop by.”
What’s the Big Deal?
I spent a lot of time finishing up the job today. I had to route the cable along a wall and then down to the basement. Several holes were drilled and cable staples were applied. Where the wire ran close to the surface of the wall, I added “nail plates” that would prevent anyone from accidently driving a nail into the wire when it was hidden by wallboard. I filled the holes between the addition and other spaces with fireproof foam (it’s a code thing I picked up from watching the real contractors do their work).
And dang, it was a lot of work and all that, but I feel good.
It was the right thing to do and I done it.
Anon.
Ridge