Rewriting and Basement Update

The electrician finished looking over the wiring and fixed problem areas. He wired my bathroom exhaust fan, removed the 220 electric stove's outlet and replaced it with a 110 outlet by the stove. He added an outlet by the microwave, so I no longer have it on an extension. I asked him to replace the 2 plug outlets on both ends of the kitchen to 4 plug outlets. I could never get the back porch light to work; now it works. Last Christmas a received new fixture for the porch from my Dad and it looks great. Last thing I requested was an outside outlet near my gas grill so I would no longer have to run an extension through the porch window to run the rotisserie.


He never did find what was causing my TV screen to go black but the TV worked normal this weekend. My father, who is a retired electrician, said he may have tightened a connection when checking the house wiring and that may have corrected it. When I talked to him last Wednesday, I mentioned that I noticed condensation on the electrical pipe bring the outside line to the fuse box. When he opened it up, he found that there was no insulation place up the pipe. The warm house air was traveling up the pipe meeting the cold outside air causing the condensation. He remarked that in some cases the water drips back on to the circuit breakers. I had fiber glass lying around the basement from all the work I am doing and he used it to insulate the pipe.

I finished insulating the 7½ inch space between the sill and first floor in the unfinished basement section. Replacing the fiber glass with the foam board and spraying foam over the sill has cut down the heat loss in the basement. While working down in the basement I took sometime to clean out the dryer’s exhaust vent. I was reading that if your clothes are taking longer to dry than normal your vent may be clogged. I pulled the hose at the dryer’s connection on Saturday and it looked good. So I put it back together and assumed it was ok. But for some reason on Sunday, I went outside and lifted the vent cover and found lint completely covering the wire screening. This time I pulled the hose apart on both ends clean and vacuum everything. I will not be using the dryer until later this week so I will not know if this corrects the problems.

The weather been in the 30s and 40s since Saturday and so the thaw has begun. The repaired basement walls are holding up fairly well but I found some minor leaks. I applied more hydraulic cement over those areas and maybe I can start to paint the walls with waterproof paint next weekend.